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Using MCO as a reference

When using MCO as a reference, please remember that it has its own article Modern Chess Openings, so please link to that when using it as a reference. Bubba73 (talk), 21:28, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Endgame tablebase

FYI, Endgame tablebase has been a featured article candidate since late March. youngvalter 19:48, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Another article that I think is really good is chess opening. Bubba73 (talk), 22:10, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
Endgame tablebase FAC review ended — the result was not to promote it. It is still a good article candidate but I don't think much feedback can be expected from there. Maybe we can list it for peer review later, but I'd give it at least a couple of months, as right now I am, frankly, rather fed up with the article. ;) --ZeroOne (talk | @) 09:24, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Chess-WikiProject template improved

I have just improved the {{Chess-WikiProject}} template to include quality and importance indicators. Here are the relevant usage instructions: 

{{Chess-WikiProject
|class = 
|importance=
}}
  • class: Options are FA, A, GA, B, Start, Stub, Dab, Template, Cat, NA. If blank, this will default as Unassessed. Descriptions of the options can be found at quality assessment scale. NA is "not applicable".
  • importance: Top, High, Mid, Low, No. If blank, this will default as Unknown priority. Descriptions of the options can be found at importance assessment scale.

I borrowed this code and these instructions from {{Film}}. They are used in many projects already. So, feel free to start adding the missing information. At some point we should get to writing our own quality assessment scale for this project with example pages from within the project's scope. --ZeroOne (talk | @) 21:56, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Good job. I've added the template to a lot of articles in the last week or so. Bubba73 (talk), 23:25, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
If an article has the tag but doesn't have an assessment, this is listed at the bottom Categories: Unassessed chess articles | Unassessed importance chess articles. If you click on one of them it take you to editing the category instead of just viewing the category. Is that an error? Bubba73 (talk), 23:51, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
It's not an error, it's just that the category "doesn't exist" — no description has been written for it. You can write and save a simple description like "This category lists the unassessed articles from the WikiProject Chess" and it would work like any other category. --ZeroOne (talk | @) 00:07, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
Done. Bubba73 (talk), 00:33, 30 April 2007 (UTC) (for some of the categories.) Bubba73 (talk),
I went through the list of chess topics and marked some as "top" importance. The ones I thought should be in any paper encyclopedia. Rules of the game, Spassky-Fischer, several more, including all undisputed world champions. I tried to be conservative in limiting "top" importance to ones of pretty general interest. Bubba73 (talk), 02:53, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, that's very nice. I was just thinking about suggesting that we start importance rating and quality assessment of chess pages. I don't like a lot of bureaucracy, but I think it might help improve the chess articles as a whole if we have a way of categorizing the most important pages and the pages in greatest need of improvement. I've created a new cat, Category:WikiProject Chess, and put the subcats under it. Quale 03:57, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
The Wikipedia 1.0 bot has started keeping track of the articles tagged with {{Chess-WikiProject}}. See Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Chess articles by quality. Not much there yet, but it's a start. Quale 07:39, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Slightly updated the template with a link to the chess portal (as most templates to wikiprojects do). Borrowed the technique from Wikipedia:WikiProject Strategy games. Voorlandt 10:53, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Is there a bot to add the template to all articles in the category chess and its subcategories? I have been adding it manually to a dozen of articles but this is very tedious! Voorlandt 20:03, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

That would help a lot. I've tagged 250 or so, mostly without assessing them. Most of them are short bios. Bubba73 (talk), 20:10, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
I just did that with WP:AWB! I used List of chess topics as the basis, so all articles there have been covered. The same could be done for the categories, but I'm not sure how AWB handles subcategories... In the process I deleted a few links from List of chess topics that I don't think belong to the project. --ZeroOne (talk | @) 20:38, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
Good, but there are hundreds of articles not on that list, mostly small bios. I wish I had known about AWB earler. Bubba73 (talk), 23:20, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
Well, those probably are not of high importance anyway and I think we have enough work with the current set of ~1000 articles anyway. :) The rest can be added when encountered, unless someone really wants to systematically go through all the subcategories. --ZeroOne (talk | @) 10:38, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
Experimented a bit with WP:AWB. There is a trick to list all articles in the category chess and its subcategories. First make a list from all articles in the category chess (this will include the subcategories). Then select all subcategories in the list (with shift and arrow keys), right click and press Add selected to list...From category. This will add all the articles (and subsubcategories) in these subcategories. Filter all talk pages, and anything you don't want and sort alphabetically. You can repeat it once more, until the page count doesn't increase. I ended up with 2030 articles in the chess category and its subcategories! Unfortunately I don't have permission to run WP:AWB, have to wait until my edit count is a little larger. Voorlandt 20:04, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
Some statistics on chess related articles.
  • Wikisearch chess: 10000+
  • Articles linking to chess: 4304
  • Articles having the chess template: 1224
  • Articles in category/subcategories chess: 1775
  • Articles in the list of chess topics: 1799
The list of chess topics and the articles in categories chess are +/- in tune. Now only the template left! I have requested to use WP:AWB, so I can help out with this. Unfortunately I have less than 500 edits, so they probably refuse it. Voorlandt 07:58, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

