Importing games¶

Everything arrives as PGN in the end. What differs is where it comes from and how it is encoded.

PGN files and clipboard¶

Import games → PGN files & clipboard. Choose one or more .pgn files, or paste the text. Name the collection first; the name is required, and the file names itself if you have not typed one.

Duplicates are detected two ways: by source id where the file carries one (a lichess or chess.com game id), and otherwise by a signature over the tags and the moves. Re-importing the same file adds nothing and says so.

ChessBase exports¶

ChessBase cannot be read natively — .cbh, .cbv and .si4 are undocumented binary formats, so export to PGN from ChessBase itself (File → Export → PGN, or right-click a database and choose the PGN format). Everything after that is handled.

Encoding¶

Why your accented names used to break

ChessBase writes PGN in the Windows code page, not UTF-8. Read as UTF-8, Réti becomes R<?>ti and the original letter is gone for good, because the replacement happens before anything is stored.

Files are now decoded by sniffing: UTF-8 first, and where that is genuinely impossible, Windows-1252 and then Latin-1, applied to the whole file rather than guessed per chunk. UTF-16 files are detected from their byte-order mark. The same rule applies to files you drop in through the browser, to files read from disk, and to PGNs inside a ZIP.

The tags ChessBase writes¶

ChessBase’s tag set is richer than lichess’s, and these are read, stored and searchable:

Tag	Used for
`EventDate`	sorting and filtering by the tournament rather than the game
`EventType`	filtering by format, e.g. `swiss`, `team-swiss`, `k.o.`
`WhiteTeam`, `BlackTeam`	club and league play — one filter matches either side
`WhiteTitle`, `BlackTitle`	shown beside the name, and filterable (`GM`, `IM`, …)
`WhiteFideId`, `BlackFideId`	telling apart players who share a name
`SourceTitle` / `Source`	the publication a game came from
`Variation`, `SubVariation`	shown next to the opening name
`Annotator`, `Termination`, `PlyCount`	as elsewhere

A library imported before these columns existed re-reads its own PGN once on the next launch and fills them in — you do not need to import anything again.

What is still missing¶

For completeness, the things ChessBase does that this does not:

Native database files. .cbh/.cbv/.si4 need an export step.
Medals and training annotations. ChessBase’s [%mdl …] and [%tqu …] commands survive a round trip inside the PGN, but nothing filters on them.
Player and tournament entities. Players are matched by name and FIDE ID, not by a curated player database with photographs and biographies.

Archives, folders and URLs¶

Archives, folders & URLs streams .pgn, .zip, .gz, .bz2 and — with the optional zstandard package — .zst, from a local path or an HTTPS URL. A folder is scanned recursively. Nothing is extracted to disk: archives are read as streams, so a multi-gigabyte dump does not need a multi-gigabyte temporary file.

C:\Chess\TWIC                      a folder, scanned recursively
C:\Chess\twic1500g.zip             a local archive
https://theweekinchess.com/...zip  downloaded and streamed

A base too big to import¶

A multi-gigabyte PGN — Lumbras GigaBase, a ChessBase export — is not imported. It is attached: scanned once so the index knows where each game starts, then read where it lies. Put it in a reference folder inside your library and attach it from Master games. See A reference base.

Your online games¶

Your online games imports from lichess or chess.com by username. A lichess token is optional here but makes rate limits kinder, and if you have connected your account in Settings the stored token is used automatically. Import every game on the account works for both services; without it, set a maximum. Lichess exports arrive with their clock times and stored evaluations, which is what the Player Lab reads to find time trouble and costly moves.

Following an import¶

Imports appear in a progress card in the bottom-right corner. You can switch tabs while they run. When the total is known, the card shows a filling bar, games processed, and a percentage. Fetching an online export may take time before a game count is available.

For streamed downloads whose total is unknown, the card shows a cumulative processed-game count and explains that games are still arriving. It does not show a bouncing bar or estimate a percentage. Counts continue across batches instead of restarting with each batch.

Completion shows a full bar and the numbers added, duplicated, and skipped. The card disappears after eight seconds, or you can dismiss it immediately. Errors remain visible until dismissed. Dismissing a notification does not undo an import; use import history for that.

lichess studies¶

lichess studies imports whole studies, including private and unlisted ones once your account is connected. See Your lichess account.

Master games¶

The Master games module points at free collections — The Week in Chess by issue number, and PGN Mentor’s player and tournament files — and imports them the same way.

PGN Mentor publishes one archive per player, so “import Morozevich” always means his entire career, not the part you searched for. That archive is kept as Masters / <player>. What you searched for — an opening or ECO range, a colour, an outcome, a span of years — is then saved as a collection of its own, named for the search:

Masters / Morozevich                                  every game in the archive
Masters / Morozevich / King's Indian Defense 1996–2012  just the ones you asked for

The second collection holds links, not copies: each game still lives in the archive and is simply shelved in both places, so the same player can carry as many opening collections as you care to look up without the library storing anything twice. Searching the same player again for a different opening adds another shelf beside the first.

If a search matches nothing in the archive, no shelf is made and the whole archive is shown instead, with a message saying so.

Year from and Year through narrow by the game’s date and, when set, become part of the collection’s name — so the same opening over two different periods stays two collections rather than one.

Naming openings¶

Games imported without an Opening tag can be named from the bundled ECO data: Database → Name openings. It never overwrites a name a file already carries.