Keeping your scoresheets

[MJMcCready]

How likely/unlikely is it to find someone who keeps all their scoresheets over all the years they've played at club level? It's a different story for professional players yes I know but at club and county level how common is this? Some people never keep any of their scoresheets and just throw them away. Any thoughts on why some people do that? I'm asking because in doing a certain level of research I have noticed some club players can give you games going back 50 years or more whereas some can't even recall who they played last week! What is the norm then? Assuming there is one.

[Graham Borrowdale]

Slightly sad to admit that I keep all of mine, going back, as you say, nearly 50 years. I lost a couple when they were put inside sealed move envelopes and my opponent took them, but I resigned without resuming so I never got them back, and about 25 years ago I lost about half a seasons worth, maybe 12 games, and turned the house upside down to no avail. Most also copied into scorebooks, and in a Chessbase file which is long corrupted.

[Roger de Coverly]

How likely/unlikely is it to find someone who keeps all their scoresheets over all the years they've played at club level?

Most of my games from long, long ago I transcribed to scorebooks which were then in turn transcribed to a computer database. Some extremely old scoresheets from my schooldays or later frieindly games I still have in paper form that I recently transcribed. One thing I found I regretted when setting up the database was that I hadn't retained scores, even if incomplete, of rapidplay games.

In the process of transcribing the scorebooks to a database, I realised that the rapidplay games were a missing link. In other words I would play a particular opening or a particular line and then seemingly give it up for no apparent reason. The reason was often a rapidplay game that had gone sour. My first rapidplay games were at the Whitby Congress in 1970 where they ran a semi-social tournament in the evening which was one round per night, one hour on the clock. For some openiings or systems that I later used regularly, that was their first outing.

[Joey Stewart]

I've got a huge draw of them going back to 2002 when I first started playing league matches - started a project to digitise them all during lockdown but after a while I got bored of it and decided to wait it out for a little longer - can't be too many more years before they develop a text-digital app which could do in seconds what currently takes several minutes.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Have all mine (OTB). Around 1000+ (including rapidplay games). Plus empty scorebooks waiting for them to be copied into (will never happen). They have all been scanned (in case the paper copies get lost), but no dedicated database generated (yet). Probably around a third in poorly maintained database files that need a proper sort through (mainly because some have reams of human and computer analysis attached).

Some people will have huge files of online games at varying time controls on various platforms. Some people who only play online will never know the delights(?) of keeping OTB records!

[Ian Thompson]

can't be too many more years before they develop a text-digital app which could do in seconds what currently takes several minutes.

There already is such an app - https://pgn-app.com/en/. I was unable to get it to work reliably when I tried it on a couple of my scoresheets - it went wrong at move 2 or 3 and then gave up completely a few moves later after a series of incorrect moves and a ridiculous position on the board. On the other hand, the organisers of the Dortmund open were using it to bulk convert scoresheets and their results for my games were better. I'm guessing the app developers were doing this for the tournament organisers. What's unknown is how much manual effort was needed to correct the conversions.

The problem with any app of this type is that you need it to be 100% accurate; 99% accurate isn't good enough unless you're prepared to manually check everything it did which rather defeats the purpose of the app.

[Roger de Coverly]

I've got a huge draw of them going back to 2002 when I first started playing league matches - started a project to digitise them all during lockdown but after a while I got bored of it

I did my scorebook archive dating back to 1968 in 1990. It was usually at least 30 games a season, sometimes much more. I think it took a month or longer, doing some every evening. I found it a valuable learning exercise, reviewing my play and I think gave a short term boost to my playing strength. Once set up, you just keep it up to date. Mine is on a laptop, so it travels to tournaments. When you play in tournaments with live coverage, nowadays you can just download the game to add it to the personal collection.

[Roger de Coverly]

Some people will have huge files of online games at varying time controls on various platforms.

I'm guessing that lichess keep past Blitz games played on their server. Any hints as to how to access these? There are possibly some opening secrets generated by the stockfish commentator hidden within.

In days of old, ICC (Internet Chess Club) would email games played on their server.

[John Saunders]

Some people will have huge files of online games at varying time controls on various platforms.

I'm guessing that lichess keep past Blitz games played on their server. Any hints as to how to access these? There are possibly some opening secrets generated by the stockfish commentator hidden within.

In days of old, ICC (Internet Chess Club) would email games played on their server.

By a weird coincidence I stumbled on the LiChess database this morning when looking for something else (and before seeing this thread)...

https://database.lichess.org/

5.9 billion games! Which you can download, month by month. In totality, the file size goes into many GBs. I wouldn't expect to live long enough for the downloads to complete so won't bother.

[Roger de Coverly]

By a weird coincidence I stumbled on the LiChess database this morning when looking for something else (and before seeing this thread)...

If they organise the data by month, that may suggest there isn't a search by user available.

Talking of size restrictions, the download from chess-results has a game count restriction which may come into play if you try to download all rounds of a large tournament in one go.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Large numbers of bullet games (usually by anonymous players) may approach an infinite monkeys approach to chess like that for Shakespeare. I will leave others to unpack the meaning of this... (and post links).

[John Townsend]

My games, which go back to 1961, have been copied into score-books. Most of the games have survived, except for during my university days, when I was not very disciplined.

[MJMcCready]

My games, which go back to 1961, have been copied into score-books. Most of the games have survived, except for during my university days, when I was not very disciplined.

Do you ever take a look at games that go that far back?

[John Clarke]

Although my active playing career finally ground to a halt getting on for 40 years ago, I've kept all my game scores and always will. Having invested at least three hours, often more, in each of some 475 games, it seems a pity to have nothing to show for so much effort. About 40 of them were at rapidplay time-limits, most of the rest at regular. Far too many had to be adjudicated, often with results notably at variance with Stockfish's assessment of the adjourned position.

My earliest games were transcribed into various kinds of exercise book (some bought, some pinched from the school stationery cupboard), along with notes (sometimes quite detailed) about the event, the outcome of the match or tournament, team-mates' performance, opponents' behaviour, etc, etc. This all came in very useful when I was writing an account of my school's participation in the North Circular League for their then webmaster. I continued the practice up till the end of the 1972-73 season, after which I was simply too busy to carry it on. So there's another four years' worth of bare game scores still awaiting (but unlikely to get) the treatment.

There are gaps in the record, usually because I handed over the scoresheet for adjudication without first copying it down (there often wasn't time, with caretakers and such hovering ready to lock up, or lift-givers anxious to be away). Two from the Sussex University championship, including my best win in it, have simply disappeared, no idea how.

From time to time I dig out a game from the distant past and run it past Stockfish. Most of them are utter mediocrities of the sort too often produced at my modest level: obviously (now) strong moves overlooked; numerous horrific blunders (most of them mine) which went unpunished. But there were also some extraordinary resources which I'd not surprisingly missed. Always amusing to find one of those, even if it is half a century or more too late!

[John Townsend]

M.J. McCready asks: "Do you ever take a look at games that go that far back?"

Answer: Yes, sometimes, mainly out of nostalgia.