OT: Ks versus Vs

Everyone talks about the Ks of chess (Karpov, Kortchnoi, Kasparov, Krammnik), but I noticed that there are also the Vs: Vasily Smyslov, Veselin Topalov, Viswanathan Anand, Vladimir Kramnik. :-) Bubba73 (talk), 04:05, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

A couple of things

  • I've done a hopefully uncontroversial merge: I've redirected the one-line article Lengfellner System (which wasn't categorised properly and so didn't appear in opening stubs) to French Defence#Early deviations and added that one line into this section.
  • A user has again undone the redirection of Épine Dorsale to Italian Game. Per the discussion on trhe talk page, the user appears to be saying that the Dorsale isn't an opening, but a series of moves ending up at the position after 3.Bc4, that can be branched off at any time (i.e by Black playing 1.e6 to go into the French). Personally I can't see how that makes it any different from an opening, i.e the Italian Game. EliminatorJR Talk 10:40, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
    • Thanks for the merge. I don't know what to do about Épine Dorsale. Actually I had never heard the term until I stumbled across it on the web, looking for some sources for some chess opening pages. (Three years ago the chess opening pages were in rough shape, and just about anything was bound to be an improvement.) Maybe the term is more popular in non-English sources (perhaps French), as I don't think I've ever seen it used in print in English. It is unreferenced, so that should certainly be fixed. The standard MCO, NCO, BCO sources aren't going to help, and I don't think ECO will either. Quale 13:58, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
      • There's no article in the French Wikipedia. It's difficult for users of en-wiki to find the article, either, because of the diacritic. Meanwhile, Google searches don't help much, especially as you get lots of hits referring to fish, and also the internet, where it appears to be a jargon term (something to do with backbones I suppose). The only articles in English I can see relating to it are this and this, plus a couple of blogs. Trying "Epine dorsale echecs" fails too because of the alternative meaning of echecs ("failure"). Finally I tried "Epine dorsale 1.e4" and got just 28 hits excluding wiki-mirrors, including a forum post at chessgames.com, and this page which equates it with the Italian game. I have to say that given this level of sourcing, I'm not sure this article can sustain itself - perhaps it could be mentioned in King's Pawn Game? The reverting editor is adamant it shouldn't go to Italian Game, though. EliminatorJR Talk 15:00, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
        • It doesn't have a listing in MCO-13 or the Oxford Companion. I put an unreferenced tag on it, hoping to get an English source. It is simply a transposition, right? Bubba73 (talk • contribs) 15:22, 30 April 2007 (UTC
          • No, it doesn't look like it is. As far as I can see from the article's talk page, the edit summaries, and the few articles mentioned above, it's a series of moves that can be branched off at any time. I think the idea is that if you play, say, 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nf6, then Black is said to have branched from the Epine Dorsale at move 2. EliminatorJR Talk 15:30, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
Scratch that. As far as I can tell, it is the same as the Italian Game, It may branch off after that to 2 knights or Guico Piano, but at that point it is the same. It seems to me that it is probably an old French name for the start of the Italian game. Bubba73 (talk), 15:33, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
Well, Italian game and Evans Gambit by Jan Pinski points out that from that point you can have the Guico Piano, the 2 knights, the Hungarian Defense, as well as 3...g6. And 3...d6 will transpose. Bubba73 (talk), 15:50, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
See my comments to ThreeE here. "Épine dorsale" is indeed the French term for "backbone" (and not "dorsal fin", which would be "nageoire dorsale"), and as I pointed out to ThreeE, this French site calls the Ruy Lopez "L'épine dorsale des jeux ouverts", i.e. "the backbone of the open games". youngvalter 16:20, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
Back in my day, we didn't have the Italian game in the US. When I first heard of the Italian, I thought that it was 3. Bc4, as the article says. Therefore it included the Guico Piano and Two Knights. However, more recent references (MCO, Pinski, Seirawan, Oxford Companion) limit it to 3. Bc4 Bc5. Bubba73 (talk), 16:31, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
IF that's the case, it needs to be merged with Guioco Piano. I've always understood the Italian to be defined by 3.Bc4 though, as in the Pinski book on this page. Is there a difference between countries here? EliminatorJR Talk 17:55, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
I have three books on that page, and the situation is not clear.The Italian game book by Pinski only covers 3. Bc4 Bc5 - contrary to the description on that page. His Two Knights book doesn't say anything about the 2N being part of the Italian. On the other hand, the Giuoco Piano book by Gufeld says that the G.P. is a branch of the Italian (inplying that there are others). But the majority (5 out of 6, I think) of references I checked equate the Italian and 3...Bc5. It might be that the Russians call everything under 3. Bc4 the Italian game. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Bubba73 (talk • contribs) 19:08, 30 April 2007 (UTC).
Actually, it looks like the Russians call 3.Bc4 Bc5 the Italian Game - see here. youngvalter 03:31, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
Then equating G.P. and Italian, with the 2 Knights being seperate makes sense to me. Bubba73 (talk), 04:25, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
As for the Lengfellner System, I wonder if the reference should be removed altogether, for reasons of notability. youngvalter 16:20, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
It is in the Oxford Companion. Bubba73 (talk), 16:32, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
According to this website, Épine Dorsale means "back spine" - we might say "backbone" (Alta Vista translates it that way). It talks about Épine Dorsale as the backbone from which the other openings arise. It seems to be an old term from when most games started 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6. It gives 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 as part 1 of E.D. and 2... Nc6 as part 2. This is in contrast to the article, which gives 3. Bc4. So it seems that E.P. doesn't really refer to an opening, but a position from which other openings start. So in that case, it probably doesn't need to be merged with Italian game, without the 3. Bc4 that is. Bubba73 (talk), 04:17, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
It certainly needs a rewrite to make that clear, then, plus it needs to be sourced. I'll have a look at it when I get the chance. EliminatorJR Talk 10:01, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
This might connect to the concept of tabia, the standard or normal position that an opening variation leads to. A term borrrowed from the chess precursor game Shatranj, tabia has been reintroduced into modern chess parlance; e.g., Google(tm) the three singular variants, tabia, tabiya, and (misspelled?) tabya, with chess. (Arabic adds a final 't' to produce the plural; I'm sure we'll soon get this wrong as we did with "isolani".) --Wfaxon 10:13, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
That's a good observation—I hadn't thought of it that way. Quale 15:17, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

