Still not totally convinced this is finished, since it took such a long time. I started with the 2025-01 FIDE XML players list, culled it with a ChatGPT-generated Python script so that only players rated 2000+ were included. Then converted that to XLSX (amongst other formats) and copied out the column in that spreadsheet for the FIDE IDs of those players. Then, with another Python script, I was able to download a JSON file for each player from the FIDE API, using a wrapper from a GitHub repository. These JSON files have all the information for those players. Not just general information, but the ratings and number of games for every month that they have a rating for. So these files turned out to be pretty long. The next step was converting all of those to a new XML players list, which includes all the history, as well as the general information. Even though the number of players is drastically reduced to only a bit more than 19,000, still the new XML players list is about twice the size of the old one. I did make sure to streamline the elements, so that, as much as possible, they resemble the elements in the regular players list.

https://www.mediafire.com/file/enoh1ljui47g305/fide-ratings-and-history-2000+-240115.zip/file

The size of the ZIP is about 40 MB, and oddly the size of the XML file is about 1.2 GB. I’m not sure how it compressed so well, but it seems to have done so.

All 24,570 games:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/no462ixnebsj9c6/chess-tournaments-2024-12.pgn/file

This is combined from TWIC, Chesscom Events, and Chess Results:
https://theweekinchess.com/twic
https://www.chess.com/events/results
https://chess-results.com/partieSuche.aspx?lan=1

Doubles and non-standard games are removed. Everything here qualifies in ChessBase as a strong game, i.e. at least 10 moves, and with ratings 2300+. Openings, evaluations, beauty scores, and novelty annotations are added.

The player’s list is provided with each month, but not provided in the archives for previous months. While it would be somewhat useful to have an archive of them, there’s no reliable way to build it. However, all three lists are provided as XML, which can be combined with a script. So, using a Python script written by ChatGPT, I’m able to create combined XML files which don’t contain the inactive players, but nonetheless could easily stand in for the player’s list. And these can be provided for every month that there are XML files. Here is December 2024.

https://www.mediafire.com/folder/86n30ijqd3cos/2024-12

I’ve made many attempts now to create the perfect Python script for SF commits (via ChatGPT, of course), and finally realized that the problem was that almost everything necessary is already at Abrok. Official builds are over at the official site anyway. But all the commits are here, going back to 2018 or so. Here is a list of those commits, with direct links to the executables.

https://www.mediafire.com/file/v3y5kjnvxuj5528/stockfish-data-250113.txt/file

Author(s): Marco Zerbinati (ITA)
Release Date: 2025-01-06
Language(s): C++
Repo Owner: Zerbinati
Repo URL: https://github.com/Zerbinati/JudaS-Plus

  • Enhance Experience Book functionality and add logging option
  • Fix: Enable engine to play black moves from the experience book
  • Enhancement: Configurable performance threshold and detailed logging for experience book
  • Added a new UCI option Experience Book Width to control the variety of moves selected from the experience book
  • Calibrated Default Values for Experience Book Options
  • Implemented “Experience Book Min Win Probability” filter and logging improvements
  • Added Experience Book Probing Functionality with Logging
  • Enhanced Learning Mode Option with UCI Feedback

https://github.com/Zerbinati/JudaS-Plus/releases/download/J4.0/windows.builds.7z
https://github.com/Zerbinati/JudaS-Plus/archive/refs/tags/J4.0.zip

Stockfish 17 source:
https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/archive/refs/tags/sf_17.zip

Working with files is a big part of being a chess engine enthusiast. Here are a few commands that will help.

First a couple that don’t involve the Windows PowerShell.

  • You may be familiar with how you can use CTRL+V to paste the latest addition to the clipboard. But you can also use WIN+V to open a list of the last ten things you put on the clipboard, and you can use the mouse to choose which one. This means if you need to copy and paste three things, you can use CTRL+C on all three, then WIN+V to select them each.
  • If you want to combine all the PGNs in a directory (for example) you would click to the right of the path in the Windows Explorer address bar, and type in cmd to replace it. This brings up the Command Prompt, in which you type copy *pgn filename.pgn …. though of course you would use your own filename.

That same Command Prompt copy command can be run in the PowerShell as well:

cmd.exe /c copy *pgn filename.pgn

or it can be run directly:

Get-Content -Path "C:\Path\To\Directory*" | Set-Content -Path "C:\Path\To\Output\combined_file.txt"

That last command takes all the files in a directory, as before, and puts them all together. Each time you run this, you would overwrite the output file. To append to it instead, use:

Get-Content -Path "C:\Path\To\Directory*" | Add-Content -Path "C:\Path\To\Output\combined_file.txt"

So it’s the exact same, except that you use Add-Content instead of Set-Content.

