Answers.Body: <p>There are a lot of PGN file database download sites, the best and most comprehensive one is probably PGN Mentor at <a href="https://www.pgnmentor.com/files.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.pgnmentor.com/files.html</a></p>
  
  <p>They have several databases containing thousands of games that can be downloaded and easily merged into a single DB using a command window</p>
  
  <p>But very few of these games are annotated, so I have put about 950 annotated games, which are in 9 separate ".pgn" files, here </p>
  
  <p><a href="https://pgnchessbook.org/pgn/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Annotated PGN file download page</a></p>
  
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2019-08-20T10:19:51.937Z
Answers.LastActivityDate: 2019-08-20T10:19:51.937Z
Answers.UserDisplayName: Norman
Answers.Body: <p>Here! Indexed by openings ECO code. <a href="http://www.logicalchess.com/learn/lessons/openings/pgndb/index.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.logicalchess.com/learn/lessons/openings/pgndb/index.html</a>. </p>
  
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2015-08-23T21:22:46.150Z
Answers.Text: You should click into the ECO section a-e and then click again for the download eg A00 here http://www.bookuppro.com/ecopgn/a.html. Just a heads up this database looks about 10 years old but fulfils all your other conditions :)
Answers.UserDisplayName: magd
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2015-08-23T21:27:06.470Z
Answers.Text: Thanks for the clarification. Sadly most of the games in each file seem to be empty (no moves after the headers, only the result).
Answers.UserDisplayName: Ellie
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2015-08-24T18:10:30.303Z
Answers.Text: +1 for the link. I may end up using it, but it is a very sparse database (so many files), with anomalies (admittedly rare for the remaining files) such as empty games.
Answers.UserDisplayName: Ellie
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2015-08-23T18:58:46.087Z
Answers.LastActivityDate: 2015-08-23T18:58:46.087Z
Answers.UserDisplayName: magd
Answers.Body: <p>Do not know if it really suits you but on <a href="http://www.theweekinchess.com/twic" rel="noreferrer">http://www.theweekinchess.com/twic</a> you can download a lot of PGN files. I once saw an explanation how somebody used this to create an opening book out of it. I could not find one big file with all games but there are quite a lot of files that date back to 25/06/2012. You can always make 1 big file out of it.</p>
  
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2015-08-25T15:58:37.897Z
Answers.Text: THIS! is the best database you can have. I have two game/opening databases: the million database one http://www.top-5000.nl/pgn.htm which itself is updated with games from TWIC up to january 2013, and another one I've build myself with TWIC games.
  
  The latter is the one I most use (as I have there the last contributions to opening theory), while the former is great to look for classic games.
Answers.UserDisplayName: sharcashmo
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2015-08-25T16:17:14.117Z
Answers.Text: @sharcashmo the Million base 2.2 is indeed useful, but it is only composed of man vs. machine games, so lacks in diversity. As for TWIC itself, games have to be downloaded individually, doing that for building a 500k+ size database is definitely not a viable solution! I was more hoping to come across one similar to ICOFY. Thanks for the link by the way!
Answers.UserDisplayName: Ellie
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2015-08-25T16:21:36.180Z
Answers.Text: The million base 2.2 is NOT composed of man vs machine games in any way. And TWIC allows you to download all the games of every week in a single file (one file per week). It took only a couple of hours to me to download all the old files, and once I had an up to date database I have only to download one file per week... not so hard :D
Answers.UserDisplayName: sharcashmo
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2015-08-25T16:38:07.020Z
Answers.Text: @sharcashmo oh, I was reading the description of the column directly left to it :), anyway the millionbase is a windows EXE file, I'm working on a Linux machine. Is there a *.pgn format of it available? (or even a text file).
Answers.UserDisplayName: Ellie
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2015-08-25T20:30:56.200Z
Answers.Text: @sharcashmo I think the weekly pgn's on TWIC, once put together will do the trick. I will do this then. Thanks for the suggestion!
Answers.UserDisplayName: Ellie
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2015-08-28T10:01:46.880Z
Answers.Text: @Phonon I'm also working in a Linux machine (an Ubuntu 14.04), I don't remember that it was an exe file... maybe it's an excecutable zip. But as far as I remember I just used the archive manager to extract all PGN games in it
Answers.UserDisplayName: sharcashmo
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2015-08-28T10:03:57.967Z
Answers.Text: @Phonom But, if you want, give me an e-mail address by private message and I can send a gzipped version of the file to you ;)
Answers.UserDisplayName: sharcashmo
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2015-08-24T19:30:44.640Z
Answers.LastActivityDate: 2015-08-24T19:30:44.640Z
Answers.UserDisplayName: Marco
Body: <p>I am looking for a relatively large PGN-formatted database (with at least 500k+ games), that is downloadable, with possibly the following properties:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li><p>Simple formatted (no time indication after moves, etc), i.e. game info headers on top, followed by the moves, an example: <em>(it doesn't have to contain all the headers of this example)</em>  <a href="https://i.sstatic.net/v0WsW.png" rel="noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/v0WsW.png" alt="enter image description here"></a></p></li>
  <li><p>Few such, but very small (2-3 thousand games) databases can be found <a href="http://chessproblem.my-free-games.com/chess/games/Download-PGN.php" rel="noreferrer">here</a>.</p></li>
  <li><p>It would be preferential if the database was diverse, for example not being only composed of man vs. machine games or somesuch. No real constraint on the ratings, whether the levels (amateur to super grandmaster) are fairly balanced or whether it's a 2000+ rating database.</p></li>
  <li><p>Although a single-file database would be easiest to work with, say for parsing purposes, one that is divided onto multiple PGN files would also be perfectly fine, as long as they were formatted similarly and did not contain too many duplicates.</p></li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>In other posts, one mentioned database with similar properties to the above is the ICOFY database, but unfortunately it does not seem to be maintained any longer, nor can a trustworthy download link for it be found. </p>
  