IRC channel

I don't know if there is any demand for a WikiProject Chess IRC channel, (see also WP:IRC) but I created one anyway: irc://chat.freenode.net:8001/wikiproject-chess. That's #wikiproject-chess at freenode. I'll idle there, just join in. --ZeroOne (talk | @) 11:05, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Xiangqi FAR

Xiangqi has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. LuciferMorgan 15:08, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Chess openings

Well, despite all the troubles, it seems to me that a lot of the mess has been cleaned up. Great Job! to all the editors who took the time to fix some of the problems. There's still some lingering concerns with unreferenced pages and ones that don't effectively assert their importance, but at least there's evidence of clean-up going on. I hope that continues, and everybody who has been motivated to work on things takes pride in the improvements they've made. FrozenPurpleCube 14:12, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Importance rating of chess personalities

In a discussion with User:Bubba73, we defined raw criteria for assessing importance to chess personalities. Because it can be of broader interest, I post the (slightly enhanced) suggestion here:

  • Top: Classical WCHs, their "great predecessors" (Morphy, Anderssen, Philidor...) plus perhaps a few other personalities of comparable importance for chess. In total about 25 people.
  • High: People who were just about the top, but not High importance (people who played for championship but lost, FIDE WCHs, people who were 1st or 2nd in Elo lists for a longer time) - examples are Keres, Korchnoi, Topalov...; further Women WCHs, Correspondence WCHs, top chess composers, top theoreticians (Réti, Nimzowitsch...).
  • Mid: Generally people who were in the top ten for some time, leading players who won important tournaments, key chess organizers (FIDE Presidents and similar) etc.; people who gave their name to important openings or to other important chess topics.
  • Low: The rest.

