CBH to PGN in one step
A .cbh file on its own is only the index of a ChessBase database: the moves are in the .cbg
file, the comments in .cba, the player names in .cbp, the tournaments in .cbt, and so on.
That is why opening just the .cbh file anywhere else fails. Upload all the files that share the
database's name (or a .zip of its folder) and you get one PGN file with every game.
What comes across:
- every game's header: event, site, date, round, players, result, Elo ratings, ECO, annotator, source, teams, and the tournament's date, type, rounds and country;
- the complete move tree, variations inside variations included;
- the commentary, before and after moves, with symbols as standard NAGs;
- graphical annotations, clock times and engine evaluations as
[%csl],[%cal],[%clk],[%emt]and[%eval]commands.
A CSV list of the games comes with it, and the guiding texts of the database as HTML pages.
Which databases
Databases written by ChessBase 6 up to the current version in the CBH format are read, including
old ones without the newer .cbj and .cbl files. The .2cbh format of ChessBase 17 and 18 is
read too. Games stored with set-up positions keep a FEN tag, and Chess960 games their start
position.
Pitfalls
- Missing files. Without the
.cbgfile there are no moves, so the conversion stops and says so. Without.cbayou get the games but no comments; without.cbpor.cbtthe names are question marks. The result page tells you which file was missing. - Deleted games. ChessBase keeps deleted games in the file until the database is compressed. They are left out unless you tick the option to include them.
- Several languages. Many commercial databases carry each comment in English and German. Pick one language under "More options" to keep only that one.
- Archives. A
.cbvfile is a compressed copy of a database: upload it as it is and it is unpacked and converted the same way.
More about what this tool reads and writes: ChessBase to PGN Converter (CBH, 2CBH, CBV).