First let's consult the PGN specs to see if it offers any guidance:

<8.1.1.2: The Site tag

The Site tag value should include city and region names along with a standard name for the country. The use of the IOC (International Olympic Committee) three letter names is suggested for those countries where such codes are available. If the site of the event is unknown, a single question mark should appear as the tag value. A comma may be used to separate a city from a region. No comma is needed to separate a city or region from the IOC country code. A later section of this document gives a list of three letter nation codes along with a few additions for "locations" not covered by the IOC.

Examples:

[Site "New York City, NY USA"]

[Site "St. Petersburg RUS"]

[Site "Riga LAT"]>

(http://www.opensource.apple.com/sou...)

That doesn't really help. It discusses "the site of an event" as if to imply that for every event, there is one (and only one) site. Multiple sites for the same event is not discussed. I don't believe that's because the author wanted databases to create a one-to-one correspondence between the Event and the Site, I think it's because he honestly didn't consider this nuance very deeply.

Another thing to consider is how this change will interface with existing PGN software. I think this might the strong point of the suggestion. I can imagine some software getting confused when you have identical Site tags and multiple locations. After all, if the Event said only "It" (international) and the Site tags were different, you would naturally assume they were from different events. And so the same software would not see "Bundesliga Hambug" the same as "Bundesliga Munich", even though they really are the same event.

Another consideration is, what is the norm? What does Chessbase do? What does NIC do? I'm not against doing things different from everybody else, but we should have a good reason for it.

Finally, what do we really want? What is better? Let's take a look at a typical multi-site event like Bundesliga (2013/14) and pluck two headers at random:

<
[Event "Bundesliga"]
[Site "Munich GER"]
[Date "2013.10.13"]
>

and

<
[Event "Bundesliga"]
[Site "Hamburg GER"]
[Date "2014.02.22"]
>

Zanzibar's suggestion would be to change this to read

<
[Event "Bundesliga"]
[Site "Various GER"]
[Date "2013.10.13"]

. . .

[GameSite "Munich GER"]

>

and

<
[Event "Bundesliga"]
[Site "Various GER"]
[Date "2014.02.22"]

. . .

[GameSite "Hamburg GER"]
>

<4.1: Character codes

Because some PGN users' environments may not support presentation of non-ASCII characters, PGN game authors should refrain from using such characters in critical commentary or string values in game data that may be referenced in such environments. PGN software authors should have their programs handle such environments by displaying a question mark ("?") for non-ASCII character codes. This is an important point because there are many computing systems that can display eight bit character data, but the display graphics may differ among machines and operating systems from different manufacturers.>

The reason why this has come to my attention is that I've noticed some of the historical tournaments have used non-ASCII characters such as Grünfeld - Tartakower (1922).

The problem comes in that now we've created PGN that contains the ü character. There is no problem having the database contain a non-Western character, but now the tag [Event "Grünfeld - Tartakower"] will show up on some PGN readers as "Gr?nfeld - Tartakower."

I normally adhere to specs as closely as possible but the argument could be made that these specs are very old and perhaps outdated in this respect.

I'm actually learning it lately but haven't used it for anything serious.

<Would you be interested in me making a blog post showing the code I used for this? ... >

It didn't work out, and I think PGN headers should be strictly ASCII, at least in the near future (say 5 years).

So, I think those tournaments in the index should be renamed. It was on my list, but you beat me to it.

Right now, I'm advocating for the player's page only.

And to keep to PGN standard as closely as possible.

This, however, is a clear example of where the standard will need to be extended.

* * * * *

Is there an easy way to check how many game submissions are pending/rejected?

<<chessgames> Something like that could be worked out, although I'm not sure how many people would use it. I know I would use it.>

This tournament contains 315 games and was inducted into the Tournament Index Sun Jan 19 2014.

Taking a header at random from the event gives us this:

<
[Event "56th US Open"]
[Site "Long Beach, CA"]
[Date "1955.08.11"]
[EventDate "?"]
>

Maybe not perfect—no event date, and "USA" should be part of the the Site tag—but that's how it was inducted and all of the games should conform to that standard.

However, they don't all conform. 16 of them mysteriously have headers that look like this:

<
[Event "US Open"]
[Site "Long Beach, CA"]
[Date "1955.08.15"]
[EventDate "?"]
>

It doesn't say <56th US Open> it says <US Open>. What happened to the <56th>?

All of the games without the <56th> were uploaded by Phoni Benoni back in 2011, and as such they have nearly consecutive GIDs:

1751663, 1751664, 1751666, 1751667, 1751668, 1751669, 1751671, 1751672, 1751673, 1751674, 1751675, 1751676, 1751677, 1751678, 1751679, 1751680.

Anyhow, now knowing they were uploaded after the tournament was inducted, that would certainly explain why they would not have normalized headers.

Then the new question becomes, why would they be added to the existing tournament? After all, the names aren't even the same, and even if they were the same, a special clause prevents new games from being auto-inserted into existing Tournament Index events.

Is this the chessgames forum or a story by M R James? You be the judge.

I've seen this kind of thing once before. I fixed something like that that I noticed myself a few months ago and was awfully puzzled.

First, as already noted, RAW Chess Challenge (2010) was actually a one-game event and we even did a live broadcast.

But then I looked at Nordic Congress (1903), it is a relatively new tournament (i.e., added last year). The game was submitted in late 2013 by a respected member.

It was never nominated for a tournament and never inducted.

The problem revolves around a database variable reading "Y" when it should read "N". I changed the data so now it won't show up in the list.

The Amantea (1995) match fits the same profile, including when and who uploaded it. It was added to the database at roughly the same time. Again, I fixed it by turning a "Y" into an "N".

So it seems that the gremlins flip the "kibitzing" flag on two or three random games. Why, I cannot say.

Here's a possibility: we have a file called "tourneys.txt" which controls the tournaments visible on the homepage "New Games." If an admin makes the mistake of entering a wrong tournament number and then processes that file, it would create exactly the situation we see here, even if the error is later corrected.

When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth!

Check this out:

London Chess Classic (Group B) (2013)

took place around the same time as this tournament was created

Nordic Congress (1903)

Before we entirely leave the topic of ghosts - I'd like to recommend this version from Japan:

Kaidan (怪談) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaidan)

In particular, this version (in English) can be read entirely online:

http://www.sacred-texts.com/shi/kwa...

And if you prefer the more visual - I heartily recommend this version: