Where we are in the development
🛠️ Armageddon POP Chess DB - ToDo List
If everything goes according to plan, we will begin updating the database around 2025-05-18. As of now, the first one million recorded games have been added, covering material well into the 1990s. (Yes, all the classic World Championship matches up to Kasparov–Karpov are already included!)
After that period, the number of recorded games increased dramatically. We have over eight million more to process, so patience is advised.
In the meantime, I’ve gathered links to notable World Championship matches — including the 1972 Fischer–Spassky match and, of course, the first of the legendary Kasparov–Karpov encounters. Below are the links. You can copy the URL (the text in the address bar) for any search you perform and share it with a friend or save it for later. We will soon provide a button to do this.
Below you can see where we are in the development. Note that the GUI both can and will be subject to changes.
Eplanation of symbols: |
|
| ✅ | Function or Script fully working and tested |
| ✅🔄 | Function or Script fully working and tested but ongoing work |
| ❌🔄 | Under investigation |
| ❌ | Bug or missing function |
Search & Filters
- ✅ ECO-based search
- ✅ Search by White player
- ✅ Search by Black player
- ✅ Search by Date range
- ✅ Search by Event/Collection
- 🔄 Search by Opening Name
- ✅ Result filter (Win/Loss/Draw)
✅Highest proirity We must lookup the user friendly name (event) and see to that its visible in the search form. Fixed. Also added disply above the board
User Interface
- ✅ Search Form styling
- ✅ Pagination improvements
- ✅🔄 Full responsive chessboard controls
- ✅🔄 Autocomplete fields for players & ECO
- ✅ Light/dark background for tablerows
🔄 Eventhandler for mouseEnter in search input after first Criteria is set, then we take all the matches sorted alphabetically.? Really, you actually must type 1 character before the search kicks in - ❌ Sortingoption (first in query and should be saved in settings, but also in the pgn4web.js where I have to add a sorting funktion in the game list. Multiple sorts in the db-query might slow down performance.
Database & Backend
- ✅ Move to single table + partitions
- 🔄 Optimize complex queries (multiple criteria)
✅ Join with collections in async
❌ Search by Move Text (future step) - 🔄 PGN Export stability checks
- ✅ General backend cleanup
- ✅ PGN import
- ✅ SQL import batch size 20 000 approx 20 s
Notes:
2025-04-28 19:05:46 Search on White performs as expected; i.e once "Morphy, Paul" is selected Black at once contains only Paul Morphys opponent just as you expect as a user. Here though we must think this through, we dont need to connect everything with everything so to speak, but a very good example is that white player should be connected to black player(s) As soon as we triggers Morphy, Paul search From date should be at first date with correct format and To date should automatically be last game with correct date format. Note, that fortunately the db is sorted chronologically by default ID :) .
We must also consider the Collections table where we have 2 major things to do, the display must be not the CollectionID but rather the "Event" Column. Event must naturally be connected to players both black and white. Here same logic about date from - to applies
Questions: How important is a search for a player both as black and white? Normally you want to know a players repertoire as white OR black, and if you want from both sides the user casn be able to make 2 selections. Question is pending
Reflektion: We already knew it, but here are the actual numbers of chess growing popularity measured by number of recorded games:
Year |
Number of games |
| 1400-1499 | 1 |
| 1500-1599 | 11 |
| 1600-1699 | 83 |
| 1700-1799 | 98 |
| 1800-1899 | 15307 |
We’re still working on the eighteenth century, but the total will be roughly one million games.
We observe the first major surge in popularity in the seventeenth century (Morphy, Anderssen, Steinitz, among others), followed by exponential growth in the eighteenth century. The next significant bump arrives around 1990, when the internet became widespread. I’ll share the exact figures once we’ve finished updating all the games. (The diagram is generated with ChatGPT connected to Wolfram Alpha's API for accuracy.)
