From a ChessBase database to Lichess studies
Lichess studies are a good home for annotated games: they keep variations and comments, draw arrows and coloured squares, and can be shared with students or a club. Lichess imports PGN, not ChessBase databases, so the database has to be converted first.
- Upload the ChessBase database (all its files, or a
.zipof the folder). - Keep "Annotations: Everything". The arrows and coloured squares are written as
[%cal]and[%csl]commands, which Lichess turns back into graphics, and engine evaluations as[%eval]. - If the database has comments in two languages, pick yours under "More options".
- Download the PGN and import it into a study ("Add chapter", then the PGN tab). A study holds 64 chapters, so split a large file into several studies, or import it into your Lichess games via the analysis board for single games.
What Lichess shows and what it ignores
- Comments, variations, symbols (!, ?, +-, with the idea…) and novelty markers come through.
- Arrows and squares in green, red and yellow come through.
- Clock times (
[%clk]) are shown next to the moves. - Guiding texts can't go into a study as they are; they come as separate HTML pages you can paste from.
Pitfalls
- Games from set-up positions import with their FEN tag; check that the study chapter uses it.
- Annotator names in old databases are often stored as "Last,First" without a space; that is how the database holds them and it is kept.
More about what this tool reads and writes: ChessBase to PGN Converter (CBH, 2CBH, CBV).