Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chess/Archive 10

Caption of opening
7	7
6	6
5	5
4	4
3	3
2	2
1	1
Moves
ECO
Origin
Named after
Parent
Synonym(s)

Caption of opening
7	7
6	6
5	5
4	4
3	3
2	2
1	1
Moves
ECO
Origin
Named after
Parent
Synonym(s)

Chess pieces
	; King
	; Queen
	; Rook
	; Bishop
	; Knight
	; Pawn

This is an archive of past discussions about Wikipedia:WikiProject Chess. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

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Chess prodigy

In the chess prodigy article, before the era of FIDE ratings and titles (1950), it lists Morphy, Capablanca, and Reshevsky. Afterward, it goes by age of earning the GM title. Becoming a GM is a great achievement, but it is a lot easier to do it now than in the 1950s when Spassky and Fischer did it. I think there needs to be another criteria (in addition to that one), perhaps reaching the Candidate's tournament. Fischer and Magnus Carlsen did this at an early age, but are there any others? What do people think about other criteria for prodigies? Bubba73 (talk), 01:28, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Things to consider - renaming, article splits or revisions

These have been discussed, but I don't think any conclusion has been reached, so nothing has been done.

1. Should Middlegame and Endgame be renamed to Chess middlegame and Chess endgame, to be like Chess opening? (I agree with the name changes.) Bubba73 (talk), 17:22, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

An advantage is that it would be more consistent. A disadvantage is that the titles are obviously longer ;-). Also, the need for being specific is less clear for "middlegame" than for "opening", as this last one has a lot of other natural usages. All in all I would slightly favor this change of names. SyG (talk) 21:14, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

It doesn't make the names that much longer. And there is the page Endgame (disambiguation) with over twenty entries. I don't think we should use Endgame with that many other uses. Bubba73 (talk), 18:50, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Alternativea: Endgame (chess) and Middlegame (chess). Bubba73 (talk), 01:13, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

2. Stalemate and Zugzwang have a little discussion of non-chess uses but then the great majority of the article is about chess. This has been discussed at Talk:Stalemate. Should the articles be split into chess and non-chess? If so, which should be the "main" article, i.e. have the titles that are used now? If not, should the articles be revamped to mention the non-chess uses but otherwise be about chess? That is, at present, almost all of the articles are in a section "Stalemate in chess" and "zugzwang in chess". Bubba73 (talk), 17:22, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

3. Also IBM Deep Blue may be renamed Deep Blue (chess computer), see talk. Bubba73 (talk), 20:19, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Links to chess pieces?

Do we need to put links to chess pieces (such as [[rook (chess)|rook]] in all articles? I've been putting them in most articles, but I wonder how much they are needed. Clearly they should be in articles such as chess, Rules of chess, and chess pieces, but are they needed in, say, French Defense? If someone is reading about the French Defense, they probably already know what a rook is. Bubba73 (talk), 03:09, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't see what the harm in putting them in is. After all, we have to assume that somebody might have accidentally stumbled upon the article and would like to know what the functions of the chess pieces are. Also, the articles about the chess pieces are quite interesting in themselves, even to those who are already experienced in playing chess. Andy4226uk (talk) 16:01, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

There's no harm in putting them in, and I usually do. But it is pretty tedious. I figured that mose people reading the chess articles (except for a few general ones) know what the pieces are. Bubba73 (talk), 17:53, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Quickplay?

~~Is a "quickplay finish" the same as "sudden death"?~~ Bubba73 (talk), 05:06, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes it is. Bubba73 (talk), 06:53, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Assessing articles, call to the wikiproject chess community

A good number of articles have been assessed:

Chess articles by quality and importance
Quality	Importance
Quality	Top	High	Mid	Low	Bottom	NA	???	Total
B				2				2
C			1	3	1		4	9
Start			1	33	3		28	65
Stub			15	85	4		36	140
List				3	1		1	5
Category						3		3
Disambig			1			9		10
File						23		23
Portal						2		2
Project						8		8
Redirect			10	84	4	79		177
Template						169		169
NA			3	6		1		10
Other	49	228	904	5,825	108	971		8,085
Assessed	49	228	935	6,041	121	1,265	69	8,708
Total	49	228	935	6,041	121	1,265	69	8,708
WikiWork factors (?)		ω = 39,395			Ω = 5.43

Ideally, we would have all articles assessed such as the Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics seems to be able to do. Can I ask, if you create an article, can you please add the wikiproject template on the talk page and assess both its importance and class? Also a good moment to assess an article is when commenting on a talk page of an unassessed article. I am trying to assess all new articles, but it is tedious, and I feel that the quality of my assessments is not very high when I do them in series. We are making progress, but it would be nice if everyone could make a little extra effort. When all articles are assessed, a great thing would be to start a Chess Collaboration of the Month (see again the mathematics project). The goal would be to have an article of the month which we try to raise to say B-class in that month. We could start with Top-stub and Top-start, then move to High-stub, High-start, and finally Mid-Stub. Voorlandt (talk) 10:08, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

I would be glad to participate into a Chess Collaboration of the Month; I will try to help you a bit with the assessments. SyG (talk) 11:09, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

I am reluctant to rate articles for which I've been a major contributor. (It is hard to be objective about your own work.) When I do give an importance rating, I notice that Quale (for instance) usually rates articles one step higher than I do. For an article I've worked a lot on, if I give it a class rating, it is either Stub or Start - basically a stub or not a stub. I'm reluctant to rate articles where I've been a major editor higher than Start. Bubba73 (talk), 13:46, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

I wouldn't worry at all about assessing a different importance level to an article than I do. Since at least three different Chess WikiProject participants have disagreed with my priority assessments, its clear that my views on article priority aren't widely held. With that in mind, I try to avoid setting the priority parameter on articles, although occasionally I get cranky about it even though I shouldn't. Article quality is far more important than priority. I don't really care much for FA and GA, but we have scandalously few articles that rate A or B classes. Quale (talk) 05:17, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

It seems the WikiProject Chess has focused more on quantity than on quality for now, as indicated by the number of "...to create", and the important number of biographies that we have. We have 2261 articles including 94 rated B-class or higher, a mere 4%. If I try to compare with other WikiProject, the Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics has 3480 articles including 775 rated B-class or higher, a massive 22%. The Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history has 62681 (!!) articles including 4818 rated B-class or higher, a correct 8%. (by the way, does the fact that War has 18 times more articles than Mathematics tell something on the human nature ?)

On the other hand, I do not want to rate a bunch of articles B-class just for the sake of increasing the number of B-class, and I am probably kind of "strict" in my assessments. SyG (talk) 08:49, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

To Quayle: I haven't rated many because a few editors were doing the bulk of the work and I thought it would be good for the ratings to be consistent. But having a rating that is one higher or lower than what would be a consensus is probably a lot better than no rating. To Syg: I think there are way too many biographies of players that are not that important. I have always been against having articles for everyone in the top 1000 or whatever it was. Bubba73 (talk), 15:11, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

I fully agree that consistent ratings are important, and those doing the bulk of the work rating articles set the tone. Since I'm not rating many articles, if you think you can rate fairly consistently with Syg and Voorlandt, you should be OK if you want to do ratings. On the other point, at one time I agreed that only the strongest players should have articles, but I changed my mind about that some months ago. Although I don't usually create articles on weak players, I do sometimes. (James Mortimer is a good example of a weak player I created an article for. It also hasn't been rated.... I should go back and add inline cites rather than the general list of references I used.) I think that WP:BIO rules should apply, and particularly the rules for athletes. My reading suggests that Chess Olympiad participants qualify, and so do national chess champions, although they may not be strong players. The recent Calvin Prasad AFD revolved around those issues. I think that having articles for winners of national chess championships is useful and justified, even if only a minimal amount of information is available. Even as little as birth and death dates is encyclopedic biographic information, and it doesn't seem to fit well in any other place. Edward G. Winter's writing shows that a fair amount of encyclopedic information can often be found even on players who are not well known. All this said, you aren't alone in thinking that only strong players should be given articles. There have been suggestions in the past that only GM level players should get articles, with exceptions for those who are well known as writers or trainers. That was my view too, but not currently. The large number of chess bios we have need not distract anyone from improving the ones they feel are most important. Quale (talk) 18:50, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

There are nearly 1,000 GMS now (900+) - I think that is too many. On the other hand, there are roughly that many professional baseball players in the US, and they probably all have articles. Yet I still think an article for every current GM is way too many. Bubba73 (talk), 07:59, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

An example of how I am out of step with the community in priority ratings of chess articles is Carlos Bielicki. The World Junior Champion of 1959 is rated Low importance. While I wouldn't assign a Top or High priority based only on a World Junior championship, I would not rate such a bio lower than Mid priority. Quale (talk) 06:55, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Mmm, as I am the one who rated Carlos Bielicki, maybe it is good if I give a bit of explanation on that assessment. Based on the rating he obtained (IM) this person is not notable at all. His performances in tournaments are not notable either (11th, 7th, 3rd in Argentina championship). So all that is left is his victory in 1959 World Junior Championship. I would say this is a notable performance but not really enough to make him notable. Of course all this is just an opinion, so that I do not feel betrayed when others revert it, as happens often enough. As explained before I am probably too strict, as in my very subjective view only about 100 chess players should make it to Wikipedia. SyG (talk) 09:51, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, but if you think wikipedia should only have 100 chess player biographies, then you have no business rating chess bio articles. That's not too strict, that puts you way outside the community norms. Quale (talk) 15:18, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

And where exactly would you situate these community norms ? SyG (talk) 16:41, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't have the exact number handy, but currently I think there are more than 1300 articles under Category:Chess biographies. (It might actually be more than 1400.) Not all of these are player biographies (the count includes list articles, and a handful of articles on composers and chess officials), but the vast majority are. According to you 1000 or more of these should be deleted or merged. In any collection of 1300 biographical articles there is a good chance that some of them may not meet wikipedia community standards and should be deleted, but you are calling for the removal of over 75% of them. In addition to the 1300+ existing biographies, the majority of the articles in WP:CHESS#... to create are biographies. I didn't count them, but there are probably about 70 requests for new bios there now. That's why I say your view that there should be a total of only 100 chess bios on wikipedia is outside community norms. Quale (talk) 02:55, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

100 top or high assessed chess biographies, yes, probably a good idea. However 100 in total can imo not be defended. Look at it as if we are making a chess encyclopaedia. There is the 1000 volume wikipedia, with one volume dedicated to chess (this ratio seems about right). An encyclopedia is in the first place a reference work. I expect there to find four times Belgian Champion Michel Jadoul. What good is an encyclopaedia if the only chess biographies it contains are world champions? Information about them can easily be found. I would never buy a chess encyclopaedia if it only has 100 bios! No, imo what makes an encyclopaedia so useful is its coverage of (notable) topics where information is harder to come by. Put into other words with the same example: Michel Jadoul is probably not notable enough to have a book written about him. Now say, I am interested in the history of the Belgian Chess Championship and I need a starting point on Michel Jadoul. I expect him to have an entry in any good chess encyclopaedia with references for future research. We have articles that shouldn't be there, but having a 100 bio's doesn't make an encyclopaedia. Voorlandt (talk) 19:29, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

