ICA Bringing 20,000 Illinois Games to Your Browser

Thanks to the work of ICA President Tom Sprandel, ICA has just posted a database of 10,004 games. The update coming soon will have almost 20,000 chess games: it begins with an 1858 Louis Paulsen simul in Chicago and ends with games from the 2011 Chicago Open.  The collection draws heavily from ChessBase, CICL, and the ICA archives.

We'd like to include as many annotated games as possible, but we don't want to infringe on any copyrights. If you have a collection of games that you'd like to contribute to the project (clean PGN or CBV files strongly preferred), This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

To see the database, click here.  You can search by game number or last name. Or choose a random game to view.

What games belong in the database? We'd like to err on the side of inclusiveness without being silly. Any game by an Illinois master (no matter where in the world it was played), any master game played in Illinois, any interesting amateur game (you probably have hundreds of your own games!), and games played by "honorary Chicagoans" (Bill Martz, Emory Tate, Bill Colias). The database also includes games of immigrants to Illinois from "the old country." Even though Bobby Fischer was born at Billings Hospital and Sammy Reshevsky went to the University of Chicago, one has to draw the line somewhere, and we've only included Reshevsky's games from his Midwest years (roughly 1924-34) and essentially excluded Fischer unless he was playing someone from Illinois. Simul games and postal games are most welcome. (Maybe even endgame studies? The Lasker-Reichhelm position was first published in the Chicago Tribune.) And please don't be bashful: send wins, losses, and draws!