About
Currently there are {{total_count}} problems in the database ({{new_count}} added in last 30 days).
Acknowlegments
I'd like to thank all the people who collect chess problems and don't mind sharing their collections.
Currently, this database comprises the following sources:
- Eduardo Sadier's collection of about 30000 twomovers. Eduardo has given his kind permission to use it on this site. You can download this collection from The Art of Direct Mate in Two.
- Valery Smirnov's miniatures collection with about 10000 moremovers. There used to be a great Chess problems library of him, but it was last updated in August 2007 and it seems like you cannot dowload files from there anymore. It says "disk quota exceeded" in russian.
- When i found out that i can't download Valery Smirnov's collection, i started to look for it on my old hard drive. Surprisingly i also have found an archive named "ProblemsPGN.rar" with more that 40000 problems of various genres. It seems like i've downloaded it a while ago and forgot about it. It contains files named in russian (e.g. Задачи.pgn). If you know where this file comes from, please let me know, i'm pretty curious about it. Anyway, i'd like to acknowledge the yet unknown collector.
- Processing of the Problemiste PBM collections resulted in about 4500 new positions and also allowed to add twins to a little more than 3000 problems. Problemiste is a proprietary program for solving and collecting chess problems by Matthieu Leschemelle.
- I have found Leonardo Mano pages (the link doesn't work anymore) via the Vaclav Kotesovec website. They featured a proprietary program called "Forsyth" and a large collection of files with chess problems in its (Forsyth) format (PGN-clone) to download. This outstanding collection has had about 23000 problems that were not yet in the yacpdb.
- Dejan Glišić has sent me his collection of chess problems from the croatian sources. It is relatively small compared to the other collections i have processed, but it's the first time something is sent to me, not found by myself, and i appreciate it a lot. Thank you, Dejan. Upd: And thanks for keeping sending me more problems!
- Dr. Rainer Staudte has emailed me a number of corrections as well as the wonderful collection of miniature selfmates (more than 3000 of them). Founded by the late composer Peter Kniest (and earlier by his brother Albert Kniest) as a card index archive, this collection was digitized by Rainer Staudte after Kniest's passing in 1993. Rainer Staudte continued collecting miniatures and was later joined by chess composers Hans Gruber and Frank Müller. There's a book based on this collection where you can find more details about its history: P.Kniest; H.Gruber, F.Müller, R.Staudte: Selbstmatt-Miniaturen Reflexmatt-Miniaturen. Editions feenschach - phénix, Aachen 2003.
- The collection of about 18000 bohemian threemoveres (with some two-, four- and moremovers) collected by Evgeni Fomichev and late Vladimir Kos was submitted by Rainer Staudte. Later Vaclav Kotesovec and Jiri Jelinek provided a fresher version and a Kos's twomovers collection (with model mates mostly).
- Vito Rallo has sent me his archive of originals from italian magazines Torre & Cavallo-Scacco, years 2000-2005 and Telescacco 2000 years 1994-2007
- Klaus-Peter Zuncke's (1954 - 2007) database of more than 60000 orthodox miniatures was submitted by his friend Rainer Staudte. Some info about this impressive collection is available in German Wikipedia: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schachdatenbank#Schachkomposition.
- Mirko Degenkolbe from Germany has sent me the digitized Fritz Schonert's collection of ~45000 directmate problems. Full credits for digitizing also include Volker Felber and Udo Degener. Full credits for the whole event also include Steven Dowd from the USA who has served as a German-English translator between me and Mirko, thank you Steven.
- I've contacted Brian Stephenson who runs the Meson Chess Problem Database (i know, you all know this site). Brian was extremely helpful and sent me the best-structured chess problem data file i've seen this far: the Meson. Hats off.
- Gabriel Török, volunteer yacpdb editor from Slovakia, has sent me his twomovers collection with more than 56000 problems. Almost half of them were not in the database yet. Thanks!
- Gabriel also sent me his fourmovers collection of ~10000 problems. About 3000 entries were new and others have their `References' section updated. And over 8000 selfmates. And 33000 threemovers.
- Uwe Würker has given his permission to include his archive of all original directmate problems from the German paper Freie Presse (years 1989-2009) into the yacpdb. The file was submitted via Olaf Jenkner and Rainer Staudte. Thank you very much, everyone.
- Anders Thulin has invited me to use his digitized collection of chess problems from books in public domain that are available on his site. I did.
- Mihail Croitor has kindly provided me with the PGN sources of Chess Endgame Study Database. These entries include a link to Mihail's site where they can be played online via PGN Live, a cool PGN viewer by Milan Velimirović.
- Anatoly Mukoseev from Tver (Russia) has sent me the legacy of the late Tver composer Nikolay Kosolapov. Thank you, Anatoly.
- Alexandr Bulavka from Belarus sent me the collection of his own published problems, thank you very much. Everybody is welcome to enjoy these problems by searching for author:"Булавка, Александр Геннадьевич"
- Alexandr Sygurov from Russia sent me the his collection of the directmate problems with model mates. Thanks!
Also i'd like to thank developers and maintainers of the Popeye - a free solving program which was used to solve many problems in the database.
Contact
Send any feedback to dmitri.turevski@gmail.com.