On Bubba's comment on the top 1000 or including all GM's. I agree totally and completely. However I think coverage of the top 100 is feasible, likely and probably effortless. Six months ago, I compiled a list of players that appeared in the top 100, but didn't had a wikipedia article (see the project page). I was surprised by the coverage we had. In January, I updated the list and had to add just two names (that is 8 names per year)! While since last update, around 5 articles had been created. This gives netto -3. What I am trying to get at, is that, it is only a matter of time before the top 100 will be covered, whether we want it or not. And having a list of articles 'missing' is imo useful in case someone falls through the maze (I am particularly thinking of less popular, less flamboyant personalities). Voorlandt (talk) 19:29, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm going to take the middleground and say that 100 bios is too few and 1,000 is too many. I checked two paper chess encyclopedias, and they have 1000+ bios, but remember that is a specialty book. I think that is too many for a general encyclopedia. If we were doing this 20 years ago, then that would probably be about the last time it would make sense to include all grandmasters (and other selected players). But today there are too many grandmaters to all have articles, due to title inflation. So I'm guessing 300-500 bios would be about right. I estimate that there are 1,200 or so now. Bubba73 (talk), 19:56, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

For all clarity (as I don't see anyone arguing to include all grandmasters), *I* don't think we should. However having 1000 bio articles is quite different from having all grandmasters. We have 510 grandmaster articles, the majority of the chess bios include chess players otherwise notable. We should aim to cover as much ground as a standard chess encyclopaedia. A 726 volume encyclopaedia is hardly a basic encyclopaedia, and is full of specialised knowledge. Voorlandt (talk) 20:15, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

I once held a view like Bubba's middle ground, but have a more expansive idea of wikipedia chess biography coverage now. Unless we develop and apply strict criteria very soon, it may be too late to keep the coverage of chess biographies small. There are only a limited number of chess rules, concepts, openings, championships, and tournaments to be covered. While these articles can (and should) be improved, they are not major growth areas. We will not (I hope) get 500 more articles on chess openings, but it seems that 500 more chess bios is inevitable. There are many things to consider in deciding inclusion criteria for chess biographies, but the primary question for me is: Does this article make wikipedia a better encyclopedia? I created George Botterill because I thought that article would improve the encyclopedia. (Well, that and because I wanted to have a Welsh player so that Category:Welsh chess players wouldn't be empty.) You can consider whether you think George Botterill makes wikipedia a better encyclopedia or not. If you think not, I would be interested in hearing your thoughts why this article is not a good fit for wikipedia. Quale (talk) 02:55, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

I think George Botterill is OK - British champ and Welsh champ. But what about Ivan Vladimir Rohaček? This happened to be one I clicked on in the first five random selections, so there are many that are not as good as this one. No high places in important tournaments, etc. I'm not saying that we should delete info that is already in there, but this one (and probably hundreds more) are stretching notability, IMO. Bubba73 (talk), 03:28, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, scratch that, he did win "Slovak championships". But other than that, isn't very notable. I'm sure there are other articles that would illustrate this better. Bubba73 (talk), 03:33, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm sympathetic to the view that we have some chess biographies of players with less than stellar chess careers. In Botterill's case I'd say that British Champ in the 1970s is less notable than any World Junior Championship (the British Championship was pretty weak then, no British GMs until 1976), and the Welsh Championship has never been a top event. I think the most interesting thing about Ivan Vladimir Rohaček is not the Slovak Ch., but that he competed at Munich 1942 along with Alekhine in a notorious Nazi-organized "European Championship" tournament. My concern with the article is its lack of references. I also wonder if we have the page in the correct categories. I think he was born in the Kingdom of Serbia in 1909, but ended up in Czechoslovakia at some point and died there. Anyway, my view is that the value of this encyclopedia is greatly enhanced by its internal linking, so that a fair initial assessment of an article can be made using What links here from the toolbox. I think it would be good to have an article for every participant in the Chess World Cup 2007, just as I think it is good to have an article for every participant in the 1962 Stockholm Interzonal. In order to complete the bios linked from the World Chess Championship 1963 page, I created Mario Bertok. I was not able to find much information on him, but some encyclopedic biographical information is available and the article is referenced. (You may recall Bertok from My 60 Memorable Games. Fischer & Evans didn't provide any real help in writing an encyclopedia article, but it was the reason Bertok was slightly familiar to me.) Anyway, I don't encourage creation of orphan articles, although I have occasionally created them myself (Göttingen manuscript). I wouldn't generally advocate deleting a chess bio just because it is orphan, if in my view it met WP:BIO criteria. Quale (talk) 04:15, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

The number of biographies Wikipedia "must have" (i.e. it would be an embarrassment for Wikipedia not to have one) is probably in the order of 100. That includes all World Champions, and main contenders for the title, these are articles which should be in "Top" or "High" on the importance scale.

However, there is a huge space between the "must have" category and the "AFD material" category, there lots of subjects where it would not be an outright embarrassment to have no article, but still noteworthy enough that an article can be supported. Most GMs today are fairly unknown, yet holding the most prestigious chess master title in the world is certainly a claim for notability, and we are then talking in the order of a thousand biographies. Then there is the subject of national champions, in most countries with a fairly well-organized chess community, the national championship is a prestigious event. The Norwegian chess championship, a fairly small championship, is officially recognized, with the champion receiving the royal trophy, and subject to a fair amount of press attention. Should not winning a tournament like that confer notability?

Even winning a "category championship" (junior champion, women's champion, etc.) can bring about plenty of attention. Irina Krush for example features on the front cover of a recent Chess Life for winning the US Women's Championship, and I cannot imagine any consensus emerging for deleting that article. What about the winner of the Norwegian cadet class (age <16) championship? She was featured on the front cover of the Norwegian chess magazine [1]. Notable?

One final note about article quality is that there is nothing inherently "unencyclopedic" about an article being a stub or an orphan for a long time. Go to any paper encyclopedia and you will find plenty of short articles which would have been rated as "stub class" here on Wikipedia. Sjakkalle (Check!) 08:03, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Kudos to everyone who has done the hard work of assessing over 2000 chess articles (SyG, ChessCreator, and others). Quale (talk) 20:19, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Assessing articles

Speaking of assessing articles, ICCF numeric notation is rated "start" but it seems pretty complete. I can't think of anything to add to it. It seems a little odd to call an article that seems to be complete as a "start", I think. There are probably others this way. Any discussion? Bubba73 (talk), 15:20, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

The article ICCF numeric notation has no lead, no references and no footnotes, that is enough for me not to put it in B-class. I told you I was harsh! ;-) SyG (talk) 15:24, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

It has a reference. I don't see that it needs any footnotes. And it is so short, does it really need a lead section? If so, just make the last three paragraphs a section. Bubba73 (talk), 18:56, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Now it has a lead. Bubba73 (talk), 19:01, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

I think it rates B class now. I agree with Syg that lack of references is an automatic Stub class for me no matter how good the article might otherwise be. (As Bubba73 noted, this article did/does have a reference so this complaint doesn't apply to this article.) I would rate an article with one or more good references and a decent lead as Start class. If it is also substantially complete (as this article is) I think it deserves at least a B. Quale (talk) 22:03, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Getting the rating up for small articles is really hard. Imagine trying to get that article to FA status :) I had the same problem with Bughouse Chess, which I have tried to get to FA status (might try again soon). On the other hand, longer articles tend to get a higher rating more easily. Often not warranted, as longer articles are more prone to have badly written sections, grammar errors, etc.. Also, longer articles hardly get read from start to finish, which again makes it easier for errors to escape. Although length (quantity) and quality shouldn't be related, in wikipedia there seems to be (sadly enough) some relation. On the specific article: one thing that is missing is a bit about the history, who introduced it? when was it first used? Another question: is it used outside ICCF games? Voorlandt (talk) 19:03, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Small articles aren't well served by Wikipedia's rating system. I think small articles are important to a good encyclopedia. For now, aiming to get them to B class might be the most realistic goal. Quale (talk) 22:03, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

That's really the point I want to make, not that article in particular. I don't think there is much more that could be said about the ICCF numeric notation - it is pretty complete. It already has more than the encyclopedias have on it. As far as that topic, it is pretty close to "finished" instead of "start". Of course, it is nowhere near a Feature Article, and it never should be a F.A. Bubba73 (talk), 22:32, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, if the coverage is pretty complete and the article is still that short, maybe it is an indication that the subject is not worth a whole article and could be merged in another one ?! SyG (talk) 09:55, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Sometimes, but often no. Merged articles are harder to link to and often don't categorize well. Anyone who thinks that Wikipedia shouldn't have short articles should look at a paper encyclopedia sometime. The ICCF article is fine as is. The obsession that demands that all articles be larger than some particular size regardless of the article subject is harmful to building a good encyclopedia. Quale (talk) 15:15, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

In this case at least, I don't think merging it would be a good idea. The only candidate for that would be chess notation, and algebraic notation and descriptive chess notation already have their own articles. Also, chess encyclopedias have about the same amount to say about ICCF notation as is in the article. So I think it should be an article. I suppose my complaint is that "start" probably isn't a good description. Now, some articles are on track to become a FA, and "start" is probably good for that track, but most articles should not have the goal of being a FA, this one included. I think it is "nearly finished", as far as what it should ultimately become. Bubba73 (talk), 17:16, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Found FAQ

Just did some archiving and found by mistake some pages, it's FAQ's on Wikiproject Chess. I suspect most members or at least new ones are not aware of it, as the pages appearance are not really visible.

Are these documents of any use now? Are they current? If yes to both these questions then making them a little easier to find would be useful. ChessCreator (talk) 12:25, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, I had created these as I found the usual archives not easy to navigate through, but it's been a long time since I last updated them. Probably they need a bit of reshuffle before they are worth promoting. SyG (talk) 22:50, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Chess Diagram maker for Windows

I've written a Windows program to generate chess diagrams for Wikipedia articles. You can download it here or go to my website and pick Downloads and get it that way. It runs under Windows, and it automatically puts the code for a chess diagram in your clipboard, or you can copy and paste it. Select the piece on the left and then click on the square. This new version 1.01 fixes some bugs and has some enhancements.

