Excel Chess Games Viewer 2.0

Silver Contributor

As my contribution to the celebration of Spreadsheet Day on 17 October 2021, I will post Version 2.0 of my Excel Chess Games Viewer. I now completed testing all of the 73 most famous chess games of all time included therein. 

 

Inspired by fmwcopen and excelasesports, the upgraded version shall feature conditional formatting for MoveFrom and MoveTo, which are dynamically defined formulas that return the squares from which, and to which, each chesspiece moves.

Can you guess the brilliant move 21 for White in The Evergreen Game, shown below: 

Evergreen Game White Move 21.png

 

As I promised, here is my Excel Chess Games Viewer 2.0. I realized that the file from the link has been edited. To view the unedited version, I now upload it here. 

 

9 Replies
This is impressive, very impressive. I didn't guess the brilliant move 21, I had what I think was a 'good' move but then again, I don't play. That said, maybe you already did this in v2.0 but can I suggest adding a CHECK/CHECKMATE notification field. For example I added the following in the cell below the Sequence number:
=IFS(LEN(INDEX(Moves!B5:B155,INT(K6/2)+2))<2,"CHECKMATE",RIGHT(B7,1)="+","CHECK",1,"")
and then adding a little conditional formatting for Yellow if CHECK and Red if CHECKMATE, I think would be nice (of course you should sub in your Named ranges but I didn't look them up).

I appreciate your compliment but no conditional formatting is required for:
1, Check. Because the last character in the move would be "+";
2. Double Check. Because the last two characters in the move would be "++"; and
3. Checkmate. Because the last character in the move would be "#".

For additional information, these last characters in a move mean, as follows:
1. Question Mark (?). Bad move;
2. Double Question Mark (??). Blunder;
3. Question Mark followed by Exclamation Mark (?!). Dubious move;
4. Exclamation Mark (!). Good move;
5. Exclamation Mark followed by Question Mark (!?) Interesting move; and 
6. Double Exclamation Mark (!!). Brilliant move. 

I noticed the "+" but didn't notice/realize those other characters. But more importantly my point was to help us noobs that don't know those conventions with a simple cell that highlights that information for us.
on an aside, what if there is a combination of them? e.g. a bad move was also check ?+ or +?
also who defines all those?
By all means, you must know by heart the meanings of those characters in each move. Those characters were published by chess gurus (certainly excluding me for being unqualified to be deemed as such). After knowing those meanings, the only issue that remains is: from what square to what square did the last piece move? If you view any chess game from other platforms, you will certainly visualize those answers, but never in Excel, until I did!
Curiosity is thirst for knowledge. A check that is a bad move would be: +?. Check (+) is the move. Bad move (?) is the comment on the move.

A move always precedes any comment thereto, not otherwise. So, a Question Mark (?), in chess notation, can never precede a Plus Sign (+).

@Twifoo, this great chess games viewer has reminded me that 6 years ago I published a chess viewer that loads games from PGN files, that I share here in case it is of your interest.

 

I just updated it to link to your chess games viewer:

Excel Chess Board PGN Viewer - Visor PGN Tablero de Ajedrez Excel | Pedro Wave for Excel Guys

 

It is a joy that there are enthusiasts who bring together Excel and Chess.

 

Regards,

Pedro Wave

@PedroWave 

I've seen your Chess PGN Viewer even before I attempted to create my versions. Nonetheless, I saw no detailed instructions on how to add and view Chess Games, and so I pursued mine. Anyway, I suggest that you upgrade your version by including such detailed instructions. 

I'm glad to know that you have already been a reader of my blog for some time.

The truth is that a detailed explanation of the use of my viewer is missing, but it is that I spent so many hours doing it that I did not want to do a tutorial, I only made an explanatory video, with a version of Excel in Spanish, which can give an idea of how to use it.

It is an issue that I have pending that some day I will get to it. For now I can only tell you that to load a new PGN file you have to go to Data> Refresh all

@PedroWave 

Without detailed instructions, your Excel PGN Viewer can never be user-friendly. Such instructions must be directed towards the convenience of the User, not the Author thereof. I look forward to viewing those instructions in your upgraded version soon.