Thanks

http://www.mp2010.pl/m/index.html

Sometimes I send in corrections about alternative game score. Are the alternative games deleted?

Sometimes there is an alternative game score and I find that the duplicate game exists in the database, and sometimes there is an alternative game score but no duplicate game existing.

Whilst the starting point of the World championship matches is very good documentation (and thanks for the footer section link), I think a really important *motive* of trying to trace the history of the World championship matches in terms of the Evolution of chess style deserves to be addressed far more strongly.

In addressing this, and tracing how chess style evolved through the World championship matches, I think this will bring the matches into much higher profile, as people will then understand things more like decisions in the Steinitz vs Chigorin match.

I am doing a video series on the Evolution of Chess Style, and have just posted some comments on the Steinitz Chigorin match. Quite frankly, I am astounded that Chigorin is not even mentioned as the father of the Soviet Chess School. Well at least by the Kibitzers.

Do people even realise that the battle between Karpov and Kasparov was an ideological battle between Karpov the extender of the accumulation of small advantages model brought by Steinitz, and Kasparov, the Dynamist, who's earliest predessor is Chigorin?!

Is the evolution of chess style just of theoretical importance and Chessgames.com is just set to be a "Nice games database" with commentary, or would you like to try and emphasise style evolution through these matches?! One of my favourite books "The World of Chess" by Saidy and Lessing not only takes a historical perspective as you have done, but does extend that into ideological insights for chess style evolution.

Anyway, please check out my video series so far on the evolution of Chess style, and feel free to use any ideas contained in there if you want. I think such a tracing of style evolution would be of practical interest to Chessgames.com readers.

<Sometimes there is an alternative game score and I find that the duplicate game exists in the database> That happens a lot when there are two versions of a game floating around the internet. Perhaps an example is in order:

1. Suppose A and A' are similar versions of the same game. We get both and they show up separately in our database.

2. Then we get a correction on game A' saying "This is the same thing as A". Usually they are technically incorrect, because there almost always is some small difference, but we know what they mean.

3. Now we do a process we call "merging the games". This puts A' in the special backup archive, moves all kibitzing and game collections from A' over to A, and then finally in the end we delete A'.

4. Later on some helpful user submits a file of 200 historical games including a new copy of A'. Suddenly the wrong score is back in our database again as a separate entry. Now we have the situation you describe: there is a game with an alternate score, and then there is another game in the database that looks like that alternate score.

<So I wonder if games are intentionally kept in the database even if they are duplicated?> Not on purpose. If you see an alternate score as well as a duplicate game, it's probably because of step 4 above. But there are other possibilities; for example, sometimes we find that when we fixed the duplicate there weren't two of them--but actually thee of them!