There will be always borderline cases, but I hope that this can solve many controversies.--Ioannes Pragensis 18:54, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

That sounds reasonable. Where exactly, by the way, did you have this discussion? Now we only need to work out the other importance rating policies and class policies of chess articles and then write them down on the project page. --ZeroOne (talk | @) 23:52, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
It was on the talk page of user:Ioannes Pragensis, under the section on "Robert Hübner". There wasn't much discussion. I've added the project tag to a lot of articles (mostly without an assessment), but there must be dozens more, mostly biographies. Bubba73 (talk), 00:06, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Need: The article's priority or importance, regardless of its quality

Top Subject is a must-have for a print encyclopaedia
High Subject contributes a depth of knowledge
Mid Subject fills in more minor details
Low Subject is mainly of specialist interest.
I have a different view, although I'm not wedded to it. Top and high I agree completely—those are exactly how I would define them. I differ on Mid and Low. I would put almost every other chess bio else in Mid. Low importance I would reserve for persons only peripherally related to chess, mostly ones who wouldn't qualify by WP:BIO for chess reasons alone but have a page for other reasons. I understand this means that Low priority wouldn't be used very often for bios, but I think this is OK. Top isn't going to be used very often for bios either, and this will give us a normal distribution of priorities. The standard guide for priority grading (floated right) says that Mid grade "fills in more minor details", and I think nearly every chess bio worth writing falls into that grade or higher. Beniamino Vergani is an example of a chess bio that I put in Low grade, although it's questionable whether it should simply be merged into Hastings 1895 chess tournament—I would never have created that page unless I had something more to say. (This isn't a chess bio issue, but I think putting the individual Chess Olympiad pages at Low priority is a mistake too, as I would go with Mid again.) One of the reasons I like this better is I think it's pretty easy to sort the top two grades.Basically just World Champions go in Top, possibly with the Women's World Champions thrown in (there haven't been many of them, and it's discouraging to see only men in the Top priority). High is also clear: world championship caliber and the most important theoriticians. Deciding between Mid and Low using the proposed criteria could lead to a lot of disagreements, as I just don't see a clear enough distinction between the third and fourth tier of chess players. Quale 00:39, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
Nevertheless we will never reach the continuous normal distribution with our four discrete outcomes :-)) But I am not against another definition of the two low groups. What about a compromise in the sense that people with the grandmaster title today (or with the corresponding strength of play in the past) will be Mid, while International masters without other special chess merits will be Low?--Ioannes Pragensis 08:08, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
I'll quite happily go along with whatever consensus is reached. I notice that we've had a large number of chess bios added in the past few months and I agree that bios of players of less than GM strength with no notable tournament victories or importance in chess history should be given Low priority. My concern is that I personally might have trouble deciding between Mid and Low in some cases. An average GM might have reason to be put in Mid priority, for instance if you were the first and only GM from Myanmar. There are many possible cases like this and I suggest expanded use of Mid priority for largely pragmatic reasons, using Low only for clearly minor bios. If we end up putting a lot of chess bios in Low priority I might not be able to sort between Mid and Low, but that's fine, I can let others do it and I will accept their judgement. Quale 15:29, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
I think that whatever decision we take, we will always have trouble deciding between categories in some cases. But do not worry, these ratings are only tools which should help us to prioritize our work, nothing more.
Why I wish to have the lowest category big and the upper categories relatively smaller (a "pyramidal distribution") and not the "normal distribution" with huge middle classes and a weak Low class is just because of this. It leads to a better focus to the really important articles.--Ioannes Pragensis 07:07, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
We shouldn't worry too much about making an incorrect judgement about mid versus low. I think the decision is more important at higher levels. I think it is better to have some judgement in there, even if it could be off one step. Bubba73 (talk), 13:57, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
