Re: [Scidvspc-users] Scidbase and TWIC

[John <jo...@js...>]

On 06/27/12 06:14, Steven wrote:
> I went through the old mailing list articles about TWIC and direct downloads, and have started to think it would be "fair enough" to have a direct download feature.
>
> But i'm probably not too keen on it anyway.  These direct downloads are ChessDB's only decent feature that i've noticed. But there are better ways of achieving the same goal. http://www.ficsgames.org/ is a great resource, and the Million Base 1.74 database is built on twic games i think.
>
> Which brings me to the main issue: A good, free, regularly updated Scid database is what we really want, would save a heap of duplication of effort and be a nice resource. Shane once offered Scidbase on cdrom available by donation, but i never saw it, and it is no longer available afaik.
>
>
> Producing (and maintaining) a high quality base is the issue. But I'm certainly not an authority on database quality, and perhaps the problem is in pleasing "most people" ?
>
>
> Steve


Most people would download all TWIC games just once. Thereafter, they 
only need updates.

With ADSL and better in the hands of most, it only takes a few minutes 
to download the TWIC games, most time is spent figuring out which ones 
need to be fetched to update the database (if you're as disorganised as 
I am), downloading the new files, unzipping them and adding them.

If someone creates a "high quality" database, it might actually not be 
the one I want. Katar's USCF rating is, I think, over 2000. My 
Australian rating is about 1400. I've never beaten anyone over 2000 
Australian (although I've been close a couple of times), I can learn 
from games from that level, so Katar prunes more games than I ever would.

Last week I played a game that started 1 e4 g6 2 d4 bg7 3 h4. 3h4 is an 
idea of Fisher, there aren't many games in my database to look at, 50 I 
think. While there was one game with both rated over 2600 FIDE, many 
were FM level or lower. Those games, of little interest to Katar, were 
very useful to me.

Don't fixate on TWIC, chessdb knows of other sites too.


>
> P.S. For those wanting to test out this feature on ChessDB, I think this patch is correct and needed to make it work with wish8.5
>
>
> --- tcl/tools/download-twics.tcl.orig   2012-06-27 07:46:32.000000000 +0000
> +++ tcl/tools/download-twics.tcl        2012-06-26 21:45:08.000000000 +0000
> @@ -20,7 +20,7 @@
>   # and so never fail to get the latest
>
>   proc ::tools::maximumTWICnumber {{when today}} {
> -    set time [clock scan $when]
> +    set time [clock seconds]
>       set year [clock format $time -format %Y]
>       # might want %W instead of %U; see the [clock] man page
>       set week [scan [clock format $time -format %U] %d]
>
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