24 April 2021

Chessgames.com Start Position XREF

In last week's post, SP864, Reddit, Chessgames.com (April 2021), I wrote,
Chessgames.com: I [...] discovered that the book was structured as an introduction to chess960 from several angles. Unfortunately, it had a big problem. The start positions used Chessgames.com numbering which is non-standard.

I also said,

I've mentioned the Chessgames.com pitfall many times on this blog, but the problem needs a more permanent warning.

To make progress, I created a cross-reference (aka XREF) between standard start position (SP) numbers and Chessgames.com numbers. I uploaded the cross-reference to my own site as a new page:-

I tested the cross-reference on a discrepancy documented in a previous post, Champions Showdown, St. Louis (September 2018), where I wrote,

I noticed one anomaly that I don't understand. The official site's 'Results' page noted the start positions and their numbers for each round, but the numbers don't correspond to the system that I'm familiar with. For example, it gives the first day using 'Position 598: NQBBRKRN'. I prepared the following table for this post, where the first column is the round number and the second column is the numeric start position:-

1: SP309 NQBBRKRN
[...]

Indeed, the chess960 standard number SP309 is the equivalent of the Chessgames.com non-standard number 598. Another unsuspecting soul had fallen into the Chessgames.com trap.

My cross-reference is crude and lacks the HTML tags that make a proper web page. I'll improve it as soon as I can and, at the same time, integrate it into my other chess960 resources.

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