I understand, and that makes sense. I agree that Top and High are the most important levels. I think for myself that we are likely to have so many Mid importance or higher articles (over 350 already, and we have 200 not prioritized in Category:Unknown-importance chess articles and hundreds of bios that aren't tagged at all yet) that going strictly on a priority scale would lead to the Low priority pages never receiving any attention. That's OK if there aren't very many of them and if they're not very important, but possibly less good if they're numerous. I'm interested in helping really polish our Top priority articles and making our High priority articles the best we can, but by the time you reach Mid the difference between Mid and Low isn't so important to me. For those pages I would likely just work on whichever ones I had the greatest interest in, or were in the most need of improvement. I think the difference is that I see the divisions as
  • Top — polish these few pages (<100) to diamond-like perfection,
  • High — make these several hundred articles high quality
  • Mid — average article so most common (many hundreds),
  • Low — esoteric details so not many of these pages. Also used for pages that are higher priority in other WikiProjects, but only of minor interest and connection to chess.
The problem with making Low really large is that it makes it hard to distinguish between the only mildly important from the nearly utterly trivial, and my hope is that we never have too many trivial chess pages. Look at Category:Low-importance chess articles now. It includes 37th Chess Olympiad, Mephisto, Ajeeb, Luke McShane, and Lego Chess. It seems to me that one of these is not like the others, but with a fat Low priority, a lot of pages are going to be put in the same priority as Lego Chess. Lego Chess deserves an article on the basis of it being important children's game software, but wouldn't (in my view) deserve an article for chess reasons alone. The individual chess Olympiads do deserve articles on their own, and so do the chess automatons and many players. Still, despite my long-winded argument, I don't think the lower categories are that important. So, to sum up much more briefly, I'm satisfied with whatever division between Mid and Low that others come up with. Quale 22:50, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
Do you think Lego Chess should be included in the Project anyway? I don't have a strong feeling either way, because as you said, it probably wouldn't deserve an article for chess reasons alone. I also promoted those individual olympiad articles to Mid-priority now — I meant to do that after reconsidering it after you complained about it for the first time (a few posts back) but I obviously missed those two. I have just been doing some very rough tagging so I'm just happy if someone wants to change the priorities I have assigned. --ZeroOne (talk | @) 23:37, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
Good question. I also don't really care either way if Logo Chess is tagged as part of the Chess WikiProject. I suppose if it were untagged someone might put the tag back sometime in the future, but that certainly wouldn't be a catastrophe. I didn't mean to gripe about the Low priority for some individual Chess Olympiad articles. I could have changed the priorities on those pages myself, but I wanted to hear other chess editors thoughts about how we should use the priority classification in the project first. Actually I have only found a very few pages that I might have classified differently, and all are Low importance articles that I might have put in Mid. I don't consider the Mid/Low distinction to be of paramount importance, and it's just as likely as not that they are classified correctly now and my classification wouldn't be as good. It seems that use of Top and High are pretty much agreed. Like you said, I also encourage anyone to feel free to change any importance or class tag that if they think a different value is more appropriate. Quale 09:14, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for information and the invitation to express my views. Most of all, I like 'Quales approach to the categorization of article importance for chess personalities. My view is that about 100 personalities in chess history deserve the highest emphasis, for coverage, accuracy, depth, game selection, etc. Among those 100, perhaps 40 would rate ultra-outstanding effort and care. I'll list my chosen '109' after this paragraph. After that, anyone who was a top 10 GM at their time would be second in importance and emphasis, so that is probably about another 50 to 75 players. Then you have the rest of the GMs, and perhaps some IMs, as third in importance, along with some key personalities, such as Florencio Campomanes, who is a top administrator playing key roles, and Arpad Elo, the father of the chess rating system. After that, there are other strong and influential masters, authors, administrators, arbiters, patrons, and so on, such as Fred Reinfeld, and Irving Chernev, who were master-strength players but had their real importance as authors. Some people, such as Max Euwe, Raymond Keene, and Alexander Kotov, excelled in more than one category of achievement, and this should increase their importance.

