Organizing and archiving one's old games

About 4 months ago, at the suggestion of Greenpawn, Robbie and others here I started organizing and archiving some 200+ old OTB and CC tournament games going back 20+ years, I've copied them onto computer disk and onto cards and placed them in a card file box, organizing them with ECO notation, still some 50 or so to go, but I must admit, playing over all these old games, checking for typo errors etc. has been a fun and educational experience, and I'm almost sorry it's drawing to a close. Perhaps the "bunker" mentality is setting in here, but it's been really nice to classify these old games quietly at my desk, as economic and political turnoil rages in the outside world. I'll be returning to compitition here at RHP in a few months, and feel I'll be better prepared as a result of this experience...an experience I highly recommend to everyone here. So Thank You to Greenpawn and others for the suggestion!! 🙂

Hi Bill. I don't have many games to archive but I would like to start soon so that I can do it as my games finish. Could you please explain your method or give me the link to where greenpawn explained?

I keep all of my games that I play. But I'm not up to date on the method that I save them. I have score books that I keep them in. One day I'll go digital...maybe.

If you can afford to spend some money on a chess program (such as Fritz) they come with very nice chess databases with thousands of games all the way from the 1600s.

On top of that you can create new databases with your own games or games that you downloaded from the internet in PGN. Then, the program will classify the different games based on criteria such as opennings, tactics, sacrifices, end games, blunders etc etc. Thus, looking for something very specific becomes very easy.

In addition, you can let the chess engine analyse one of the games stored in the database with a click of a button.

This is what I do. And it is very easy to go back and replay old games straight onto your pc rather than recreating things in a chessboard from score cards. It really helps in looking how you used to play long time ago (in terms of mistakes, evaluation score etc) and how you play now (and whether you have improved).