Ossimitz DB Books
19 May '08 22:02Those of you that have downloaded DB books (PGN or Chessbase formatted moves of games from chess books) are probably aware of the two main sources, Gambitchess and Ossimitz.
Well, I recently tried to go to the Ossimitz site only to find that it's no longer there. (The dreaded "The page cannot be found" message.) Now, the page hadn't been updated since 2003, so the discovery wasn't a complete surprise to me. Lessening my shock somewhat was the fact that Gambitchess has a lot more DB books than Ossimitz had, although many of the Gambitchess DB books do require "the password" to open them. But I still wanted to check the Ossimitz site one last time, since Ossimitz had some DB books that weren't offered by Gambitchess. (Also, the DB book for Hay's algebraic edition of Euwe and Kramer's "The Middlegame" appears to be a fantastic effort.)
Well, score one for persistence. By use of the Wayback Machine (Hey, Rocky, watch me pull a rabbit outta my hat!), I was able to find an archived page of the Ossimitz site. And luckily, most of the DB books are still downloadable. (Only a handful of the books were either empty or not downloadable.) I have no idea if this archived page will exist forever or if it might go away some day, so I decided to just mention it in the forums as sort of a public service announcement.
Two cautionary notes - I had a little trouble downloading the books from the archived page using my download manager, but the Windows "Save as" feature worked just fine. Also, my freeware version of ZipCentral was only able to unzip about 20 percent of the books I downloaded. For the other 80 percent, I was able to extract the zipped files using the freeware IZArc program. I don't have a clue why either one of these problems occurred. Here's the link:
http://web.archive.org/web/20060710121413/http://www.uni-klu.ac.at/~gossimit/c/book.htm
The book links that either wouldn't download or were empty were:
karpbest.zip
sor.zip
heemsoth.zip
gmsecret.zip
spiel_as.zip
(The rincon2.zip and rincon345.zip files were damaged, but ZipCentral was able to repair them.)
Also, his "Favorites" page seemed to be a complete duplication of the main page but for one notable exception. At the bottom of the favorites page, there's a link to a DB book for the Zurich International Chess Tournament 1953, which I didn't see on the main page. Here's the Favorites link:
http://web.archive.org/web/20051219210944/www.uni-klu.ac.at/~gossimit/c/myfav.htm
BTW, even though I think the link for the Gambitchess site has been mentioned before, I know someone's going to ask. Here's the Gambitchess link:
http://www.gambitchess.com/index2.htm
Well, I recently tried to go to the Ossimitz site only to find that it's no longer there. (The dreaded "The page cannot be found" message.) Now, the page hadn't been updated since 2003, so the discovery wasn't a complete surprise to me. Lessening my shock somewhat was the fact that Gambitchess has a lot more DB books than Ossimitz had, although many of the Gambitchess DB books do require "the password" to open them. But I still wanted to check the Ossimitz site one last time, since Ossimitz had some DB books that weren't offered by Gambitchess. (Also, the DB book for Hay's algebraic edition of Euwe and Kramer's "The Middlegame" appears to be a fantastic effort.)
Well, score one for persistence. By use of the Wayback Machine (Hey, Rocky, watch me pull a rabbit outta my hat!), I was able to find an archived page of the Ossimitz site. And luckily, most of the DB books are still downloadable. (Only a handful of the books were either empty or not downloadable.) I have no idea if this archived page will exist forever or if it might go away some day, so I decided to just mention it in the forums as sort of a public service announcement.
Two cautionary notes - I had a little trouble downloading the books from the archived page using my download manager, but the Windows "Save as" feature worked just fine. Also, my freeware version of ZipCentral was only able to unzip about 20 percent of the books I downloaded. For the other 80 percent, I was able to extract the zipped files using the freeware IZArc program. I don't have a clue why either one of these problems occurred. Here's the link:
http://web.archive.org/web/20060710121413/http://www.uni-klu.ac.at/~gossimit/c/book.htm
The book links that either wouldn't download or were empty were:
karpbest.zip
sor.zip
heemsoth.zip
gmsecret.zip
spiel_as.zip
(The rincon2.zip and rincon345.zip files were damaged, but ZipCentral was able to repair them.)
Also, his "Favorites" page seemed to be a complete duplication of the main page but for one notable exception. At the bottom of the favorites page, there's a link to a DB book for the Zurich International Chess Tournament 1953, which I didn't see on the main page. Here's the Favorites link:
http://web.archive.org/web/20051219210944/www.uni-klu.ac.at/~gossimit/c/myfav.htm
BTW, even though I think the link for the Gambitchess site has been mentioned before, I know someone's going to ask. Here's the Gambitchess link:
http://www.gambitchess.com/index2.htm
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