The program is for anyone who wants an easy way to make the diagrams. Bubba73 (talk), 00:40, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Whoops, I thought this had been removed from the main page, but it is under "Diagrams, annotation and notation". Bubba73 (talk), 00:50, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Barry Attack

I was looking for something on the Barry Attack, (1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 g6 3. Nc3 d5 4.Bf4 Bg7 5.e3 0-0 6.Be2) which is an anti-King's Indian Defence fairly popular at club level and has also been used by Mark Hebden and Julian Hodgson, but it doesn't appear to be mentioned anywhere. Does it deserve its own article? I mean, would be regarded as an opening in its own right or just something to be mentioned in the King's Indian article? Pawnkingthree (talk) 11:10, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

It's up to you, but my advice would be to start it in the Kings Indian, if it becomes big enough then it can eventually be moved to a new page. ChessCreator (talk) 13:23, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I've in fact added it to the Indian Defence article, as it can also be used against the Grunfeld. (I've created Barry Attack as a redirect to that page). Pawnkingthree (talk) 14:03, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

I think the Barry Attack is important enough to get its own page, although starting by describing it in the other relevant articles is good too. Quale (talk) 16:20, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

I have Aaron Summerscale's book A Killer Chess Opening Repertoire (somewhere) which I can use as a source so I'll have a go at expanding it. Pawnkingthree (talk) 09:52, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Chess Portal

Why is the Chess Portal not rated is given an importance value? I note this is not the same with other portals. Also on the issue of the portal, the page has \12 which it seems related to articles for the 12th month. Are there others for earlier months. I tried amending to 1 and 2 but all was missing. ChessCreator (talk) 03:06, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Chess opening articles and notability (yet again)

I hesitate to bring this up yet again as it seems that the project doesn't have a clear consensus on what chess subjects are notable enough for wikipedia articles, at least in the case of biographies, but I'll dive in anyway. We are again starting to see the creation of a number of articles on obscure chess openings. Personally I support an article for each of the 20 opening moves for White (we already have these), even though some are obscure. The problem arises that Black as 20 responses to each of these moves, and most of the 400 combinations have a name. Except for the popular openings, these names are typically obscure and often there are several names used with no commonly established nomenclature. (This could lead to conflicts over which obscure and not generally accepted name is used for the page, although I haven't seen this to be a problem.) And there are many obscure openings past move one that have been given names, so the potential for these articles is actually a few times more than 400. Appendix I to The Oxford Companion to Chess lists 1327 named openings and variations (and this is not an exhaustive list as there are a number of named variations missing). The Companion is a reliable source, but I would consider those mentions to be trivial in the sense described in the next paragraph unless the opening also appears in the main text of the book.

I don't follow WP:N closely, but a view that I think is gaining support is that before a subject is considered encyclopedically notable, it should have at least two non-trivial mentions in independent, reliable sources. Precisely what this means in this context would have to be established, but viewing it from the negative side I would say that trivial mentions include appearing in a directory-style list (e.g., list of ECO codes) and unreliable sources include the vast majority of websites. If we were to use a standard like this, ideally at least two such sources would be provided when the chess opening article is created. We've been a little too lax about verifiability in some of our articles, as the discussion at Talk:Wade Defense shows. I should also say that the requirement is a minimum, and not every chess opening that has two non-trivial mentions should necessarily get an article.

It's important to understand that WP:N applies only to whether a subject deserves an individual article, not whether it deserves mention in wikipedia. (It's applied on a per article basis, not on every sentence in an article.) I think obscure openings have a place in wikipedia, but that place might be in lists or inclusion in survey articles rather than on individual pages of their own. Articles such as Open Game, Semi-Open Game, etc. could have a section for the common openings (roughly those found in MCO and NCO) that would point to the separate detail articles. Another section could be created to gather most of the information on obscure lines. This might be analogous to a current trend in collecting minor movie, TV, and video game characters into "List of xxx in yyy" articles rather than leaving them as individual articles.

On the other hand, given the fairly strong inclusion stance I've taken on biographies, maybe these are OK too. In the past this project has been attacked for articles that were "how-to's". Ironically a large number of articles on very obscure openings weakens this argument, as few of these lines are ever discussed in instructional books on chess. Quale (talk) 08:25, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

I notice that we have the article Irregular chess opening, which is not much more than a list at present. The content from the individual articles could be merged there, and if reliable sources can be found, they can always be separated out again. Pawnkingthree (talk) 11:58, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

That's been suggested before, but the specific Irregular chess opening article refers only to unusual first moves by White (ECO code A0). That's one sense of the term, although it also has the broader meaning you refer to. This is fixable, but it would mean a change in the top level division currently in place. Chess opening at the top, next level is Open Game, Semi-Open Game, Closed Game, Flank opening, and Irregular chess opening. Most of the recently added obscure opening articles have been Semi-Open Games. Quale (talk) 12:05, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Oh I see. Maybe Unusual chess opening? But I guess it's subjective what an "unusual" opening is. Pawnkingthree (talk) 12:11, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Personally, I can't see any notability in these highly irregular opening articles (Corn Stalk, Goldsmith, Lemming Defenses etc.). Surely some of these have just been made up? Is it April 1st already? Would we find them with the same name in any two sources? Actually, if you make a hybrid of the 'Corn Stalk Defense' and 'Goldsmith Defense', you get the 'Wide Receivers Go Long Defense'. Perhaps someone will add that one soon - before Keene and Schiller write a book about it. Or am I becoming overly cynical? Brittle heaven (talk) 16:04, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm reminded of a line in one of my first chess books, (I think it was one by David Prichard) "If you play a very poor opening, you may find it has no name, in which case you can name it after yourself, but don't expect anyone else to notice." I'm sure some are just made up. Pawnkingthree (talk) 16:14, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

I had never heard of Corn Stalk Defense before seeing the article here, but a little research shows it really is a name that has been applied to a variation which was used by Preston Ware. I suspect that you could find mentions of it in the late 19th century in either the American Chess Bulletin or the books on the American Chess Congresses. I think that the Oxford Companion to Chess mentions it as well. I don't know whether the Corn Stalk (spelled "Cornstalk" in all the references I saw) deserves an article, but I think 19th century mention in the ACB or American Chess Congress books provides a better reference than Eric Schiller does for "Reagan Attack" as an alternate name for the Desprez Opening. (On the other hand, Edward G. Winter reproduced a game from the ACB that the ACB labelled "Popcorn Opening", beginning 1.e4 e5 2.f3 f6 3.Kf2 Kf7, etc.) Quale

(talk) 20:13, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

I'd never heard of the Cornstalk either, and I voted to delete it. But it survived. Bubba73 (talk), 21:30, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

That must have been a proposed deletion. It's currently on AFD for a full five day discussion here. Quale (talk) 23:46, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps these unusual openings should all be collected into one article. Irregular chess openings just lists them, and they are all A00, and Cornstalk is B00. Otherwise, perhaps it and others like it could go there, or in a similar article. Maybe Unusual responses to 1. e4 or something like that. Bubba73 (talk), 00:16, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

I like Bubba73's idea of an article like unusual responses to 1.e4 collecting the Corn Stalk, the Barnes Defense and maybe a few others. I just voted to delete the Corn Stalk, but let's face it, the Barnes Defense is really no different. Its only claim to notability is that someone managed to beat Morphy with it 150+ years ago.

As for Quale's idea that an opening should have two non-trivial mentions in independent, reliable sources, that's probably generally a good idea. I might make an exception for some rare instances like the Wade Defence (1.d4 d6 2.Nf3 Bg4), where although the opening has no widely accepted name, it is in fact a respectable opening played by a number of strong GM's. There's no way I'm going to be convinced that 1.d4 d6 2.Nf3 Bg4, played repeatedly and successfully by the likes of Leonid Stein, Julian Hodgson, Tony Miles, and Vlastimil Jansa, is less notable than 1.e4 f6. Krakatoa (talk) 01:00, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Taking a couple of points: about where to put unusual responses to 1.e4: I thought we used to have a B00 article. Normally I'd say that using ECO codes as article titles is a bad idea, but it is an accurate and precise description. If we were to go that route we'd need to make it easier to find the article somehow. As to notability of 1.d4 d6 2.Nf3 Bg4 compared to the Barnes Defence: actually the real world may have already decided that the Barnes is more WP:N notable than the "Wade". Notability in the wikipedia sense isn't determined by how important we judge something to be, but rather how many WP:RS secondary sources are available. Discussion at Talk:Wade Defense suggests that sources are hard to come by for the Wade. Sourcing the Barnes D. might be easier. Quale (talk) 03:28, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

I wasn't aware notability was determined by how many WP:RS secondary sources are available. If that's the case then many of those unusual first move openings and first move replies are going to have to be deleted/merged as they are badly covered in chess references because they are of insignificant interest to decent chess players. Pity because Chesslover96 has been through a lot of effort to improve the contains of most of those openings in recent times. ChessCreator (talk) 04:28, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

If you read WP:N, you find "A topic is presumed to be notable if it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject." There's more, since WP:BLP1E applies to biographies, and WP:NOTNEWS applies to the kind of ephemera that a certain wikipedia constituency adores. If there's good material in chess opening articles that don't satisfy WP:N on their own, it may still be salvaged by collecting it somewhere else as Bubba73 suggests. WP:N#CONTENT explains that the wikipedia concept of notability applies to articles, not individual sentences within the article. Quale (talk) 05:28, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm assuming that a reliable source would have to have more then a name and it's position. So ECO B00 Corn stalk defense, 1. e4 a5, it's not enough for an article, no matter how credible the source was?

Judgment is required, but directory entries such as that one are usually considered to be trivial mentions. What kind of an article would you write based on such a list entry? Quale (talk) 05:55, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Well it gives you a page name which as you know it not always straight forward. It gives you a chess position so you can then have a chess diagram, it gives you the ECO code which is normally mentioned. With the moves you can look up in chess databases which games occurred and by whom and that in turn might lead to a useful reference. ChessCreator (talk) 18:34, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Does anyone here subscribe to Kaissiber an apparently respected Chess theory magazine in German available through the USCF? If so issue 14 covered the Corn-stalk. ChessCreator (talk) 05:34, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

One problem with the "A00 article" and "B00 article" idea is that while the obscure stuff winds up in those ECO chapters, not everything in those chapters is all that obscure. A00 includes the move 1.Nc3 (Dunst Opening) which is uncommon, but not more obscure than that there are books written about it [2]. Indeed, even the common opening move 1.g3 is technically an A00, although that nearly always transposes to something more common. The B00 chapter includes the Nimzowitsch Defense (1.e4 Nc6), and Owen's Defense (1.e4 b6), which are not "mainstream", but not entirely obscure and silly either. The idea of an A00 and B00 article might still work, but a few openings will need to be spun out. Sjakkalle (Check!) 07:54, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, so maybe the articles should be Irregular chess openings (first move for white) plus an article on unusual/irregular responses to 1.e4 and unusual/irregular responses to 1.d4; or perhaps all lumped together. And other things against A00 and B00 articles is that (1) not desfriptive to people not familiar with ECO, and (2) it might encourage articles on all ECO codes, which I don't think is a good idea.Bubba73 (talk), 00:16, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Who won the Aeroflot Open in 2002?

The top finisher were Alexander Grischuk, Aleksej Aleksandrov, Alexander Shabalov, Gregory Kaidanov and Vadim Milov. TWIC says: The website was unclear on who took first place on tie-break, I understand it was Gregory Kaidanov (although in some places the website implies Alexander Grischuk). Thanks for any help regarding this! Voorlandt (talk) 10:18, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Grischuk it appears ChessCreator (talk) 12:55, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Actually no, that link is misleading as it's sorted into ELO order ( N and R columns) maybe why the confusion. I'm not sure how they split those five on equal score. ChessCreator (talk) 14:18, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

I think twic was right and it is Kaidanov [3] Voorlandt (talk) 17:02, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Chess pages without 'references or sources.'

