PART 1 • Basic game searches
Searches for games of a specific opening are also regularly performed
by most chess players (mainly because players tend to spend far too
much time studying the opening, but that was mentioned earlier). Most
chess playing programs allow you to search for openings by ECO code
(described in Chapter Nine, along with tips for finding codes you don't
already know). You'll just type the ECO code in a box, click “Search”, and
the program will pull up all of the database games which are identified as
falling under that ECO classification.
Some programs will offer two boxes for opening searches, which allows
for a search which covers a range of consecutive codes. For example,
the Petroff Defense (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nf6) falls under two separate ECO
codes, C42 and C43. You would type “C42” in the first box and “C43” into
the second, then do the search and see a list of all of the Petroff Defense
games from the database.
As noted, different chess playing programs offer different database
search tools, some more elaborate than others. In addition to player
and opening searches, most also allow searches by year, result, and
player rating. Others add factors such as length of game, tournament
name or geographic location of the event, and sometimes even specific
board positions. The more comprehensive (and much more expensive)
database programs provide an even bigger variety of search terms,
including maneuvers (specific piece moves) and material balances (two
Rooks and three pawns vs. a Queen and one pawn, for example).
COMBINING SEARCH TERMS
You can combine search terms when looking for games in a database.
For example, you can type on player's name into the “White” box, another
player's name into the “Black” field, and the program will show all of the
games in which those two players faced each other. You can specify
the colors they played, as well, so you can get all of the games in which
Player A had the White pieces while Player B played Black.
Another commonly searched combination is “player and opening”. For
example, Garry Kasparov was well known for playing the King's Indian
Defense at one time, so you could search for his name under “Black” and
the ECO code range from “E60” to “E99” to see all of his games in which
he played the Black side of the K.I.D.
The more search terms a program offers, the more specific your searches
can be. But there are a couple of pitfalls you should be aware (or just
beware) of...
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