Chessgames.com

     This is one of my favorite sites for locating games. OK, so it’s received some harsh criticism from such luminaries as Chesscafe.com columnist and chess historian Olimpiu G. Urcan, GM Tim Harding and chess historian Edward Winter, but considering it’s free and run by amateurs, it is a valuable resource in my opinion. 
     Urcan criticized the "phony scholarship" and lack of ethical standards of Chessgames.com and chess websites in general. He also criticised its close association with Raymond Keene. 
     Harding said he would never dream of using chessgames.com as a source for any kind of historical data and Winter criticized the site for lack of precision, rigor and sourcing. 
     It’s a free site, but you can enhance your experience (the site’s words) by subscribing to their premium tier of advanced features for $29 a year. The site touts itself as an Internet chess community with over 224,000 members.
     Chessgames.com maintains a database of games, where each game has its own discussion page for comments and analysis. Limited primarily to games where at least one player is of master strength, the database begins with the earliest known recorded games and is updated with games from current top-level tournaments. 
     Chessgames.com was founded in 2001 by Daniel Freeman (who died on July 24, 2018, at the age of 50) and Alberto Artidiello (who died at the age of 56 on March 1, 2015) in association with 20/20 Technologies. They developed software to integrate a database with a discussion forum, so that all games and players have a unique message board. 
     Each game is hosted on a separate web page to allow internal and external weblinks to that particular game. Although other online databases may contain more games, they typically do not permit external links to individual games or allow for kibitzing on each game. 
     Prominent Chessgames.com members have included: Susan Polgar, Nigel Short, Gata Kamsky, Raymond Keene, Eric Schiller, Maxim Dlugy, Lawrence Day, Natalia Pogonina and Yelena Dembo. Plus, many Grandmasters have posted on the site. 
     Despite its flaws the Chessgames.com database can be searched by player, year, opening, ECO code and result. Members can create Game Collections to store hundreds of database games by any desired category, such as opening, endgame, tactic, player, or tournament. The site's kibitzing may be searched by keyword for all messages to locate previous posts and find specific information.
     Chessgames.com has created several educational tools available to Premium (paid) members, but the free membership also offers a lot. 

Game Collections - games assembled by members. Some collections feature a player, opening, or a tactical motif. Other collections are based on games found in a popular chess books. Still others are personal collections of favorite games. You can use the option to locate the collections. 
Tournament Index - games from specific tournament from 1843 to 1999 
Players - a directory of the most eminent chess players in the database. 

     One valuable/interesting resource is the collection of games that are based on chess books...about 120 books at present! 
     Some are the subject of more than one collection and some have more than one volume but are counted as one book. This is a really valuable asset because if you own a chess book and would like to be able to use your chess program to play through or analyze the games that are included in the book, just find the game in the collection and play through them using the interface available on chessgames.com or just download the game.