Is there a way of locating Chess pages marked as without 'references or sources.' such as this this page. ChessCreator (talk) 16:54, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

This tool can do it: click me (slow loading though) Voorlandt (talk) 19:03, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Thank you!. That's a cool tool. ChessCreator (talk) 19:25, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Sting

I recently learned that the musician Sting played a game against Kasparov. game here. Have added category 'English chess players' to Sting's page however changes for it don't seem to appear here. Is there something else to do to make it appear? ChessCreator (talk) 20:47, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Solved. Had to be added to List of chess topics. ChessCreator (talk) 20:55, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't think Sting belongs in Category:English chess players. The chess player categories aren't for anyone who has ever played a game of chess (that would make them worthless), but for people who are known as chess players—it should be a significant part of their bios. The fact that the Sting bio doesn't mention chess at all means the category is not appropriate. Quale (talk) 04:36, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

I forgot to mention: Kasparov has also played David Letterman and Woody Harelson and probably a lot of other celebrities as well. Please don't add them to Category:American chess players. Quale (talk) 04:40, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

I think the Sting article will mention chess when it's complete. Was going to add it myself, but unsure if it should go in the section on Sting's personal life or a separate section I left it pending some more research into the matter after I found a webcam of the event here

Even so perhaps it's not related to the chess players, in which case there are other incorrect articles Richard Farleigh, Henry Dudeney and Aleister Crowley springs to mind. ChessCreator (talk) 10:41, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Quale that celebrities who play a game do not belong in the chess players category. However Richard Farleigh is a strong amateur - he played in many Australian tournaments in the early 1980s and according to his page he has a FIDE rating - so he should probably be included. Peter Ballard (talk) 11:25, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

See List of chess players - scroll past the alphabetic entries to find 'Famous People connected with Chess' - this is the place to add celebrities interested in chess. It already contains Sting, Bono, Madonna (although I don't personally agree with her inclusion, but that's another story) etc. etc. I agree with Peter Ballard, in that there will be odd exceptions who merit the use of Category: XXXXXX chess players, Richard Farleigh being one and probably C. J. de Mooi another, but they will be few and far between. Brittle heaven (talk) 12:02, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Sometimes it can be hard to know if a particular bio should be considered in the chess project or belongs in the chess categories, but a single exhibition game with the world champion is way too low a bar, so Sting is an easy call. As a comparison, Stanley Kubrik is much better known as a chess player, but he still doesn't belong in the chess player categories. Being a strong amateur in the age of professionals doesn't get an encyclopedic mention unless the amateur actually plays those professionals regularly—see Wolfgang Unzicker for an exceptionally strong amateur. Henry Dudeney is a famous chess problemist and belongs in Category:Chess problemists. He was put in the English chess players cat before the chess problemists category existed. This was the best that could be done at the time but can be fixed now. I think Aleister Crowley should be removed from chess player cats also. His bio says he claimed to have beaten Blackburne once and that he was thinking about being a career in chess but gave it up. Thinking about a chess career you never had doesn't make you a chess player in the encyclopedic sense. A better example of someone who belongs but is much better known for accomplishments outside of chess is Marcel Duchamp. Farleigh was already commented on. An example of the harder decisions I mentioned is Benjamin Franklin, who is well known as an early American chess player and writer. I think he almost certainly belongs in Category:Chess writers, and he might also have a place in Category:American chess players. Why is Franklin different than Sting? Well, Franklin wrote about chess and those writings are pretty well known, and a couple hundred years after his death other people are still writing about his connection to chess. Sting playing chess might get the odd mention here and there as trivia, but it won't be mentioned in his obits and it will be forgotten long before he dies. Categorizing based on hobbies is generally not a good idea. Quale (talk) 17:49, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Crowley is an interesting case; I agree his wiki-bio does not support much of a claim to a chess career, but there was some years (or months?) ago a lengthy article in CHESS magazine which I believe suggested his chess career was altogether more prolific and effectual. If I can ever find it again, I'll check this out. Brittle heaven (talk) 00:44, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

I think the question should be (and indeed should be the case for just about any category): is chess a significant part of their WP article? In that case, it's definitely a yes for Aleister Crowley and Marcel Duchamp - there is a whole section on their chess. For Richard Farleigh there's a paragraph, so probably yes (though perhaps I'm biased because I remember him personally as a chess player, and personally it was interesting to stumble on him as I looked through Category:Australian chess players). For Benjamin Franklin - currently no, but if all the things Quale mentions are put in the article, then it would be a yes. By the same reasoning, Sting and Stanley Kubrick, and celebrities who have played exhibition games with Kasparov, are a clear no. Peter Ballard (talk) 11:27, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

It's the Chess Olympiad appearances that would cause me to put Richard Farleigh in the chess categories. There isn't anywhere near enough about chess in Aleister Crowley for me to put him in any chess category. The entire chess section is Crowley's claims, with no outside evidence to back any of it up, and Crowley is a noted fraud. You could write that paragraph about anyone: "I [claim] to have beaten [strong chess master, where, when and conditions not detailed, no outside confirmation whatsoever, possible exhibition game if it even happened]. I was thinking about becoming world chess champion but I gave it up. [I don't detail any tournaments or matches I played. My games aren't found in any game collections. I'm not mentioned in any standard chess biographies.]" Who cares? I have never seen Crowley's name appear in any chess biography anywhwere. Crowley wouldn't come close to meeting WP:BIO for his chess accomplishments alone, and that's closer to the criteria I'd use. Bubba indicates that there is some outside writing connecting him with chess, so I may be wrong. Right now it isn't even close for me, I'd put Crowley in exactly the same situation as Sting. Quale (talk) 17:26, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

If it's for chess accomplishments alone, then Farleigh doesn't qualify either. See his FIDE rating card - his rating is 2184.[4] (I should clarify, by "strong amateur" I meant stronger than most club players, not "strong amateur" in the way that Euwe and Reshevsky were technically amateurs!) But I still think there is an area for notable people for whom chess plays an important part in their biography. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Peter Ballard (talk • contribs) 23:04, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

WP:BIO#Athletes: "Competitors and coaches who have competed at the highest level in amateur sports (who meet the general criteria of secondary sources published about them)." People disagree over what this means in chess, where there is really no distinction between amateur and professional. My view is that Chess Olympiad participation qualifies, just as it Olympic Games participation is generally thought to qualify for other sports. (Not everyone agrees with this interpretation, either for Chess Olympiads or the Olympics. Note that the WP:BIO rule doesn't require that the player be in the top flight, just that she competed there.) I'm afraid I don't see how chess plays an important part of Crowley's biography, and I'd say there's certainly no evidence given yet that he competed at the highest level. Did he play any tournaments or matches at all? Farleigh has. Since I've spent a lot of time saying what I think doesn't qualify, maybe I should say what sorts of things I think do qualify:

Generally known as a chess player, meets WP:BIO requirements on the strength of chess (overlaps with other criteria below)
Coverage in standard chess biographical works
Competed at the top level of chess (World Championship candidate, Olympiads, national championship winner or regular contender)
Participation in top level, invitational, international tournaments (even if doing so without success—see James Mortimer)
Title holders (generally limited to just the GM title)
Well known as a chess writer

and there are probably other criteria along these lines that would qualify. It's a question of quality, not quantity. I honestly don't see what chess claims in Crowley's couldn't also be made about Sting if Sting cared to make the same unsupported claims. I mean really, I would classify the Aleister Crowley#Chess chess claims as utter crap, completely unsupported except as autobiographical delusions of a known fraud unless corroborated by someone else. Even if true I don't think they meet any reasonable criteria for classifying Crowley as a chess player. Lord Randolph Churchill has a better claim. He founded the Oxford University Chess Club and his famous son wrote about his father's love for chess. Still, it is possible as Bubba pointed out that there are other references and then my objection would not apply. Quale (talk) 00:49, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Swindle (chess)

No doubt this is vanity on my part (since I'm primarily responsible for having written the article in question), but I'm wondering if there's any chance that Swindle (chess), with a little further work, could be nominated as a featured article? It's a pretty thorough treatment of the subject, I think. Krakatoa (talk) 10:30, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Submit it to the Review page. ChessCreator (talk) 12:21, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Well done. This looks like a very comprehensive treatment to me. There is, I recall, another book on Traps/Swindling etc. by Horowitz and Reinfeld. No doubt you could get the details off Amazon if you wished to include it in the 'Further Reading' section. I was amused to see the game Pein-deFirmian in there. Malcolm Pein once swindled a draw against me in the National Club Ch. in 1977 - so it was nice to see him on the receiving end this time! Brittle heaven (talk) 13:22, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Apologies, I've just noticed the Horowitz/Reinfeld book in your references. Brittle heaven (talk) 13:50, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Vladimir Georgiev

Recently there has been an article created Vladimir Georgiev(Vladimir Ivanov Georgiev ), however, I'm unsure if this is the same person who is a chess GM (see Chess World Cup 2007 and 36th Chess Olympiad) or whether it's someone with the same name and therefore misleading links. ChessCreator (talk) 11:58, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

No doubt this is a different Vladimir Georgiev to the one that plays chess for Macedonia. I would imagine it's a very common name in eastern europe - I have changed those links to Vladimir Georgiev (chess player) to avoid any confusion. Brittle heaven (talk) 12:25, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Categories for images

We have had Category:Chess images for quite a while, although it isn't heavily used. I created and partially populated a subcategory, Category:Chess player images, to use for the many images of chess players that have been added to articles recently. These are purely administrative categories to help keep an inventory of chess images (kind of like List of chess topics helps watch chess articles). The chess player images category could use a good introduction, pointing out that many of the images are non-free fair-use, and so can't be used in other articles without careful consideration of the license. Someone who better understands image licenses could help by writing that warning. Quale (talk) 17:55, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

I forgot to mention that the image categories should either be piped to set the sort or perhaps DEFAULTSORT can be used. Otherwise I think they sort under "Image:xxxx", which isn't very good. Quale (talk) 05:59, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Also one picture of Seirawan here w:Category:American chess players don't understand why, but seems rather strange. ChessCreator (talk) 20:26, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, I forgot about that one. I don't like images in the standard categories, so I changed it to the chess players images cat. Getting images out of Category:Chess is why I created Category:Chess images over two years ago. The chess categories look a lot better now than they did in 2005, and they're much better populated too. Quale (talk) 05:59, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

I didn't know about the category. I've added several images, I'll check to see if they are all in the Cat. I noticed you got many of them. Bubba73 (talk), 21:50, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

You categorized all of the ones that I'd added except two, good job. Bubba73 (talk), 22:01, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

There are some chess images in the Commons. Is there a way to put them into our category? Bubba73 (talk), 04:00, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Good question, I'd wondered about that myself. Unfortunately I don't know. Quale (talk) 05:59, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

My Great Predecessors

How should we list the title of My Great Predecessors? The books have "Garry Kasparov on My Great Predecessors, part I", etc, with "My Great Predecessors" in a different color. Book stores list that. Should we use that, or "On My Great Predecessors, part I", or olny "My Great Predecessors, part I"? Bubba73 (talk), 04:20, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

And volume 4 seems to be "Garry Kasparov on Fischer: My Great Predecessors, part IV". Bubba73 (talk), 04:23, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Normally I would say "parrot whatever the book says on the title page." However, here there is a series of five volumes; the titles ought to be consistent, but the title pages are not. Not only is the fourth volume different, as you say, but the second volume is totally different from all the rest. On the title page, it uses a completely different font and typeface (much smaller) from the other volumes and says:

Garry Kasparov

MY GREAT PREDECESSORS

A modern history of the development of chess in three volumes (only three?!?!)

