user-1: I'm working on a rating/ranking algorithm and I'm finally at a point where I can test some hypothesis but in order to do so I need real data. To be honest almost any board game could be used for this but I thought that chess is the board game with the highest possibility of having such a database.
I was thinking of posting it on other stackexchange pages but in the end I thought going to the root would be most efficient. 
What the database should fulfill:

At least 50 players
At least 1000 matches
Downloadable (maybe not required if I can parse it from the website chronological)

Since I only play chess on rare occasions I'm not really too familiar with all the websites out there so I hope someone can help me.

user167: Million Base 2.5 (available from a link here) and ICOfY Base are two free options that more than meet your given criteria, each providing millions of games in PGN format to draw from as you please. In particular, ICOfY Base includes well over 4 million games.

-1: <p>I'm working on a rating/ranking algorithm and I'm finally at a point where I can test some hypothesis but in order to do so I need real data. To be honest almost any board game could be used for this but I thought that chess is the board game with the highest possibility of having such a database.</p>

<p>I was thinking of posting it on other stackexchange pages but in the end I thought going to the root would be most efficient. </p>

<p>What the database should fulfill:</p>

<ul>
<li>At least 50 players</li>
<li>At least 1000 matches</li>
<li>Downloadable (maybe not required if I can parse it from the website chronological)</li>
</ul>

<p>Since I only play chess on rare occasions I'm not really too familiar with all the websites out there so I hope someone can help me.</p>
 167: <p>Million Base 2.5 (available from a link <a href="http://rebel13.nl/rebel13/rebel%2013.html" rel="nofollow">here</a>) and <a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/icofybase/?source=navbar" rel="nofollow">ICOfY Base</a> are two free options that more than meet your given criteria, each providing millions of games in PGN format to draw from as you please. In particular, ICOfY Base includes well over 4 million games.</p>
