Master Database

The Explorer panel shows opening statistics for the current board position. It is available on both the Home page and in the Openings workspace. It has three tabs: Master DB (master game database), My Games (your personal game collection), and Repertoire (your prepared moves).

For each candidate move from the current position, the Explorer shows:

• Move popularity — total games in which this move was played
• W/D/L bar — colour-coded win/draw/loss breakdown
• Performance % — (wins + 0.5 × draws) / total
• Average Elo of players who chose this move

Below the move table, a list of example games is shown. Click a game to view its full PGN on the Home page.

Data source

The master database is built from Lumbra’s Gigabase — a freely available, regularly updated compilation of over-the-board games from professional and amateur tournaments, covering millions of games.

Downloading a master database

The master database is downloaded directly from within the app — you do not need to source, build, or import multi-gigabyte PGN files yourself. Masterboard hosts ready-made databases and pulls the one you choose over the internet.

1. Go to Settings → Master Game Database.
2. Choose a storage location for the database (Choose Location). The database is large, so pick a drive with room to spare.
3. Click Change Collection to open the collection picker. Each collection lists its game count and download size; select one and download it. A progress bar tracks the download, which runs in the background while you continue using the app.

You can also download a database during first-run setup, from the setup wizard’s master-database step.

Choosing a collection

Masterboard offers several collections (slices of Lumbra’s Gigabase) so you can trade coverage against download size and disk use:

• Masters — games where both players are rated 2200 or above; the smallest download.
• Elite — games where both players are rated 2400 or above.
• Full OTB — every game regardless of rating (over ten million); the largest, for the deepest statistics.

Once a collection is installed, the section shows its name, version, game count, and on-disk size. To move to a different collection, use Change Collection again.

Keeping it up to date

Click Check for Updates to see whether a newer version of your collection is available. When one is, Update Now downloads and applies just the delta (not the whole database again), verifies it, and swaps it in — with an automatic rollback if anything goes wrong. To remove the database entirely, use Clear Database.

My Games tab

The My Games tab queries your personal game collection using a local position index built incrementally as games are imported (see Position Index). Filters are available for folder, collection, and player name.

In the Openings workspace (with a single repertoire selected), clicking any move row in the Explorer panel adds that move directly to the repertoire at the current position as a response.

Repertoire tab

The third Repertoire tab shows the moves you have prepared at the current position across all your active repertoires — without having to switch to a repertoire in the side-nav. It is available wherever the Explorer panel appears: the Home page (check your preparation while reviewing a game) and the Openings workspace (see how a position is covered across all repertoires, not just the one you are editing).