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The Chess
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Editor: Dr Tim |
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The Chess
History |
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Editor: Dr Tim |
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© Dr Tim Harding
Last modified:
21 March 2025
We have found that many historic games from over-the-board matches and tournaments (especially from the 19th and early 20th centuries) are wrong in databases and even in chess history books.
Back in 2021 we created some pages on this topic to do with Steinitz's later years (see below) and we are now returning to this topic.
The main focus of our new research is on the career of Carl Schlechter, finding many forgotten games and correcting the scores of others.
Another concern is to create for the first time a reliable record of the great 1895 Hastings tournament in which he was one of the participants. There are four tournament books (two contemporary and two dating from its anniversary) and they all contain mistakes, as does every database we have looked at including Britbase.
We are not intending to publish our findings at this time (apart from what we already released in 2021) but we may give some examples later.
Some of our corrections are minor but several involve radical corrections to the accepted scores of games.
Since 2020 we have been using Thomas Niessen's Chess Suite software, which compares PGN databases and identifies previously unnoticed discrepancies in records of the same game. (The Chess Suite has other features but this is the only one I have used.)
The software produces a report on the databases compared. Then we check these findings against the primary printed sources, although sometimes they disagree about how games really went, which requires more research and sometimes the exercise of judgment to decide between alternatives.
We found many problems with Steinitz games several years ago but by no means all were detected. Niessen's software became invaluable when preparing the final text of Steinitz in London. During 2021 we used the Chess Suite to detect many problems in later Steinitz games that fall outside the scope of our book.
In 2021 we published here a series of articles in which many of our findings were be published for the first time.
We began with an article about problems in several games between the first two world champions, William Steinitz and Emanuel Lasker. We are sure readers must agree that it is particularly important to correct the record of their many encounters.
Our second article deals with more games from Steinitz's later career, especially his matches with Chigorin, Gunsberg, and Schiffers.
Further articles may deal with corrections for J. H. Blackburne's games and some of Schlechter's.
Article 1: Steinitz v Lasker (introduction)
Article 2: Steinitz v Gunsberg and others (link now fixed)
Our general conclusion is that database users, especially chess historians, need to be wary of trusting the databases. They should go back to primary sources whenever possible before publishing old games in books and magazine articles. Moreover, those who edit, post or sell databases must reform their procedures.
The main databases we have compared are ChessBase (various editions), chessgames.com (where readers contribute games and sometimes corrections) and, in the case of Steinitz, Sid Pickard's database on his CD The Collected Works of Wilhelm Steinitz. When we found discrepancies in versions of a game, we usually checked some other databases also.
Recently we spent a substantial amount of money purchasing ChessBase's Mega Database 2025 but so far we have only checked it for Schlechter (about 20 mistakes found so far). Later this year we intend to check that database very thoroughly but important family events at present mean we do not have enough time to do this.