With the participation of Dmitry Plisetsky

Volume 2 (the other volumes use Roman numerals)

From Euwe to Tal

For the sake of consistency, I am inclined to just call them all "My Great Predecessors, Part IV" (or whatever the number is, in Roman numerals). Since you'll list the author as Garry Kasparov and give the ISBN, everyone will know what you're talking about and the titles will be consistent, rather than having a mishmash of different titles like "Garry Kasparov on My Great Predecessors, Part I", "My Great Predecessors: A modern history of the development of chess in three volumes, Part 2", "Garry Kasparov on Fischer My Great Predecessors, Part IV" etc. Krakatoa (talk) 04:14, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, I've used the books as references in several places, and I think I've done it that way so far "My Great Predecessors, part II', etc - leaving out "Garry Kasparov On" and "On Fischer". Bubba73 (talk), 04:50, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

"Garry Kasparov on My Great Predecessors" isn't even grammatically correct... one of many valid criticisms of the first volume.Pawnkingthree (talk) 10:37, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Biographies with no category YYYY births

Recently User:Quale and User:Brittle heaven have created excellent articles of the type 1999 in chess. A tool is used to search the deceased chess players in a particular year. Anyway, to cut a long story short, here are all the chess players which are currently not in a category of the type Category:1975 births:

There can be exceptions where people used the BD template (I used xml scanning to search for chess bios not containing the string "births"). Needless to say, would be good to add such a category to all of them! (shouldn't be too much work as most of them already have the birth date in the article). Please delete from this list when you add the article. Voorlandt (talk) 20:16, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Also, bios with missing dates should be given [[Category:Year of birth missing]] or [[Category:Year of birth unknown]] (or the corresponding death cats) as appropriate. Several of the articles above are already in the missing and unknown categories. Quale (talk) 04:11, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Ok, I have gone through all of them, and put them in the right category if I couldn't find a date. Voorlandt (talk) 18:58, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Invite template.

Several other wikiprojects use an invite template (something like this or this) that can be given to new contributors to inform them about and encourage them to join the wikiproject. Is this something useful? I ask because it seems few wikiprojects use them and perhaps there is a reason with this or better way. ChessCreator (talk) 22:48, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Page numbers needed for references

We need page numbers to be added to references used in chess articles. This is particularly noticable in the references that have been added to a number of articles created recently on fringe chess openings, such as Lemming Defense and Carr's Defense. There are also some articles either lacking WP:RS sources like Goldsmith Defense (reference is a geocities page) and Adams Defense (reference is another personal website), or no references at all including Tortise Opening and Boungcloud Attack. For the articles that do have references, the typical ones given are Angus Dunnington Winning Unorthodox Openings (2000) and Eric Schiller Unorthodox Chess Openings (second ed.) (2003). I personally don't consider Schiller to be a WP:RS in this area, but this aside, the lack of page numbers makes me wonder if the references actually support the material in the articles or is just a guess by someone else that the books might contain something relevant. I don't have either of these books so I can't check this myself. Quale (talk) 19:25, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Have added page numbers for Eric Schiller on Lemming Defense, Carr Defense, Tortoise Opening and many others.

Suggest the following replies to e4 without significant references are somehow merged into one page as discussed recently in Corn Stalk Defense (AfD discussion).

1.e4 a5 Corn Stalk Defense
1.e4 Na6 Lemming Defense
1.e4 b5
1.e4 f5 Fred Defense
1.e4 f6 Barnes Defense
1.e4 g5 Borg Defense
1.e4 h5 Pickering Defense
1.e4 h6 Carr Defense
1.e4 Nh6 Adams Defense

Specifically listed those above because with the exception of the Corn Stalk, which is where the merge idea was brought to light, I don't believe the others have two reliable sources.

The name for such an article was suggested as "Unusual responses to 1.e4", not keen on having a chess move(1. e4) in the article name. How about 'Unusual King's Pawn replies" or even covering the openings in King's Pawn Game. ChessCreator (talk) 20:30, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

I like your idea of merging all those into one page. Maybe we can try by putting them into "King's Pawn Game", and if ever the page grows too much it will always possible to split into a separate page. SyG (talk) 22:20, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Merging them into King's Pawn Game and splitting the article out if it ever needs it sounds good to me. Bubba73 (talk), 22:50, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

So what's the way this is suppose to be done, tag all the pages with a merge request? ChessCreator (talk) 02:26, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Names of openings in boldface?

I think that all of the names of openings and variations should be in boldface, as they are easier to see and pick out. Does anyone agree with me, and is anyone willing to assist me in changing names to boldface? Thank you! Chesslover96 (talk) 00:16, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

I thought they are already in boldface. Can you give an example of one that is and an example of one that is not? ChessCreator (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 01:07, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

In general all the names shouldn't be bolded. The first use/definition often should be bolded, but never subsequent uses. Quale (talk) 04:59, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

That is the standard method for Wikipedia. Bubba73 (talk), 06:00, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Articles to work on

Which two articles are both Top level and Stub? I think those need to be worked on to get them better. And then the 56 High level Stubs should be made better. I.e. Top and High importance articles should be better than stubs.Bubba73 (talk), 16:10, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Louis-Charles Mahé de La Bourdonnais and Luis Ramirez de Lucena. ChessCreator (talk) 18:17, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Correspondence champions

The World Correspondence Chess Champions seem to all have "high importance" rankings. Although I was an avid correspondence player, these are pretty obscure people except for Purdy, Ragozin, Berliner, and Estrin. should their articles be ranked lower in importance? Bubba73 (talk), 23:57, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

A separate but related matter: I think we need a category for correspondence grandmasters. They don't really belong in Category:chess grandmasters. How about Category:correspondence chess grandmasters or Category:Grandmasters of correspondence chess or a better category name that someone else can think up? Quale (talk) 02:46, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

It is certainly needed, and either category name would be acceptable. I think I prefer the former, because it is more succinct. Peter Ballard (talk) 03:12, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

As far as I remember, the crude rationale was something like: "OTB chess worldchampions are Top Importance, correspondence chess worldchampions are less important so they should have High importance". I do not have sufficient knowledge in correspondence chess to understand which champion is important and which is not, but I would be ready to follow Bubba73's assessment

If we want to set a more objective criteria, my favourite system would be based on references: are there extensive writings on the correspondence champion in some books ? If yes, he is High importance; if not... SyG (talk) 20:11, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

International Correspondence Chess Federation lists the World champions. Only the ones listed by Bubba73 spring out. I doubt there is much published about other CCWC's other then there chess games. The current world champion for example (Christophe Léotard) has a total of one article about him from a quick google search. Moving them down to mid seems like a good idea until further sources come forward. ChessCreator (talk) 02:49, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

I think you're right that it will be hard to get good sources of information to expand the biographies of most of the correspondence chess champions. Quality and quantity of sources is one good way to judge importance for our project page assessments. On another note, I created Category:Correspondence chess grandmasters. If anyone wants to help populate it, that would be great. Quale (talk) 02:35, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

The "importance" rating is of small consequence, since I don't think anyone here thinks that the CC World Champion articles should be deleted. It is mostly an internal project thing for which subjects should have priority (and being an all-volunteer project, nobody is required or even expected to abide by these priority ratings). I do note the slight inconsistency in seeing Ivar Bern marked as "high importance" while Simen Agdestein is marked "low importance". Ivar Bern is a strong player, and an International Master, as well as being a chess columnist for Bergens Tidende, and all chess players in Bergen, and perhaps most in Norway know who this is, but he is a rather obscure figure outside the chess community. Winning the world championship is of course something big, but it did not garner huge attention in mainstream media, although it did garner some attention as shown in this article. Simen Agdestein on the other hand was by far the dominating player in Norway in the late 80s and early 90s, he has played an enormous role in chess education, hosted a chess program on television, and writes seven times as many chess columns as Ivar Bern does. (Agdestein's column in Verdens Gang is daily, Bern's column is weekly.) Perhaps it was his chess and football career combo which made Agdestein a celebrity, but for a long time he was Norway's only chess celebrity. It is only with the rise of Magnus Carlsen (a student of Agdestein) that he has been seriously surpassed in Norway. (For the record with respect to COI and such: I am a member of the same chess club as Ivar Bern.) Sjakkalle (Check!) 14:47, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Got that mistaken idea from Simen Agdestein's page that he was mainly a football player. I've changed the importance to mid. More about Importance assessment here. ChessCreator (talk) 15:08, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

In line with the above discussion the following World Correspondence Champions have been altered from High-Importance to Mid-Importance.

Albéric O'Kelly de Galway, Vladimir Zagorovsky, Horst Rittner, Jørn Sloth, Tõnu Õim, Victor Palciauskas, Friedrich Baumbach, Gert Jan Timmerman, Grigory Sanakoev, Mikhail Umansky, Tunç Hamarat, Ivar Bern and Christophe Léotard. Joop van Oosterom was already mid.

The remainder Cecil Purdy, Viacheslav Ragozin, Hans Berliner, Yakov Estrin are still High-Importance. ChessCreator (talk) 19:22, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Max Lange and Max Lange

It's been brought to my attention by User:Mibelz that there are two Max Lange's.

Max Lange from the 19th Century(1832-1899) who brought us the Max Lange attack in the Two Knights Defence. Highest world ranked in chess of #7
Max Lange from the early 20st century (c1880-c1940) who was also a expert chess player. He was involved with Go (board game) and is linked via Go in several web articles with Emanuel Lasker. Highest world ranked in chess of #54

Chessgames.com mixed them together and it's likely many other sources will also. It would seem a good idea to have a page for them both so that this ambiguity can be cleared up. However I don't know what the name to create for the second Max Lange would be Max Lange 2 or Max Lange II perhaps? In any case I think it would most likely take an experienced Bio editor to create the page, as the information might not be straight forward. ChessCreator (talk) 18:58, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Maybe there could be an article "Max Lange (chessplayer)" and another one "Max Lange (go player)" with a disambiguation page ? SyG (talk) 20:18, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

I imagine that "Max Lange (go player)" was more notable as a chess player(!) so that might not be appropriate. ChessCreator (talk) 20:30, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

I think the usual way this is done on wikipedia is by including the country or nationality if that's enough to disambiguate. I'm not familiar with the second Max Lange, but I'm guessing that this won't help because they would both be Max Lange (German chess player). As a last resort I think people use the bio years: Max Lange (1832-1899) and Max Lange (c.1880-c.1940). It's also possible that the first Max Lange is more famous and could stay at Max Lange, and only the second would need the parenthetical disambiguation. Disambiguation notes would go at the top of the relevant pages using Template:for or one of the other disambiguation templates. Thanks to ChessCreator and Mibelz for pointing this out so we can get it fixed. Quale (talk) 20:38, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Template:ChessWorldChampions

This has recently been altered (without any discussion). What do people think? I preferred it how it was before, with just two lines, "Undisputed" and "FIDE". Seems over-complicated now. Pawnkingthree (talk) 15:18, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