My 109 picks as the most important personalities in chess history: 1.Bobby Fischer 2.Gary Kasparov 3.Paul Morphy 4.Mikhail Tal 5.Paul Keres 6.David Bronstein 7.Judit Polgar 8.Alexander Alekhine 9.J.R. Capablanca 10.Emanuel Lasker 11.Mikhail Botvinnik 12.Anatoly Karpov 13.Boris Spassky 14.Tigran Petrosian 15.Vasily Smyslov 16.Wilhelm Steinitz 17.Viktor Korchnoi 18.Aron Nimzowitsch 19.Adolf Anderssen 20.Vladimir Kramnik 21.Miguel Najdorf 22.Samuel Reshevsky 23.Reuben Fine 24.Max Euwe 25.Frank Marshall 26.Efim Geller 27.Veselin Topalov 28.Svetozar Gligoric 29.Siegbert Tarrasch 30.Alexander Kotov 31.Vishy Anand 32.Louis Paulsen 33.La Bourdonnais 34.Alexander McDonnell 35.Andre Philidor 36.Ruy Lopez 37.Richard Reti 38.Savielly Tartakower 39.Lev Polugaevsky 40.Semyon Furman 41.Larry Evans 42.Maya Chiburdanidze 43.Nona Gaprindashvili 44.Susan Polgar 45.Bent Larsen 46.Raymond Keene 47.Nigel Short 48.Howard Staunton 49.Alexandre Deschappelles 50.Boris Gulko 51.Lev Aronian 52.Alexander Morozevich 53.Gata Kamsky 54.Robert Hubner 55.Lajos Portisch 56.Lev Alburt 57.Isaac Boleslavsky 58.Salo Flohr 59.Magnus Carlsen 60.Vassily Ivanchuk 61.Alexei Shirov 62.Tony Miles 63.Michael Adams 64.Leonid Stein 65.Laszlo Szabo 66.Gideon Stahlberg 67.Sultan Khan 68.Milan Vidmar 69.Efim Bogolyubov 70.Pal Benko 71.Fedor Bohatirchuk 72.Harry Nelson Pillsbury 73.Peter Leko 74.Rudolf Spielmann 75.Carl Schlechter 76.Jan Timman 77.Alexander Matanovic 78.Erich Eliskases 79.C.J.S. Purdy 80.Hans Berliner 81.Boris Gelfand 82.Joel Benjamin 83.Andrew Soltis 84.Keith Richardson 85.Geza Maroczy 86.Andras Adorjan 87.Sergei Karjakin 88.Alexander Khalifman 89.Grigory Levenfish 90.Ulf Andersson 91.Ruslan Ponomariov 92.Mark Taimanov 93.Igor Bondarevsky 93.Xi Jun 94.Kevin Spraggett 95.Walter Browne 96.Henrique Mecking 97.Eugenio Torre 98.Ludek Pachman 99.Alexander Beliavsky 100.Vera Menchik 101.Akiba Rubinstein 102.Joep Van Oostrom 103.Bessel Kok 104.Mikhail Chigorin 105.Duncan Suttles 106.Maurice Ashley 107.Ljubomir Ljubojevic 108.Yuri Averbakh 109.Alexandra Kosteniuk.