To zip all the files in a directory, use:

Get-ChildItem *.pgn | ForEach-Object {Compress-Archive -Path $_.FullName -DestinationPath ($_.BaseName + '.zip')}

To instead zip all the folders in a directory, use:

Get-ChildItem -Directory | ForEach-Object {Compress-Archive -Path $_.FullName -DestinationPath ($_.Name + '.zip')}

Having used a Python script to make a list of player names from the Online Superelite DB, I then used another script to attempt to download the Nov. 2020 games from each of those players, ending up with about 2,000 PGNs. After running them through pgn-extract with the same filters used for the rest of the Online Superelite DB, this was the result. These games have players rated at least 2500. Games are between 20-150 moves, and end in checkmate. Doubles, bullet games, and non-standard games have been removed.

5,875 games (with evaluations and openings):
https://www.mediafire.com/file/rvqcqq8sbw5o1gw/chesscom-superelite-2020-11.pgn/file

The FIDE player list is a combination of the three ratings lists (standard, rapid, and blitz) but is very big and includes lots of players who are registered but have no rating. After running a Python script to keep only the players rated 2000 or above, I can provide a much smaller list that might also be more useful. In the MediaFire directory for 2025-01, you can find it in XML, CSV, JSON, XLSX, ODS, and TXT.

https://www.mediafire.com/folder/kpyvsijjhsiiw/2025-01

This is a Python file which has been converted to EXE — along with the original Python script, if you’re not on Windows — which takes as its only argument a path to a PGN. If not specified, it will prompt you for it during runtime. This program provides information on a PGN — namely the number of players, the number of games, the number of events, and the highest and lowest Elo. It will also prompt you to ask whether or not you want a text file list of players, and if you want a text file list of sites/events.

https://www.mediafire.com/file/g9snnwefprj8btp/PGN-Info.zip/file

This is a combination of the Chesscom Elite db (which covers 2020-12 to 2024-12) and the Lichess Elite db (which covers 2013-01 to 2024-12).

Covers 2014-12 to 2024-12. Every game has players rated at least 2500, the games are between 20-150 moves, and they end in checkmate. Doubles, bullet games and non-standard games have been removed. Openings, plycount and evaluations have been added in.

1,829,705 games:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/nev27dqeqjnqtbg/online-superelite-240109.zip/file

Author(s): Marco Zerbinati (ITA)
Release Date: 2025-01-08
Language(s): C++
Repo Owner: Zerbinati
Repo URL: https://github.com/Zerbinati/HypnoS-plus

HypnoS ++ is a free and strong UCI chess engine derived from Stockfish that analyzes chess positions and computes the optimal moves. HypnoS ++ does not include a graphical user interface (GUI).

https://github.com/Zerbinati/HypnoS-plus/releases/download/H1.0/windows.builds.7z
https://github.com/Zerbinati/HypnoS-plus/archive/refs/tags/H1.0.zip

Stockfish 17 source:
https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/archive/refs/tags/sf_17.zip

Author(s): Liam McGuire (USA), Eduardo Cáceres (ESP)
Release Date: 2025-01-08
Language(s): C#
Repo Owner: liamt19
Repo URL: https://github.com/liamt19/Lizard

Has a more complex network and a few search tweaks/additions. For the sake of my sanity (and because .NET can’t/doesn’t autovectorize NNUE code), this requires at least AVX2 to be performant, but will still function without it.

A Note On Bindings

This release includes C++ code from Horsie to make NNUE evaluation faster. This code is only used if your processor supports AVX2.

The Windows and Linux releases here already have it compiled and embedded as a .dll/.so within it. For technical reasons this embedded file will automatically extract itself into a file called HorsieBindings.dll/HorsieBindings.so which Lizard will try to use when it launches.

You will see “Loaded Horsie bindings!” if they are successfully loaded, or “Running without Horsie bindings” if they aren’t. The bindings aren’t required, but they do make Lizard significantly faster.

Picking A Binary

Use a …-512 binary if your processor has Avx512.
AOT binaries aren’t being included here because they are strictly slower.

https://github.com/liamt19/Lizard/releases/download/v11.2/Lizard-11_2-arm64
https://github.com/liamt19/Lizard/releases/download/v11.2/Lizard-11_2-linux
https://github.com/liamt19/Lizard/releases/download/v11.2/Lizard-11_2-linux_512
https://github.com/liamt19/Lizard/releases/download/v11.2/Lizard-11_2-win-512.exe
https://github.com/liamt19/Lizard/releases/download/v11.2/Lizard-11_2-win.exe
https://github.com/liamt19/Lizard/archive/refs/tags/v11.2.zip