I bought CM11 and I like it, but I have encountered a problem when I wanted to build my own database of computer games.

I created the database and I tried to import chess games from PGN files. However, the program often corrupted and had to be restarted. Some PGN files it reads with no problems, some not. Later I found out mistakes in the database - some of the imported games contained errors.

How come that Fritz can import any PGN files without problems and errors and Chessmaster not? Is there any explanation?

Other thing is that when I have several databases in Chessmaster format, how can I merge them into one database? Fritz can do this easily. But can CM do this as well? Can anyone help?

quote:

Originally posted by Volkodav1972:
I bought CM11 and I like it, but I have encountered a problem when I wanted to build my own database of computer games.

I created the database and I tried to import chess games from PGN files. However, the program often corrupted and had to be restarted. Some PGN files it reads with no problems, some not. Later I found out mistakes in the database - some of the imported games contained errors.

How come that Fritz can import any PGN files without problems and errors and Chessmaster not? Is there any explanation?

Other thing is that when I have several databases in Chessmaster format, how can I merge them into one database? Fritz can do this easily. But can CM do this as well? Can anyone help?

I've mentioned this too many times maybe, but still, I'd like to repeat it over and over: do not use chessmaster for analysis of any kind. if you have fritz, that's all you need. use CM to play with and enjoy the user created 3D boards, but leave the analysis job for other programs, and actually, any other would be probably a lot better than CM.

I've had the same problem with importing some PGN files. While PGN is a standard, it seems like many PGN files have slight variations in formats that Chessmaster doesn't like.

As to merging several database, CM cannot do this. To get around it, you could export all the games to PGN files, create a new database, and then import all of the PGN files. But that's far from easy...

I've created a small database of chess computers games (now version 3), download link is here:

http://rapidshare.com/files/89884917/chessprograms_version3.zip.html

It is in both Chessmaster and PGN format. Please feel free to import it to your main CM database.

Hopefully, I will create some bigger database next time. This one is small so far.

This 3th version includes games played by Chessmaster Vs. other engines too.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Volkodav1972,

Also, Don't try to export the CM data base as a PGN file. It will start to do it but then will crash before it gets too far. This is true for both CMX and CM-GM. I wanted to add these games to another database I have to use for opening tree analysis but it didn't work.

Oh well! As others have said, CM is good for the training but analysis/data base functions can be better handled by other programs.

Just out of curiosity, can you tell me the error you received?

I tried exactly what you said... and everything went fine for me. I went to the default database, selected all games (783,953 of them!), and exported them to a PGN file. It worked, although it took a long time - over an hour, with the resulting PGN being 545 MB! I opened the PGN with a text editor and it looked fine.

I didn't try importing the PGN into a new database - I didn't have the patience.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: KHollister,

quote:

Originally posted by KHollister:
Just out of curiosity, can you tell me the error you received?

You are right. It now seems to work - but very slow. I know it didn't work when I first got CM-GM so I assume that the patch fixed it.

I tried it again in CMX and the message I got is the standard "CMX has encountered a problem and needs to close." This happened after it had exported about 22,000 games and was repeatable.

I also noticed that SCID had a problem importing a number of the games - Looking at a couple of these, I discovered that CM doesn't add a FEN string to the PGN to specify the starting position when the starting position is something other than the stardard position - such as an 'odds' game or an end-game fragment.

If I have a lot of time some day, I will filter out all the games with non-standard starting positions and then exoprt the rest of the database.

Well, I did have some problems importing some of the games from the recent 2008 Gibtelecom Chess Festival; however I didn't know if this was due to the PGN file or Chessmaster.

As I mentioned before, while PGN is a standard, all chess programs seems to format them differently. For instance, you could have 4 PGN files with the same game by Vishwanathan Anand, and his name would appear differently, i.e. 'Anand', 'V. Anand', 'Vishwanathan Anand', or 'Anand, Vishwanathan'. The same thing goes for the formats of the event date.

I know that sounds petty, but when you're trying to import PGNs from several tournaments, it makes for a mess when you look at things in Chessmaster. So I wind up editing the PGN file manually before I import it. That's a real pain!

Lenard 2005: For your issue this procedure would be a pain, unless you really want to include a particular game or games in your DB that do not begin with the standard starting position. I use it primarily to create a PGN game from books, chess articles, etc., whre the game begins from a particular position that is not the starting position:

1. Set up position in Training Room.

2. Save as .pgn file. CM automatically adds headers and FEN.

3. If the source for the moves, annotation, etc.,is an online article you can copy same for pasting to the PGN file (#4 below).

4. Open the pgn file in Notepad and enter or paste the moves from the source before the *

5. Save the file again as .pgn.

6. Open in CM for playback. The game will now begin with the given position and the moves will begin at 1. from that position.

This may not help you but thought I'd give it to you just in case....