Now people may disagree on a few of these, preferring to add their own choices, but I would think that probably 80 of them would be near unanimous among reasonably knowledgeable chess people. Frank Dixon May 22, 2007.

I don't think that anywhere near that many should go in "Top" priority. I think that just a few other than world champions would be in Top. I think "top" priority topics should be limited to just a few that would be of interest to general readers who are not chess players. However, looking at your list, I think the rest would be "high". Bubba73 (talk), 20:11, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
I have an idea to consider. If a person has an entry in the Oxford Companion, they would be "high" or "top". Newer players of similar stature that have come on the scene since the publication of the book would also be included. Otherwise, they would be "mid" or "low". Just a thought - I'm not sure if that is the best way to do it. Bubba73 (talk), 00:20, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
My fault—I wasn't clear. When I said about 100 articles in the Top priority I meant about 100 total in all chess categories, not 100 chess bios. (Right now we have only 56 in Top priority, see Category:Top-importance chess articles.) Since this section title specifically mentions chess bios I should have made it clear that I was talking about the expanded context of priority for all types of chess articles. My thoughts agree with Bubba73's, which is chess bios get Top priority only for World Champions, official and unofficial. There aren't all that many unofficial champions and without adding them it looks like the history of chess begins with Steinitz v. Zuckertort, and it's important for people even casually interested in chess to know that there's a lot more history than that, even if you only consider Europe. (We've suffered plenty recently from some who are totally ignorant of the history of chess.) I would also add the official women's champions too, for some balance, and again there haven't been very many of them. This means that giants like Nimzovitch, Keres, Bronstein, and Kortchnoi, to name just four, get dropped to High priority. Even more perversely, following my suggestion regarding women's world champions, Susan Polgar would be Top priority but Judit Polgar would be only High. I'm sad about both those effects, but I guess it depends on exactly you define Top priority: Is it Top within the chess world (what chess enthusiasts would consider to be of primary importance), or is it Top for anyone with some interest in chess but who doesn't intend to make an in depth study? I am going by the second interpretation, and so my desire is to limit the number of Top priority pages to what it might be a reasonable reading list for someone to read who isn't a chess nut like us. We all love chess, but there is some group of people that loves just about every subject. Not to compare golf with chess (it's clear to all of us that chess is far more important or we wouldn't be here), but I would hope that a golf WikiProject wouldn't confront me with 200+ Top priority golf articles including 100+ bios when I just want the highlights. (I just checked, and ironically the current total number of Top priority golf articles is 56, exactly the same number we have right now: Category:Top-importance Golf articles.) That doesn't make my interpretation the correct one, and I respect anyone who sees a larger role for Top priority.
There are a couple of pragmatic factors that also lead me to prefer to limit Top priority to chess subjects of general interest: 1) I'd like all of our Top priority articles to be of Good Article quality or better. The chess WikiProject is fairly small, and the goal of polishing our Top priority articles is easier if there are fewer of them. 2) One use for the priority ratings is with the WikiPedia 1.0 stuff which I don't really understand or have a stake in, but it wants to use priorities to determine essential core articles. There is a third reason I like the World Champion criterion: it gives a clear and unambiguous cutoff for who goes in Top and who doesn't. We'll have enough trouble sorting bios between High, Mid, and Low, that it's nice to have at least one decision that can be made mechanically. (I agree again with Bubba73 that any bio in The Oxford Companion should be at least High priority. Since the Companion was last updated in 1992, we would have to find some other criteria to manage the last 15 years and the future.) Anyway, I like to read and consider opposing views, as I learn a lot more from people with different ideas than I would from my clone. Quale 02:23, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
I see no reason to make all Women's World Champions top priority (indeed any, with the possible exception of Vera Menchik). I can't even name most of them. That would solve the Susan Polgar versus Judit Polgar dilemma. Peter Ballard 02:41, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
You might have given one reason to put the women's champions at top priority right there. I can't name most of the women's champions either, but maybe I should. Although Vera Menchik is better known in the West, Nona Gaprindashvili and Maia Chiburdanidze are probably better known world wide (demonstrating a possible systemic bias problem). My view is that if the men's champions are automatically Top priority, the women's champions should be too. I admit that leaving the women's champions at High probably wouldn't be catastrophic, but I do think they should all be treated the same. Although I brought it up, I don't really consider the Susan v. Judit issue to be a serious problem. Judit doesn't want to be the biggest fish in a smaller pond, and I respect that. Of course we also have correspondence champions, most of whom I had never heard of either, and I would put them only at High priority. I guess I'm not exactly a model of consistency. Quale 16:55, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
With respect, I disagree. Women's-only chess should not be treated the same because it is less important. There are less books about it. Its games are less discussed. It gets less news coverage. It is not like physical sports where women need to have a separate competition, and the 10 or so female grandmasters have proven that. So women's championships are very much a sideshow - it's not just me saying that, it's reflected in coverage and public interest. Peter Ballard 12:30, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
That women's chess is accorded less importance overall than men's chess is clear, but that in itself does not automatically mean that all women's chess champions must be accorded less than Top priority. The priority system is discrete, not continuous, so when ranking all chess champions at Top priority we put Euwe, Kramnik, and Kasparov all at High, but that in no way indicates a judgment that all of their contributions to chess are judged absolutely identical in importance. (This is made even more clear if all the FIDE champions of 1993–2006 are accorded Top priority, and again if the unofficial champions are also included.) In the same way, tagging the women's champions Top priority would not necessarily imply that each individual was as important as Kasparov either. It's difficult to come up with a simple formula that doesn't have some anomalies. If we don't include any non-champions as Top priority then Nimzovitch ranks lower than Smyslov, which doesn't accurately reflect the chess world's interest in them either. Including non-champions would make the selection for Top complex and potentially a source of even more disagreements, although we face that in the High, Mid, and Low priorities in any case. That there are only around a dozen female grandmasters compared to around a thousand males makes the achievement of the women more noteworthy, not less. I think that women's chess gets covered pretty well in chessbase.com news, and some (although certainly not all) of the lack of coverage of women's chess in books is due to historical reasons. The men have had a 450 year head start and chess books on any subjects other than the opening have been essentially dead for some time. Realistically women have not had the opportunity (or at the very least not availed themselves of the opportunity) to compete against men until quite recently in the history of chess. (Vera Menchik is noteworthy as a woman who competed in men's events in an era when that was nearly unheard of; today it's commonplace.) To me this suggests that women's chess is increasing in popularity, although this is just my personal view. I admit that it is not WikiPedia's job to predict the future, just report on the past and present. I think that ranking women's champions at a lower priority than the men's champions would be consistent and acceptable, although my personal preference is to also put the women's champions at Top priority. In the end, the priorities just aren't that critical. I will be perfectly satisfied with whatever consensus we can come to, even if no one finds my arguments convincing. We just need two or three others to give their opinions and I will adopt the majority view. Quale 16:04, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Importance of chess openings

