Opening Master Golem and OTB

The history 

The chess database Opening Master has been on the market since 2004 when it was registered under the copyright protection. It was marketed mainly in Central Europe where its roots are coming from. When it reached big popularity among chess players it was ready for going global. Back in the early days it was the pilot ''alpha'' project after about 3 years of research and development and had around 4.2 millions of non -commented games. It's a big step considering now 7.5 millions.

The first database was in dual format and could be used by two Chess Database Programs (readers of data)

1) ChessBase / CB   and   2) Chess Assistant / CA

The leader among the chess programs which can read databases according to the statistics is currently the Chess Base. It was very difficult for authors to keep up with the two formants simultaneously therefore the decision was made to start using only the Chess Base software program for reading and analysing the Opening Master data. It was not until early 2010 when we introduced ''again'' the coversion for Chess Assitant realizing the market potential including the older ChessBase file CBF which can be used under EXACHESS environment (MacUsers). More than that, the PGN format is also very popular among users of SCID thus it was converted also to this environment.

The database readers

CB is more 'user friendly' program but you pay for this user friendliness much more money plus get "real" updates roughly once a year.. The CA has on the other hand more advanced menu and operations are much faster there, It is more suitable for advanced chess players and for massive data handling. It can also handle de-duplication of commented games which after so many years CB is not able to bring it to the market. The CA updates online which is a great advantage.

But coming back from Database software to actual DATABASES. Why the Opening Master was born? One must say, that to buy every year the same product with only small updates and no big value-add is bit strange, and yet there are thousands of players who buy commercial products like this. It's all about marekting how great name you give or how great cover you produce. The DATA inside? Forget it, people won't notice.. The one year period is also very long waiting time for a good chess players, there are so many things happining during this time, thus more frequent update might be necessary if not required. Both CB and CA are now updating their databases more frequently however the quality of the updates is questionable. (make comparison between 3 products and see)  For beginners 2 years time is ok, until they figure out that the old data is actually hurting them and then they will seek for an update.

Some practices of inserting data into the commercial databases are very disputable, consider games without bodies. Who needs such games? Just for the stake of increasing the number of the database?  And what about games prior 1900? Our opinion and focus is mainly 20th century that changed the way of thinking and analysis over the chess board, thus you won't find any historical games prior 1900 in the Opening Master Database.

The main features of Opening Master :

• approx  8,7 million high quality games between humans in Chess Base, Chess Assistant and PGN formats. Including now also CBF format which can be used by EXACHESS / Mac players.
• out of which approx 6,2 millions is OTB players only (i.e. excluding any Portal, Correspondance games etc..) THIS is pure OTB games
• out of which approx. 1,2 million games is pure Correspondence games only. This is especially useful database for ICCF players.
• each game has result ending 1:0, 1/2 or 0:1
• the smallest number of moves is 8 and more. There are NO draws of GMs between 2nd and 7th move
• does NOT contain games prior year 1900
• does NOT contain games played by computers only. These games are at lower quality than if played by humans. OM GOLEM has computer assisted games called Centaur where human decision at the end matters.
• does NOT contain games played on 'web portals' with nick names behind. where the rules are not clear (again, exception for OM GOLEM which is collection of best human, i.e. here we put also web portal games)
• it has much higher number of high ELO games and the basis for collection is only quality not volume
• there are many other smalle database specials like FIDE top 100, ICCF top 200, OM 2300, OM Portal only etc...
• there are NO DUPLICATES in this or any other OM database. See filter criteria below
• Since version 1.22. databases are also converted for Chess Assistant players and universal PGN
  

The history of development Opening Master :