I noticed this also. Did you read on the Template talk page that is was(is) going to be removed? Perhaps the two things are linked. In that someone edited to save it from being removed. ChessCreator (talk) 03:09, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Not sure if that older discussion is the reason for the change. My view is that we only need to show each name once: we can list all the undisputed champions, then the FIDE only ones (Khalifman, Ponomariov, Kasimdzhanov, Topalov). Fortunately the only disputed Classical champion who hadn't previously been an undisputed champion was Kramnik, who went on to unify the title anyway. Pawnkingthree (talk) 09:11, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree that it is over-complicated for a template which doesn't really say much (only the 20 names). I say either go back to the two lines, or remove it and replace it with in the champions' articles with Template:World Chess Championships (which takes up about as much space but is packed with much more information). Peter Ballard (talk) 11:30, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and changed it back to two lines. 20:21, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

I've copied this discussion to Template talk:ChessWorldChampions. Peter Ballard (talk) 12:13, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Grandmaster draw problem

I would like other editors to look at these two secions:

Are they too opinionated? Too much original research (mostly written by one person who designed the BAP system, I think)? Should they be revised? Deleted? Moved to their own article? Bubba73 (talk), 19:32, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

It seems to read fine. It's not clear to me that any of it is original research. If there is concerns about original research how about adding ref required tags to those parts of the article or somehow indicating it WP:NOR ChessCreator (talk) 19:54, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

I think Draw (chess)#Grandmaster draw problem should be merged into Draw by agreement#Discouragement of draws by agreement, then deleted. I agree that Draw (chess)#Grandmaster draw problem reeks a little of POV/OR, though it may be unintentional. Peter Ballard (talk) 11:20, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

If someone wants to tackle a merge/rewrite, this recent ChessBase News article may be helpful for sourcing: http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=4513. It seems to be a pretty sober, thorough discussion of the issue. There are also sources in the section that Peter points out as a possible merge target (Draw by agreement#Discouragement of draws by agreement). If the merge is done, I think we should consider renaming that section to "Grandmaster draws" or something similar. Not everyone wants to discourage draws by agreement in general (although some certainly do), but almost everyone agrees that grandmaster draws are a problem. Quale (talk) 09:15, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree the paragraphs do not seem to comply with WP:NPOV. For example the first sentence "Draws are very common among high-level chess [...]" is a pure point of view. About WP:NOR, I think it is fine to collect a list of proposed solutions, as long as there is no subjective assessment of the better solution. Every solution should have at least one reference to a notable source, otherwise it is OR. As Quale pointed out, the more references the better. SyG (talk) 10:05, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

I've added a little to "Grandmaster draw" at Draw (chess) and made "problem" a subsection of that, but I'm still not happy with it. Bubba73 (talk), 01:32, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Template colours

Currently researching templates. If there is something that wants changing let me know. Many of the templates are in the default colours and it would be perhaps useful to change them. Examples:

Makes some colour changes today. If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know. ChessCreator (talk) 11:14, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, I have just deleted the color of the caption in Template:Infobox chess opening and in Template:Infobox Chess player, so that the background of the caption now has the same colour as the rest of the InfoBox. Two reasons:

I find the former color ugly (but that is certainly a question of style)
"transparent" is more in line with WikiPedia usage and templates of other projects, see for example Template:Infobox Person used in the Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography

SyG (talk) 15:27, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Maybe you can suggest another colour.

As I said on the template talk page I think white(or transparent) is one of the worse choices(Black is worse because it would be unreadable). It's the bland option, the standard nothingness the use of Template:Infobox Person would indicate it's not been categorized.

Those places where the template has been most worked on, often with wikiprojects, have a colour.

Whether it's

There all in coloured template. Pick a colour we can agree on. ChessCreator (talk) 16:15, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Oh well, you are totally right, it seems a lot of WikiProjects like to colour their infobox after all. My mistake! Concerning the colour, my "artistic taste" (uh?!) would still guide me towards transparent (e.g. I love this painting) but I understand a colour may be prefered. In order to let everyone express his opinion on the most liked, here are some different possibilities, tested on the Template:Infobox chess opening:

Caption of opening

	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h
8									8
7									7
6									6
5									5
4									4
3									3
2									2
1									1
	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h

Moves

ECO

Origin

Named after

Parent

Synonym(s)

Caption of opening

	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h
8									8
7									7
6									6
5									5
4									4
3									3
2									2
1									1
	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h

Moves

ECO

Origin

Named after

Parent

Synonym(s)

Caption of opening

	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h
8									8
7									7
6									6
5									5
4									4
3									3
2									2
1									1
	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h

Moves

ECO

Origin

Named after

Parent

Synonym(s)

Caption of opening

	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h
8									8
7									7
6									6
5									5
4									4
3									3
2									2
1									1
	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h

Moves

ECO

Origin

Named after

Parent

Synonym(s)

Caption of opening

	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h
8									8
7									7
6									6
5									5
4									4
3									3
2									2
1									1
	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h

Moves

ECO

Origin

Named after

Parent

Synonym(s)

Caption of opening

	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h
8									8
7									7
6									6
5									5
4									4
3									3
2									2
1									1
	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h

Moves

ECO

Origin

Named after

Parent

Synonym(s)

Caption of opening

	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h
8									8
7									7
6									6
5									5
4									4
3									3
2									2
1									1
	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h

Moves

ECO

Origin

Named after

Parent

Synonym(s)

Caption of opening

	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h
8									8
7									7
6									6
5									5
4									4
3									3
2									2
1									1
	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h

Moves

ECO

Origin

Named after

Parent

Synonym(s)

So what do you prefer ? SyG (talk) 21:03, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

My preferences in order on the chess position template, any of the Top8 would be great.

Orange
Darker Blue
Darker Green
Yellow
Lighter Blue
Magenta
Lighter Green
Wine red
Grey
White

Grey and White last as Chess can be easily perceived as boring and don't think we should reinforce that misconception.

In regards to the Bio's the yellow and lighter colours would be lower because they are weak in terms of authority. Bio template order as follows with any of the Top6 being good.

Darker Blue
Darker Green
Magenta
Orange
Wine red
Lighter Blue
Lighter Green
Yellow
Grey
White

ChessCreator (talk) 01:18, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

A bit of a deafening silence - which probably means people aren't much bothered. I suppose encyclopedias are never going to look sexy, are they? If I had to give an opinion, I'd probably say orange for the openings and darker green for the biographies, but I'm not sure why. Definitely don't like yellow though. Boy, it's comforting to know those high school art lessons weren't a total waste ... Brittle heaven (talk) 17:41, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

OK I have changed the template for players to darker green and the template for openings to orange. SyG (talk) 18:28, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

FIDE trainers

Obviously I've been living in a cave, since I'd never heard of this. At the 75th Congress at Calvia 2005 FIDE created a series of titles for trainers.

We probably need to mention this in an article somewhere. Quale (talk) 16:41, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Multiple references on same source

If the same source is used multiple times in a article how should it be referenced? Say you have an articles that makes reference to a book four times. Each of the references are to a different page on the book. Do you make one reference (ref name='book_x') and reuse it, or do you have one reference for each occurance because the reference description will be slightly different in each case, because it has a different page. ChessCreator (talk) 11:20, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Quale's reasons given above, so that we should give the page number in each reference. Thus in your example there would be 4 different references. SyG (talk) 12:28, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

So why when I start doing this do you remove my reference with a page number? ChessCreator (talk) 01:45, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

I think you should use your best judgment. I think page numbers are very important unless the entire book/magazine article/whatever is used, and even then specific claims may need specific page numbers so they can be checked. (There may be exceptions if the reference is in encyclopedia or dictionary format, as the entry may be obvious and in alphabetical order. Even then I think page numbers are nice, but two years ago I wasn't providing them myself. I'm trying to add some of them now.) Sometimes I think it's OK to use a single reference and just list all the pages: Smith, John. A Discourse on Life. pp. 3, 7–9, 15, might be easier than listing it three times. Otherwise you can put the books and other references in a "References" section, and make the inline cites/footnotes use Harvard references (see Template:harvnb) giving the author, year, and page numbers. The footnotes/endnotes are then put in a section above the References section called "Notes" or "Footnotes". I'm trying to think of a good example chess article where we have that and I can't come up with one right now. Closest are World Chess Championship 1963 which doesn't use separate Notes and References sections but instead uses a full reference the first time a source is used and then a brief Harvard ref for subsequent cites, and Göttingen manuscript which has the separation but the endnotes are longer prose explanations. You can also look at Swindle (chess). It was mostly written by a lawyer, so it should be a good model. Quale (talk) 23:17, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Chess Player Info box

Can we add Template:Infobox Chess player to chess players bio's. I've just gone through and checked and added those missing in Top importance chess articles. There are still so many, including Unofficial World Chess Champions and Grandmasters. I'm doing it myself, but as we know many hands make light work. ChessCreator (talk) 15:09, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

I'll pitch in: they definitely improve the bios. Pawnkingthree (talk) 21:30, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

To split this into some workable sections.

Top importance chess articles with Bio's

Done

Official World Chess Champions

Done

Unofficial World Chess Champions

Done

High importance chess articles with Bio's Letters A - L

Done

High importance chess articles with Bio's Letter M - Z

Done ChessCreator (talk) 22:26, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Grandmasters Letter A

Grandmasters Letter B

Grandmasters Letter C

Grandmasters Letter D

Grandmasters Letter E

Grandmasters Letter F

Grandmasters Letter G

Grandmasters Letter H

Grandmasters Letter I

Grandmasters Letter J

Grandmasters Letter K

Grandmasters Letter L

Grandmasters Letter M

Grandmasters Letter N

Grandmasters Letter O

Grandmasters Letter P

Grandmasters Letter Q

Grandmasters Letter R

Grandmasters Letter S

Grandmasters Letter T

Grandmasters Letter U

Grandmasters Letter V

Grandmasters Letter W

Grandmasters Letter X

Grandmasters Letter Y

Grandmasters Letter Z

ChessCreator (talk) 13:33, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

The recent edits to the template have made it display oddly in Internet Explorer: the data is now squashed on the right hand side and there's a big white space in the middle.Pawnkingthree (talk) 09:48, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree. Some of the examples I've seen recently look dreadful - for example, Harriet Hunt. As well as the vast expanse of central white space, the knock-on effect is to push the box a long way down the page. Can anyone help? Brittle heaven (talk) 11:14, 17 March 2008 (UTC).

