I was looking at the Master Games database for recent King's Gambit games.  Sometimes I like to see what the most recent GM's are doing in the lines I enjoy playing.  I was unaware, however, that hundreds of 2009 chess.com games have been added to the Master Games database.  So when I sort by year, I get several screens of 2009 games that, while interesting, are not really the sort I was looking for.  Then a big jump back to 2006 master games.  An example of a 2009 chess.com game now in the Master Games database is attached. 

Does anyone else have concerns about populating the Master Games database with games from chess.com?  Should they instead keep the Master Games database pure (or update it with more recent genuine master OTB/correspondence games) and have a separate database available for chess.com games?  I am worried that games of the likes of Fisher, Tal, and Karpov are going to get smothered under a potential avalanche of chess.com games.  And will the statistics become less reliable?

good question ray.  relayed to management.    ret

excellent point by Ray with regard to authenticity of master games database and statistics

Erik is looking into it and corrections (as deemed appropriate by staff) will happen.

regards.

Thanks Ret.  Obviously, a few errant games showing up in the database in not nearly as important as some of the other projects Erik is working on.  But thanks for the quick feedback.

As an aside, I am sure I read somewhere that chess.com was thinking of updating the database with more recent games.  I think that is a great idea, if it can be done easily.  There seems to be a lot of free recent games online, such as from TWIC.  I recently put all the individual weekly games from TWIC for 2008 into a single database that offers me the ability to look at how a number of lines are played in 2008.  Its not as comprehensive as the super large databases, but the price was right (free!).  I am not sure if TWIC has some rules regarding commercial organizations like chess.com making the same free games available to paying members, but would love to see more recent games like those showing up in our database. 

Then again, I don't have the time to look at all the great games that are already in the database in the lines I play anyway.