Know what your opponent plays before you sit down
YottaChess is the largest database of over-the-board tournament games in the world, and the only one where the 1800-rated player from Saturday's open actually shows up. Your membership includes a Premium account for a year.
- games in the database
- 15,344,723games in the database
- player profiles
- 1,873,839player profiles
- Grandmaster video lessons
- 9Grandmaster video lessons
Figures published by YottaChess on 26 August 2026.
How your account is activated
The Premium Basic account comes with the The Magic plan for a year: nothing to pay on their side. It includes 30 profile downloads per month, every preparation tool and the video seminars.
Subscribe to the plan
Once your membership is active the Premium account is already included: there is nothing extra to pay.
Sign up with the same email
Create your free account at yottachess.com using the same email you use at AcademiaTal. That is what lets us identify you on their side.
Wait 24 to 72 hours
We pass your registration on to YottaChess and your account becomes Premium for a year.
Already had a YottaChess account under a different email? Write to us at soporte@academiatal.com and we will activate that one instead.
A tournament games database with the amateurs in it
It collects games from FIDE-licensed players competing in rated over-the-board tournaments. Its value is not the size: it is who it covers.
The classic commercial databases are built for the elite. If your next opponent is the 1800-rated player from the provincial open, they simply are not there: you will not find a single one of their games. On YottaChess you will, because it gathers everything played on the circuit, amateur level included.
It was born to fill the hole left by chess-db, the free reference that disappeared, and it does the same job better: recent games by real people, on a site you can open from your phone in the playing hall, with nothing to install.
What it does not cover is online chess. You will not find your opponent's Lichess or Chess.com profile here: this is the database of the wooden board, of the tournament with a scoresheet and an arbiter.
Club or FIDE open player
Its natural audience. Opponents who appear in no commercial database, with every game they have played in recent years.
Coach
Preparation for a whole group from a single account: every student with their profile, their opening tree and their performance graph.
Organiser or club
Rankings you can embed on the club site, ELO and title-norm calculators, and game broadcasting from any camera.
Online-only player
Not much use, and it is worth saying: for internet chess the good data is on Lichess and Chess.com.
Everything you can learn about an opponent
Search by name or by FIDE ID and their profile opens. It is the heart of the platform and the reason almost everyone comes in.
Square heat map
How many times each square has been occupied by one of their pieces. At a glance you see which side they castle to, how they develop and which areas of the board they own.
Their own opening tree
Every move they have played, sorted, on a navigable board with Stockfish evaluation: what they open with as White, what they defend with as Black, and how often for real.
Rating and performance over time
The last-year graph tells you whether they are coming off a sharp climb, a slump, or years stuck at that level. A rating on its own says none of that.
Their ten best tournaments
Sorted by finishing place, with the full crosstable of each event one click away.
Centipawn history
The average quality of their play according to the engine, game by game. It is the fastest way to gauge what their rating is really worth.
All their games in PGN
The player's full download, ready to take into ChessBase, SCID or Lichess Studies and analyse with a modern engine.
What the Premium account unlocks
All of this comes unlocked with the account your membership includes. It is not in the free plan.
Preparation panel
You enter your name, your opponent's and which colour you are playing. It returns their opening tree against that colour and, next to it, their weaknesses: lines where they score below their average, structures they avoid and variations where they burn clock time.
Twin Bot
Games against a bot that imitates your opponent: their openings, their setups and their decisions. A few blitz games against their twin before the round beat half an hour of theory.
Opening explorer
The global tree of the whole database: most played moves, win percentages, representative games and analysis. You can enter a FEN, move on the board or browse the tree.
Elite and engine databases
Two separate databases: players above 2400 and engine games. This is where you cross-check your opponent's line to find where it scores worst at a high level.
YottaCoach
An AI assistant that comments on positions and answers in plain language. It is in beta, with limited use.
Custom search
If a player turns up nowhere, you can ask the team to look them up for you. Nobody is left without preparation.
And you find out when someone is preparing against you
Link your FIDE ID to your account and you see the latest downloads of your games, with dates, plus the full history of visits to your profile. It is the one thing here that no commercial database replicates.
If your opponent has studied you, your usual repertoire is public information and it pays to deviate on move 3. If they have not, you can play your main line in peace and save hours of work. It is a single fact that changes the whole preparation, and you only get it here.
Nine lessons from two Grandmasters
On video, with their PDFs, included in the account. They are not theory lessons: they are preparation lessons, that is, how to use all of this for one concrete game.
GM Iván Salgado López
- Downloading games
- Analysis with the premium tools
- How to prepare against a given player
- A Grandmaster's real preparation
GM Tomás Sosa
- Searching by position, variation trees and structures: how to take your opponent out of the classical Sicilian
- How I prepared for a game at the Olympiad
- How to prepare in double-round tournaments
- What if your opponent needs the win more than you do
- How to drag your opponent out of their setup
Preparing a game, step by step
Between forty-five minutes and an hour, the night before, against an open opponent.
Find them by FIDE ID
Never by name alone: the database carries namesakes and transliteration variants. The FIDE ID is on their FIDE profile and in the tournament pairing. Download their full PGN.
Read their opening tree by colour
What they open with as White and which defence they choose as Black, and how often for real: one stray game from three years ago is not their repertoire.
Cross their lines with the elite database
Look for where their choice scores worst at a high level. That is your candidate novelty.
Gauge their real strength
With the performance graph: a rating can be inflated by one good tournament or out of date after months without playing.
Read the heat map when time is short
Preferred castling side, type of structure, tendency to trade queens early. It is the qualitative shortcut when you have fifteen minutes left.
Check whether they downloaded you
If they did, leave your usual repertoire right from the opening.
Take the PGN to your analysis tool
YottaChess is the data source; the laboratory is somewhere else. ChessBase, SCID or Lichess Studies for deep work with a modern engine.
Saturday's opponent is already in the database
The Premium account comes with the The Magic plan, together with the full catalogue, the live group classes and the monthly simul with a Grandmaster.
Data and features published by YottaChess in August 2026. What the platform offers may change.