Well done whoever fixed it ... looking good again. Brittle heaven (talk) 12:50, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I reverted it to the old. It's not really fixed, but acceptable for now. Working on fixing it with a test version. ChessCreator (talk) 13:05, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Done Fixed now, thanks to technique from Template:Infobox British Royalty. Let me know(include page name) if you notice any alignment issues. ChessCreator (talk) 13:55, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Chess player photos

Scouting the web for chess images, I was recently drawn to these pages at Cleveland Library [5]. They contain some quality images of living players like Karpov, Spassky, Larsen, etc. as well as some deceased players. As many of you will be aware, images of 'living people' are amongst the most difficult for us to procure on WikiProject Chess, as they tend to be copyrighted and (unlike deceased players,) lack of a free alternative does not qualify as a valid 'fair use' reason. If you click on these images, some details are listed, (check out Kasparov's image for an inexplicably odd description btw) and under rights it says for educational use only and contact the library for permission ... or similar. Has anyone already tried this? Is it likely we can get a blanket permission if we ask? Or should we just go ahead and download/use them, as we are an educational use? Any views or experiences gratefully received. Brittle heaven (talk) 23:07, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

That looks like a good source and it would be good to ask them about permission. However, there aren't many players there for whom we don't already have a photo, although some of them are better than what we have. Bubba73 (talk), 23:36, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Okay, as Bubba73 has now started using these images, it appears that the decision is not to ask permission. Brittle heaven (talk) 19:34, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

I only used two or three of deceased people, so they fall under "fair use". There are some better ones of some living players there, but I think we would need to ask permission for those.

One thing I don't like about the policy is that if you can get any free image of a person, that kills "fair use". For instance, I'd like to have a photo of Spassky at the time he was world champion, but we have a free image of him much later in life instead. Bubba73 (talk), 00:46, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Example of en passant in a game

I think en passant needs a good example from a game. It needs to be out of the opening book, and it would be good to be between famous players, and if it was somehow significant in the game. I don't know of one - does anyone know of such a game? Bubba73 (talk), 18:26, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

I think you will like this game. First time e.p declined, second time it's real pretty. http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1242924 ChessCreator (talk) 21:33, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Added, thanks! Bubba73 (talk), 15:55, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

That is a neat game. Another idea would be to include an example of the classic "one pawn holding two", as can happen on the queen side of a Benoni when white plays a4-a5 against black pawns on a6 and b7. Without e.p. white's advance often wouldn't make sense as black could simply play b7-b5 without fear of capture. I can look around for a sample position of this type. Watson may talk about it in Volume 2 of Mastering the Chess Openings, but if not I'm sure we can find another reference. Quale (talk) 05:02, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Hot Topics

Some wiki page viewing information has become available http://stats.grok.se Here is what appears to be the Top20 most viewed chess topics, with approximate average number of views per day.

Chess, 4800
Bobby Fischer, 2000
Garry Kasparov + Gary Kasparov + Kasparov, 1200 (combined)
Chess opening, 1000
Magical_objects_in_Harry_Potter, 840
Elo rating system, 750
Gambit, 630
Rules of chess + chess rules, 630 (combined)
Viswanathan Anand + anand, 600 (combined)
Sicilian Defence + Sicilian Defense = 560 (combined)
Wii Chess, 510
Stalemate, 500
The Turk, 500
Chess piece + chess set, 460
Computer chess, 450
En passant, 400
List of chess terms + Chess terminology + chess terms = 380+ (combined)
Chess strategy, 370
Checkmate, 350
Chess variant, 350
Chess endgame + Endgame, 340 (total)
Ruy Lopez, 330
World Chess Championship, 330

This is interesting data. A year or two ago when I asked around if it was possible to get data like this, everyone said "no". Bubba73 (talk), 23:51, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

It is very interesting. Once you get past all the obvious questions people have, like ... Which is the best page to vandalise? Was Fischer Jewish? What else can I learn about Harry Potter? How does Wii Chess compare with Wii Golf? - you eventually notice that a few people are reading about the rules, piece movement and strategy elements. Consequently, it strikes me as quite important that we improve/widen topics like middlegame, tactics, planning etc., although of course, it should be borne in mind that a good encyclopedia provides more specialised knowledge also, and is not just a 'fanzine' or 'magazine' catering for the mass market. Brittle heaven (talk) 00:23, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

It appears that chess terms that are linked from the Chess article get good viewing numbers. ChessCreator (talk) 01:01, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

That stands to reason, otherwise I wouldn't expect The Turk to get that many views. Bubba73 (talk), 02:23, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, interesting information. Only been available a few months it seems. Found it without looking here. It appears the idea is to use the information into some sort of automatic article assessment system. SelectionBot is the bot that already does the assessment counting. ChessCreator (talk) 00:27, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Did you have to type in each article title individually and then run the program? That would be a LOT of work. Bubba73 (talk), 00:30, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

I manually entered each topic name for the above list, so that's why I've done all the TOP/HIGH etc but not the Low importance. A more extensive list on the assessment talk. WT:WikiProject_Chess/Assessment#Pages_views. One thing I noticed is that biographies get less views then topics of a similar importance class and it saved a lot of time to skip many biographies as so many have less then about 50 views per day. ChessCreator (talk) 00:39, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, that's really interesting and useful information. As far as improving the most viewed articles goes, I think most of those pages are in good shape, or at least acceptable. I would nominate chess strategy as the most in need of improvement, but when I looked at it just now it wasn't as bad as I feared. Ruy Lopez could probably use some work to make a introductory section that is more accessible to beginners. We could also improve Gambit. Stalemate is good but diagram placement could be improved. Quale (talk) 02:08, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Regarding Gambit it may well be much of the page viewing is not chess related. There are many pages incorrectly linking to it. Waiting for Godot, Superhero, Pascal's Wager, Ultimate Spider-Man John Leeson etc. ChessCreator (talk) 02:24, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

I saw your note about that on Talk:Gambit. I think you're right—Maybe we should rename the page. Quale (talk) 02:48, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

I think that Gambit is okay, just be aware that the page view traffic maybe somewhat inflated. ChessCreator (talk) 19:58, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Just out of curiosity, I checked the approx. daily hits on a few more of the iconic figures in chess - Kramnik 250; Tal 200; Carlsen 180; Alekhine 150; J. Polgar 145; Topalov 130; Botvinnik 120; S. Polgar 108; Steinitz 105; Kamsky 95; Korchnoi 80; Bronstein 65; Aronian 50 etc. Amazingly, Nigel Short was around 120 before and after the Cheparinov incident, but temporarily shot up to 1400(!) on the day in question. Perhaps surprising that a relatively small 'news' item can increase the daily flow by 10x or more. Brittle heaven (talk) 00:32, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

And Anatoly Karpov + Karpov - close to 300/day. And Spassky about 250. This is a fascinating tool! Bubba73 (talk), 01:51, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

And to pick a random biography of someone I haven't heard of: Jens_Enevoldsen - about one per day. Which supports my feeling that we are putting in too many biographies. Bubba73 (talk), 02:23, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Capitalization conventions

Some useful tips on the Project page already, but I've noticed a few other terms for which definitive guidance may be a blessing. The following examples seem to be capitalized or not on a fairly random basis (and I know I'm guilty myself). Any English Majors (majors?) out there? Is it something to do with the definite or indefinite article?

world champion
world championship
national champion
national championship
candidates matches
international arbiter
chess master
grandmaster
national master
correspondence chess
computer chess

etc. Brittle heaven (talk) 01:04, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

A few of these should never be capitalized: chess master, correspondence chess, and computer chess (except when part of a title that would otherwise be capitalized, e.g., 1969 Correspondence Chess Championship). At least one should (nearly) always be capitalized: International Arbiter (when referring to the FIDE title, which will be nearly always). Specific candidates matches seem to be nearly always capitalized, as in 1971 Candidates Matches or Larsen–Fischer Candidates Match. When writing about all candidates matches in general perhaps it isn't always capitalized, but I'm not sure. In the same way specific world championships are always capitalized, e.g., 1886 World Championship, but as a general concept it's probably spelled both ways, although it might be better in lower case. Grandmaster poses an interesting question, since I think you can find it capitalized and in all lower case in the chess literature. I think when used as a title/honorific (Grandmaster Bronstein) it should always be capitalized, but we don't use GM that way very often here. For other uses I'm not sure what we should do. Assistance from an expert in these English language issues would be helpful, although we will want to follow the common practice in the chess literature if it conflicts with what a grammarian prescribes. (We once had a non-chess playing fool argue that chess openings should be in lower case, as "queen's gambit".) Unfortunately I think we will find in some cases that chess writers aren't consistent in capitalization of some of these. Quale (talk) 09:38, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. That's very helpful. If I can attempt to encapsulate it all in one rule, it seems that 'personalising' any of these phrases, OR referring to a 'specific edition' demands a capitalized version, whereas de-personalised and/or grouped descriptions are better suited to the lower case. Some examples using a title might be: Minev is an International Master (the title is personal to him) | International Master Minev (again, personal to him) | Minev knew many international masters (the use of the title is not personal to him)| Minev was of international master strength (again not personal to him - it refers to the strength of the average IM). Looking through a few texts, like Golombek/Sunnucks/Hooper & Whyld, the above examples are widely used and would be my preference, although I note your point that some texts may also use "Grandmasters" in the upper case throughout. Brittle heaven (talk) 13:00, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

What about "Capablanca was world champion" versus "Capablanca was World Champion"? In a sense it is the general world championship, but he was also a specific World Champion. Bubba73 (talk), 14:15, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

That's a title that you are attaching to him personally - so the latter is correct as far as I can see. To de-personalise it enough to use the lower case, I would suggest "Capablanca was a world champion" might be okay, as it distances him from the specific title. Brittle heaven (talk) 20:33, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Speaking of capitalization

Speaking of capitalization:

names of pieces are not caps, although in some literature (especially older) they are, or sometimes only king and queen are caps.
"White" is caps when substituting for a person's name, but not when refering to the pieces (ditto "black"). Bubba73 (talk), 03:52, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Reference needed

The Chess article states that the title of chess grandmaster was first formally conferred by Tsar Nicholas II of Russia to Lasker, Capablanca, Alekhine, Tarrasch and Marshall. Does someone has a reference for that ? SyG (talk) 08:30, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

There are many references for this claim (e.g., Anne Sunnucks, The Encyclopaedia of Chess (1970), p. 223), although it is probably not true. See the recent discussions at Talk:Grandmaster (chess). We should do a better job of explaining the research that has been done on this, especially in the GM article. Quale (talk) 09:18, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the info, impressive discussion indeed. I have changed the Chess article to make it more balanced and give at least one reference for each opinion. SyG (talk) 11:04, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia Shadow

Found a site showing wikipedia live for example Bubba73's En Passant page that was just updated a moment ago is here http://top40-charts.com/pedia.php?title=En_passant Seems rather odd, although I guess it helps anyone who is blocked from viewing wikipedia. ChessCreator (talk) 16:12, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Opening name with 's after names of players inconsistent

I noticed the use of Alekhine Defence in an article recently and changed it to Alekhine's Defence as that's exactly what our article is called, today however I was reading and came across Petroff Defence and checked in the Petrov's Defence article and noticed it's one reference(a book) calls it Petroff Defence, so then checked also in BCO2 to discover the same thing.

