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FAQ
  General FAQ
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  Applet TroubleShooting
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Game Database

There are 4 main sections of interest in the Game Database tool.

1. Game Board

The first will be familiar to you, its a game board! On it will appear the moves of the game you've entered as white and black pieces. The search results will be displayed as green pieces. The database works by entering a position you're interested in and clicking the Search button. This will return a set of moves that have been made in other games that at one point had the same position you searched for. The moves are possible next moves. To setup a position you simply click your mouse once over the position you want. Continue doing so until you reach your desired position. You can also navigate back and forth through the moves by using the << <, >, and >> buttons. The Clear button should be self-explanatory. The Reset button will return the board to the position you searched for.

2. Search Result Moves

The second section is a table containing the coordinates of the search result moves. For each move, the number of games that have made this move is listed, and also the percentage of those games that ended in a win for the player that made the move. You can sort these results by the coordinates, number of games, or percentages by clicking the headings on the table.

The first and second sections are tied together. If you move your mouse over a move on the board, an indicator will light up next to the stats for that move. If you move your mouse over a coordinate in the stats table, a black or white piece will show up on the board for that stat. This makes it easier to view the statistics.

3. Search Result Games

The third section is a table containing a listing of recent games that match the position searched for. Various statistics are shown in the table. For a complete listing of information about the game, click on the Txt link for the game. To view the game on the board, click the Load link for the game. Then you can navigate through the game just as if you had entered it yourself. If you wish to view more than the default number of games you can use the select box to view up to 25 games at a time. To view more games you can use the << and >> links at the bottom of the table.

Below the most recent games in the table is a subtable containing links to download games that matched the search in a zip file. The format of the game files in the zip file are the same as if you clicked on the Txt link. This is a useful feature if you wish to have a local copy of a set of games, of if you wish to use the game files in another program.

4. Filter Options

The fourth section is the filtering options table. This form allows you to filter the games that are searched. Currently you can filter games by site, event, round, section, players and date.

4.1 Venue filtering

You can select a site, event, round, and section from a drop-down list. Initially the board is set to filter "All Sites", "All Events", "All Rounds", "All Sections". Once you select a site to filter, the event drop-down list is updated with all the events that have occurred at the selected site. If you select an event to filter, the round drop-down list is updated with all the rounds for the selected event and finally if you select a round to filter, the section drop-down list is updated with all the sections for the selected round. Some events don't have any rounds (like the event "Non-Tournament"), in this case the only round and section you can select is "-". One other thing to note with this strategy is that it is impossible to filter by eg. "Round = 3" without first selecting a site and an event. So it is currently impossible to filter for all games in "Round 3" played at any site in any event. Perhaps a more sophisticated client will handle this problem differently in a future release.

4.2 Player filtering

You can also filter by the players in a game. If you enter "dweebo" for player 1 and click "Search" you'll only view games in which "dweebo" was player 1. If you also enter "mmammel" for player 2, you'll only view games in which "dweebo" was player 1 and "mmammel" was player 2 and so on. Also note that names are searched case-insenitively, so a search for "DWEEBO" will match on "dweebo".

4.3 Date filtering

You can also filter by the date games were played. This makes it possible to perform a search like this "show all games played by dweebo in the past month". You can accomplish this search by entering in dates into the "After date" and "Before date" fields in the filter options table. Dates must be entered in this form (MM/DD/YYYY). If you enter in just a before date, you'll be searching for all games from the beginning of time up to the date you enter. If you enter just an after date, you'll be searching for all games from the day after the day you entered until today. If you enter in both a before and after date, you'll be searching for all games between the two dates. For example, say today is 07/21/2001. If you wanted to search for all games played today enter in 07/20/2001 for the "After date", and 07/22/2001 for the "Before date".

4.4 Winner filtering

Finally, you can filter by winner, that is search for games won by player 1, or search for games won by player 2.

Other notes

Other things you might find useful. The positions you search for will also search for games which are mirrored or rotated. Or, if a game starts differently than the game you entered, but ends up with the same position, it will also match. So when you search, keep in mind that you're not looking for games that moved at "K10", then "L11"...a capture at "M10"... but games that have a white piece at "K10", a black piece at "L11" and "1" capture by black...

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