Tags: <pgn><database>
Title: Freely available PGN databases
ThreadText: # Freely available PGN databases
  
  (Asked by: username_0 on 2015-08-23)
  
  I am looking for a relatively large PGN-formatted database (with at least 500k+ games), that is downloadable, with possibly the following properties:
  
  * Simple formatted (no time indication after moves, etc), i.e. game info headers on top, followed by the moves, an example: *(it doesn't have to contain all the headers of this example)* [![enter image description here](https://i.sstatic.net/v0WsW.png)](https://i.sstatic.net/v0WsW.png)
  * Few such, but very small (2-3 thousand games) databases can be found [here](http://chessproblem.my-free-games.com/chess/games/Download-PGN.php).
  * It would be preferential if the database was diverse, for example not being only composed of man vs. machine games or somesuch. No real constraint on the ratings, whether the levels (amateur to super grandmaster) are fairly balanced or whether it's a 2000+ rating database.
  * Although a single-file database would be easiest to work with, say for parsing purposes, one that is divided onto multiple PGN files would also be perfectly fine, as long as they were formatted similarly and did not contain too many duplicates.
  
  In other posts, one mentioned database with similar properties to the above is the ICOFY database, but unfortunately it does not seem to be maintained any longer, nor can a trustworthy download link for it be found.
  
  **Tags:** pgn, database
  
  
  ---
  
  ## 3 answers
  
  ### Answer by username_3 on 2015-08-24. Score: 6 | Accepted answer
  
  Do not know if it really suits you but on <http://www.theweekinchess.com/twic> you can download a lot of PGN files. I once saw an explanation how somebody used this to create an opening book out of it. I could not find one big file with all games but there are quite a lot of files that date back to 25/06/2012. You can always make 1 big file out of it.
  
  > **Comments:**
  > **username_4**: THIS! is the best database you can have. I have two game/opening databases: the million database one http://www.top-5000.nl/pgn.htm which itself is updated with games from TWIC up to january 2013, and another one I've build myself with TWIC games.  The latter is the one I most use (as I have there the last contributions to opening theory), while the former is great to look for classic games.  
  > **username_0**: @username_4 the Million base 2.2 is indeed useful, but it is only composed of man vs. machine games, so lacks in diversity. As for TWIC itself, games have to be downloaded individually, doing that for building a 500k+ size database is definitely not a viable solution! I was more hoping to come across one similar to ICOFY. Thanks for the link by the way!  
  > **username_4**: The million base 2.2 is NOT composed of man vs machine games in any way. And TWIC allows you to download all the games of every week in a single file (one file per week). It took only a couple of hours to me to download all the old files, and once I had an up to date database I have only to download one file per week... not so hard :D  
  > **username_0**: @username_4 oh, I was reading the description of the column directly left to it :), anyway the millionbase is a windows EXE file, I'm working on a Linux machine. Is there a *.pgn format of it available? (or even a text file).  
  > **username_0**: @username_4 I think the weekly pgn's on TWIC, once put together will do the trick. I will do this then. Thanks for the suggestion!  
  > **username_4**: @Phonon I'm also working in a Linux machine (an Ubuntu 14.04), I don't remember that it was an exe file... maybe it's an excecutable zip. But as far as I remember I just used the archive manager to extract all PGN games in it  
  > **username_4**: @Phonom But, if you want, give me an e-mail address by private message and I can send a gzipped version of the file to you ;)  
  
  ---
  
  ### Answer by username_1 on 2019-08-20. Score: 2
  
  There are a lot of PGN file database download sites, the best and most comprehensive one is probably PGN Mentor at <https://www.pgnmentor.com/files.html>
  
  They have several databases containing thousands of games that can be downloaded and easily merged into a single DB using a command window
  
  But very few of these games are annotated, so I have put about 950 annotated games, which are in 9 separate ".pgn" files, here
  
  [Annotated PGN file download page](https://pgnchessbook.org/pgn/)
  
  
  ---
  
  ### Answer by username_2 on 2015-08-23. Score: 1
  
  Here! Indexed by openings ECO code. <http://www.logicalchess.com/learn/lessons/openings/pgndb/index.html>.
  
  > **Comments:**
  > **username_2**: You should click into the ECO section a-e and then click again for the download eg A00 here http://www.bookuppro.com/ecopgn/a.html. Just a heads up this database looks about 10 years old but fulfils all your other conditions :)  
  > **username_0**: Thanks for the clarification. Sadly most of the games in each file seem to be empty (no moves after the headers, only the result).  
  > **username_0**: +1 for the link. I may end up using it, but it is a very sparse database (so many files), with anomalies (admittedly rare for the remaining files) such as empty games.  
  
  ---
  
  