So then a more wider checked showed we have openings a few more named with an 's like Benko's Opening, Anderssen's Opening. They are the minority however as most don't have a 's if it is name after a person, so we also have

Fischer Defense not Fischer's Defense

Philidor Defence not Philidor's Defence

Réti Opening not Réti's Opening

Pirc Defence not Pirc's Defence etc

Perhaps there is source one for one use or perhaps both? I've yet to find a source saying Petrov's Defence or even Petrov's Defence. Your thoughts are welcome. ChessCreator (talk) 11:00, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Here is a reliable source where they use the spelling Petrov's defence, although I doubt it is enough to judge this is the correct name. SyG (talk) 19:40, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

It is mostly Petrov there, but C33 has Petroff. Bubba73 (talk), 19:45, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

MCO-13 has "Petrov". "Understanding the Ches sOpenings" has "Petroff". Bubba73 (talk), 19:50, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

I was trying to convey the question of whether it was suitable to have an 's on the end of a persons name, rather then a particular spelling of the word Petrov. ChessCreator (talk) 21:13, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

I think chess literature is inconsistent on this point. It was in disease names as well, but medicine has standardized on names without the possessive. In some cases chess never uses the possessive. In addition to the example you mention (Réti O.), also Evans Gambit and Caro-Kann D are never possessive. On the other hand, some (almost) always are formed as a possessive, such as Grob's Attack and Bird's Opening. It is an interesting question. Here's an overly narrow and biased sample of general opening references:

PCO (1948)	MCO-10 (1965)	BCO-2 (1989)	H & W (1992)	NCO (1999)	MCO-14 (1999)
Alekhine's D.	Alekhine's D.	Alekhine's D.	Alekhine D.	Alekhine's D.	Alekhine's D.
Nimzovitch's D.	Nimzowitsch D.	Nimzowitsch D.	Nimzowitsch D.	?	Nimzovich D.
Petroff's D.	Petrov's D.	Petroff D.	Petroff D.	Petroff D.	Petrov's D.
Philidor's D.	Philidor's D.	Philidor D.	Philidor D.	Philidor D.	Philidor's D.
Ponziani's O.	Ponziani's O.	?	Ponziani O.	Ponziani O.	Ponziani's O.
Bird's O.	Bird's O.	Bird's O.	Bird O.	Bird's O.	Bird's O.
–	Pirc D.	Pirc D.	Pirc D.	Pirc D.	Pirc D.

PCO - Fine (1948), Practical Chess Openings

MCO-10 - Evans & Korn (1965), Modern Chess Openings

BCO-2 - Keene & Kasparov (1989), Batsford Chess Openings

H & W - Hooper & Whyld (1992), The Oxford Companion to Chess, 2nd ed.

NCO - Nunn (1999), Nunn's Chess Openings

MCO-14 - de Firmian (1999), Modern Chess Openings

Clearly I was wrong about Bird's Opening, but Hooper & Whyld are an outlier here. If you ignore the Pirc which is never made possessive (possibly because it should be pronounced "peerts", and "peerts's" would sound odd?), only Fine and Hooper & Whyld are self-consistent. Fine always uses the possessive and Hooper & Whyld never do, even in cases like Alekhine's D. and Bird's O. where everyone else does. For instance, why does MCO-14 use "Alekhine's D." but "Nimzovich D."? Probably there isn't a good answer. In practice, chess players and writers get around this problem by using "the", as in "the Alekhine" and "the Petroff", as these are never made possessive. Unfortunately that's no help for our article titles.Quale (talk) 00:05, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for the time and effort to go and do that research Quale, I hesitate to conclude from it. I guess what it means is that 'anything goes' as various sources use various ways of naming. ChessCreator (talk) 16:40, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Chess templates - nation's grandmasters

Check out these templates Template:Chess in China and Template:Serbian grandmasters. Right now we have two or three examples but tomorrow who knows how many. If there are already categories on the bottom of any page, I can't see the point why this templates should be presented on any personal chess player page.

Another problem is wrong data like you can see on Template:Serbian grandmasters template. Source for this list is search result from FIDE site which is known as incomplete. If you go manually throw it you will realise different results, let's say in search result of women's part there are no two best players, etc.

Do we really need this kind of templates?Ikaria (talk) 15:46, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

I think those template look good and some form of navigation is useful. Whether this is correct method I'm not sure.

Am concerned about use of nationality for categorising things because of issues of errors and maintainability, have same concern about Category:Chess players by nationality and flags on List of chess grandmasters. ChessCreator (talk) 16:30, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

I would personally recommend that we get rid of all these ( - see also Julio Kaplan for some more unnecessary templates). Maintainence/reliability are the key issues, as ChessCreator points out. Who on earth is going to regularly check these entries against the latest FIDE lists, and update them in the context of title details, activity/inactivity, rating, nationality changes, deaths etc. There is enough to do in maintaining 'List of chess players', 'List of chess topics' and 'List of chess grandmasters', the last of which can be sorted to give the national scenario in any case. Furthermore, most individual player bios have links to the FIDE site, Olimpbase, Chessgames.com etc. where most, if not all, of this info is again, readily available. Brittle heaven (talk) 17:36, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Yeah I agree, to remove them. Too hard to maintain, really not worth it, and we don't want an article to look like a collection of just infoboxes. Voorlandt (talk) 21:28, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

The problem with these templates is that they are lists dressed up as infoboxes. The list of a country's GMs and WGMs belongs in an article, perhaps Chess in Serbia or Chess in China. In fact Chess in China already has a list of Chinese GMs. Quale (talk) 03:28, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Nationality

This seems to be a separate re-occur problem. Suggestion: How about the nationality is clarified with a date. For example.

Miguel Najdorf

Poland (1910-1939)

Argentina (1939-1997)

Igor Vasilyevich Ivanov

Soviet Union (1947-1978),

Uzbekistan (1978-1980),

Canada (1980-2005)

Bobby Fischer,

United States (1943-2005),

Iceland (2005-2008)

Obviously it would require some checking out that the transition years are correct as it may not be clear at all, but the end result might be more sensible that the present one country nationality. ChessCreator (talk) 21:36, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

I think that's a very good idea and helpful to the reader if we can find the information we need. Keep in mind that changes in nationality after a player's active career are over are not significant in some contexts. Bobby Fischer was an Icelandic citizen, but he can't sensibly be described as an "Icelandic chess player" as he quit chess in 1992. For this reason he isn't in the list of nationality transfers in chess. One difficulty is one we already face even without including the years. Players who emigrated when young are often described as chess players of their birth country, although sometimes it isn't clear that they played any significant chess or even learned the moves before they moved. Quale (talk) 03:38, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

The more I think about this the worse it seems. I think countries should be omitted where possible for ease of maintenace, especially in lists and when used (on the bio) be very specific about what the country means. Presently it's not clear what the country or countries refer to. ChessCreator (talk)

Here is a related discussion about Country of birth in Infoboxes. ChessCreator (talk) 17:37, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't agree with that at all. Maintenance is not difficult. Most nationalities will never change, and once the person is dead they're fixed forever. It is absolutely essential that many lists include nationality (maybe this is covered by your "wherever possible" qualification) and often they are easy to determine. In Chess World Cup 2007 the reader wants to know the players' nationalities when the event occurred, not what they may have been formerly or subsequently, and there is no maintenance. Quale (talk) 19:38, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Thinking about it, I was mistaken about maintenance. It should not be an issue. When I look at the bio infobox and the List of chess grandmasters it seems unclear to me, but maybe it down to not understanding what the country is suppose to represent. To me it looks like there are some errors, but perhaps some editors are adding country of birth and others county when GM title given, or country that the player is now a citizen of. ChessCreator (talk) 20:41, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Forgot to mention: if we want to eliminate a real maintenance nuisance, we should get the current ratings out of the chess bios and especially out of the chess player infobox. For active players these need to be updated four times a year. It seems pointless to me when a link to their FIDE rating card (usually already in the article) will give current information and some history. In fact a field in the infobox for a link to the FIDE rating card would be more helpful. Quale (talk) 19:44, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Agree. Leaving out current rating seems a sensible idea. It changes four times a year and with the recent rating list out 1 April and only a handful of bio's changed since then, at the moment I would imagine the majority of the bio's have an incorrect figure in current Elo rating. ChessCreator (talk) 20:41, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

I have updated the numbers 1-80 on the FIDE top 100 list so far (some were already done by others), and I will do the rest this week. (It's better to wait a few days to give FIDE time for the usually necessary corrections, by the way.) Personally I don't think it's a problem to update them; a player's rating is interesting information (first thing I want to know, to be honest) that is very often being added to the article anyway, so why not put it in the box? For comparison: the Template:Infobox Football biography has a field for the number of appearances a player has made for his club. That's thousands of infoboxes that need to be changed at least once a week! Certainly we can manage a three-monthly update of the, say, two hundred articles we have about notable & active chess players? It would be handy, though, if a bot could generate a list of all articles that use Template:Infobox Chess player and in which the field "rating" is not empty. That way we can be certain that they will all be updated. DAVID ŠENEK 10:46, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Completely agree with David: I think it's very useful info which we should keep updated. Pawnkingthree (talk) 11:59, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

At present most players don't have an infobox, so 80 updates cover most of the active ones. When all players have infobox it going to be more of a task, there are over 1200 grandmasters(not all of which are active) and many other players are also notable and have ratings. Still if someone wants to do this then good, I would suggest a systematic way is made so that they are all updated. ChessCreator (talk) 12:32, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

I disagree completely. Category:Chess grandmasters already has over 500 articles in it, and could be expanded to nearly 1200 I think. We also have player bios for players who aren't GMs. Updating these four times a year solely to change the current rating and ranking is pointless busy work in my opinion. (We also have the problem that FIDE makes mistakes and updates its lists, often without announcing the fact I think. As you know this happened for the April 2008 list, requiring dozens more updates.) If the first thing you are interested in is a player's current rating, I suggest the first place you visit be http://fide.com/ratings/ (although I know you already know that). There are two problems with these edits, although they are related. First, there is no inherent reason why the April 2008 rating is of greater interest than the January 2008 rating, or any other period. You may be interested only in the current rating, but this is an encyclopedia, not a chess magazine, and historical ratings have just as much encyclopedic interest as current ratings. Second, although you may think that updating hundreds of articles to include current ratings is improving them, in fact it isn't. It's just churning them. Every time you add the current rating you delete the previous rating, so in net the article includes no more information than it did before your edit. Every edit should make the page better. These edits don't make the page better, just different. In essence it's a junk edit. What the football project does is of interest but doesn't control what we do. Number of games played is actually a statistic that makes sense to update regularly, however, which makes it different than FIDE rating. Games played always increases, and at the end of the football player's career it reaches a final number that doesn't change. The final rating that a chess player has at retirement or death is generally of no special interest. Games played is a cumulative statistic, Elo rating isn't. Despite this I'm not really trying to dissuade people from making these edits. The problem is that as the job gets larger, I'm not sure that those who express great enthusiasm for this work today will still be around to do it. The rest of us may be left with the cleanup. Quale (talk) 03:49, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

I think it takes too much effort to keep all of those ratings up to date. Does a change from 2565 to 2549 really matter that much? As an alternative, perhaps keep peak ratings instead and update them maybe once a year. If someone wants to know their exact rating there is a link to their FIDE card. Another advantage of using peak ratings is what happens as they age and start dropping in rating? Perhaps they were once a 2600 player, but in time they may be a 2200 player. Would a 2200 indicate their one-time notability? Bubba73 (talk), 04:52, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

And as Quale said in a different way - we are looking for permanent information, not current information. Bubba73 (talk), 05:00, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

This is an archive of past discussions about Wikipedia:WikiProject Chess. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

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