A complete database of international chess players and chess performance ratings for varied longitudinal studies

Chess is an oft-used study domain in psychology and artificial intelligence because it is well defined, its performance rating systems allow easy identification of experts and their development, and chess playing is a complex intellectual task. However, usable computerized chess data have been very limited. The present article has two aims. The first is to highlight the methodological value of chess data and how researchers can use them to address questions in quite different areas. The second is to present a computerized database of all international chess players and official performance ratings beginning from the inaugural 1970 international rating list. The database has millions of records and gives complete longitudinal official performance data for over 60,000 players from 1970 to the present. Like a time series of population censuses, these data can be used for many different research and teaching purposes. Three quite different studies, conducted by the author using the database, are described.