IRLchess

The “Search games” function here (see right column and the games page) has been modified to add a link to download a pgn file corresponding to the results of a search. I hope this will be useful for readers.

For example, typing "baburin, alexander" gives a result page with 574 games and 9 results without moves. Clicking the link at the bottom of the page downloads a pgn file with 583 games.

The file is named baburin-alexander-q-583-20241204-Wed-175416.pgn. Why such a long name? The idea is to aid the reader who searches at one time, and again some time later, and who wonders whether there have been any changes. The name of the pgn download will change if and only if something has changed in the search: new games added, or old ones deleted, or a new writing of one of the result’s playable game files.

(The naming is derived from the search "baburin, alexander", dropping the comma and converting the space to a dash, adding -q- to indicate that what has gone before was a composite search term rather than "baburin" "alexander", adding the number of games in the search (583 here), and adding the latest time of any game file writing (20241204-Wed-175416 here).)

Each game in the result file has the added tags “[URL” and “[LastModified” automatically generated from the file system. Note that this does not mean that the pgn file itself (without the URL and LastModified tags) has changed, or even that the .htm file has changed: it reflects only the last time the file was written. For example, if a tournament report is rewritten to add commentary in one game, the entire game file will usually be reprocessed, and the change dates of all game .htm files will change.

Up until now, games could be searched using multiple search terms, but if quotation marks were used for any search terms, they had to be used for all. Thus for example, to search for C. H. O’D. Alexander’s games from 1959, the search terms

"alexander, c. h. o'd." "1959"

could be (and still can be) used, but dropping the quotation marks from 1959 would yield no results. This restriction has now been removed, so the search

"alexander, c. h. o'd." 1959

yields the same results.

The results only include games included in the most recent site index; other games might be included in sundry files (search “-month2024-12” to find sundry games for this month) or in a tournament added after the most recent site index. The date of the most recent site index is given on the search results page.

Finally, it is not always the case that a player’s name is rendered the same way throughout the site, as should be clear from searches. I’m working to standardise player names over time, but in the meantime, a search does not automatically find all games of a given player.