Deep Dive into a Duplicate Database Game

[Tony Dowden]

I was 12 and in Form 2....

Good grief! I was only playing in primary school events at that age! And I had only learned to play three years before.

I've corrected my earlier post

[Tony Dowden]

Dr Dowden is spot on! On both points. While transcribing the game (conversion from descriptive notation for all 3 NZ games JMA vs GM [Grand Master!!]), I could not see why I did not take that en prise Knight earlier.
White's 24th should be Nf5.

You can call me 'Tony' I've revised the 24th move and the final comment.

[Adamski]

Thanks, Tony!

[Tony Dowden]

Thanks, Tony!

No worries!

[Adamski]

Correct 24th move inserted. Final note revised.

Gavin has provided a corrected scoresheet. This time the Knight does not sit en prise!
[Event "Premier Reserves, Wgtn, 1977-78"]
[Site "Civic Chess Club, Wellington"]
[Date "1977.12.30"]
[Round "2"]
[White "Marner, Gavin"]
[Black "Adams, Jonathan"]
[Result "1-0"]
[ECO "B72"]
[PlyCount "53"]

PGN Viewer

 

[Adamski]

Gavin and I worked out that our game in the Wellington ANZAC Weekender was played on a Saturday 26 April before 1984. The strong likelihood is it was 1980. Bill, you might like to use that date in the database. I moved to Wellington in 1979 so earlier dates are not possible.

[Adamski]

Gavin and I worked out that our game in the Wellington ANZAC Weekender was played on a Saturday 26 April before 1984. The strong likelihood is it was 1980. Bill, you might like to use that date in the database. I moved to Wellington in 1979 so earlier dates are not possible.

1980 confirmed. We were in Group B of the Feltex Carpet ANZAC Weekender. Played 25-27 April 1980 in Wellington. Phew, Bill. That took some detective work! Source: NZ Chess, 1980.

[Bill Forster]

Gavin has sent me that scoresheet plus a third game we played in a Wellington champs. He did not have Year for our Morra but can tell from place in his scorebook that it was PRE1984.

I had a nagging alert at the back of my mind that I had unfinished work from these various Adams-Marner and Marner-Adams clashes. I must admit, these games have been making my head hurt this afternoon! There are three games in total. I originally put the Morra in the NZ database, but I have now removed it, since Gavin indicates it was actually pre 1984, and my serious doubts I expressed earlier about its date greatly grow in weight. I have put the dragon from the 1977-78 Premier reserve into the database. This was the tournament that started this whole thread. I just noticed that David Beach (now mentioned in the thread an umpeenth+1 times) won a strong tournament with a magnificent 10.5/11 and David Gollogly (similarly) wrote the tournament report in NZ Chess!

[Event "Premier Reserves, Wgtn, 1977-78"]
[Site "Civic Chess Club, Wellington"]
[Date "1977.12.30"]
[Round "2"]
[White "Marner, Gavin"]
[Black "Adams, Jonathan"]
[Result "1-0"]
[ECO "B72"]
[Annotator "J. Adams"]
[PlyCount "53"]

PGN Viewer

 

(Game later fixed by Tony Dowden - 24.Nf5 not 24.Nc5 and everything makes sense - this was the version I put in the NZ Database)

However, I need to point out that NZ Chess report shows me that Marner did in fact beat Adams in this tournament, but in Round 8 (not in round 2) as shown above, on the 4th January 1978 (not 30 December 1977). In fact round 2 was on 28 December not 30 December! - so I'm sorry with my chess historian's hat on I am marking this scoresheet as a good effort but could do (much) better Jonathan! (I put the correct date/round information in the version I put in the database)

I had a quick look at the third game, but with no record of any "Wellington Champs" games from that month in the NZ database to synchronise against, and given the trouble the other two games had given me I decided to quietly ignore this one.

[Bill Forster]

I was reading the first 2019 issue of New In Chess, when a Carlsen-Giri game gave me strong deja vu due to a game that appeared in this thread. Read more about it in the latest issue of the NZ Chess Bulletin.

[Adamski]

All good, Bill. In my defence I no longer have the paper score sheets for any of my Wellington games with Gavin. They were all provided by him. At least I now know the year each game was played in and have them all in a ChessBase 14 database. And fascinating parallel of Kai Jensen's win and the recent Super-GM blitz game. I join you in thanking Michael Freeman for unearthing Kai's win.

[Bill Forster]

1980 confirmed. We were in Group B of the Feltex Carpet ANZAC Weekender. Played 25-27 April 1980 in Wellington. Phew, Bill. That took some detective work! Source: NZ Chess, 1980.

Goodness me somehow I missed these last posts when I was working on the Adams-Marner conundrum yesterday. I think it was likely the "same person makes multiple posts in a row and you don't realise anything's changed" syndrome. So now I will put the game back (yesterday I removed it) with the corrected meta data. But it will have to wait awhile, until the next time I work on the database.

[Adamski]

Goodness me somehow I missed these last posts when I was working on the Adams-Marner conundrum yesterday. I think it was likely the "same person makes multiple posts in a row and you don't realise anything's changed" syndrome. So now I will put the game back (yesterday I removed it) with the corrected meta data. But it will have to wait awhile, until the next time I work on the database.

Thank you, Bill. And of course the database update can wait.

[Bill Forster]

I have only just noted that bringing the Peter Stuart database from Chessbase to PGN format with my (old) Chessbase V9 has resulted in thousands of games having bogus WhiteTeamCountry and BlackTeamCountry tags. For example Sarfati-Oliver above is bizarrely allegedly an Australia v Papua New Guinuea game! I put this down to a ChessBase bug, I think it is continuing on the tags with their existing values to games that don't have (and actually shouldn't have) the tags. Something else I'll have to fix in due course!

I have been investing a lot more hours on the Peter Stuart database, mainly wrestling with obscure technical problems like this one. (if you really want to give yourself a headache try sorting out the issues involved in Ansi v Unicode in chess databases). Anyway, today I republished the database on the NZCF site (see the History page <--- link). I am happy that I've now finally got everything under control and have a firm base to continue maintaining the database into the future. The issues that came to light during this thread, (the duplicate Gollogly-Adams game, the rediscovered Jensen-Oliver game, the various Marner-Adams clashes, the fallacious Australia v Papua New Guinea tags), are all addressed and/or present. As well as 250 more games (from the 2018 and 2019 North Island Champs).

Incidentally the Australia v Papua New Guinea thing was indeed caused by a bug in ChessBase 9, and I had to dip into my pocket to buy ChessBase 15 to address it. This annoyed me as I am not a big ChessBase fan, having developed my own chess GUI Tarrasch <--- link. Never mind the reality is that it is important to offer ChessBase format, not just PGN. At least I could fund the purchase from my Paypal account with Tarrasch donations! (thank you Capablanca Fan incidentally).