On a similar note, what about the importance of chess openings? I don't think any should be in Top level. At one point I was thinking that all openings with their own chapter in MCO should be High level. I also thought that they may need to be divided by the number of ECO codes they have.

But roughly I've been thinking that Ruy Lopez, Petrov, Sicilian, French, Caro-Kann, Pirc, QCD, QGA, Slav, KID, Nimzo-Indian, Grunfeld, and English should be top importance. (Perhaps a few others.) The rest that have chapters in MCO would be Mid importance, and the rest would be Low. (Or it could go by number of ECO codes.) How about something like that? Bubba73 (talk), 13:10, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

That sounds like a good way of splitting "Mid" and "Low". For "High", rather than going by number of ECO codes (which were decided years ago on unknown criteria), how about going by all NICBaseopening codes with over 30 000 games (1.2 million games in the database). That would give the Sicilian, Ruy Lopez, French, Caro-Kann, Pirc, Queen's Gambit Declined, Slav, Nimzo-Indian, Queen's Indian, Grunfeld, King's Indian, and the English. It would also give the Réti Opening if you consider that to be just 1.Nf3 and not 1.Nf3 d5 2.c4 - OK, I think I just started another topic of debate... youngvalter 16:36, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
That is a good thought - go by frequency in a database. As far as ECO codes, the Dutch has 20, which seems to be too many for its importance these days. Is there a place on the website where you can see the frequencies of the openings? Bubba73 (talk), 17:04, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
On NICBase? Yeah, go to the NIC-Key tab and click on the names of the openings. And it amuses me that the King's Gambit has as many codes as the Queen's Indian and five times more than the Petroff, to say nothing of the Sveshnikov! youngvalter 20:21, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
It is because King's Gambit was really important 150+ years ago, and its theory was well developed. - By the way, I think that King's Gambit and Italian Game should be also rated High, because of the historical reasons. They are rarely met today at the top level, but they played an important role in the development of chess theory. - Otherwise I accept the suggestions.--Ioannes Pragensis 20:42, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
My thoughts were more along Bubba's original idea—no articles on individual openings in Top priority, combined with Ioannes' suggestion to also consider historical factors. Top priority to me should include mainly articles that might be of significant use to someone interested in learning about chess, but not necessarily playing it. For instance, I've never played Go and I don't think I'm likely to take it up, but I have some interest in learning about it—how many Go pages might I expect to be Top priority? To me that means that Top priority articles should be selected very carefully. That includes bios of the champions, basic game rules, history and origin of the game, and some survey-type outlines of theory. That would put the survey articles on the opening, middlegame, and endgame in Top priority, but pages on specifics about particular openings, middlegame strategies and tactics, and particular endgames would range from Low to High importance. (As an aside, the middlegame page is in bad shape.) I would rate High as any opening with great historical significance or one that you would expect an average club or scholastic player to be familiar with. In addition to the most popular openings based on databases, historical importance would add the aforementioned KG and also the Evans. I think any opening you might teach a beginner should be considered for Top High (sorry, a thinko) importance, and that would include the Scandinavian, Giuoco Piano, Two Knights, and Scotch. The Philidor is usually used as a negative example for beginners, and the Damiano is notorious, so I'm not sure what to do with them (Mid might be fine). Clearly pages like Parham Attack, although very interesting, can go in Low. Quale 22:18, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
Much of what you say is already that way, as you undoubtedly know. The last time I checked, there were no openings in Top prriorty but the general artices op the opening, middle, and endgame are. I think that is the way it should be so that anyone should be able to read a top-priority article (as you suggested). Then major openings (I think it is good to include a few of mainly historic value, and instructive ones) would go in High. Others with chapters in MCO (Vienna, Hungarian, 3 knights, etc) in Mid level and the rest in Low. I think that would make Mid level the largest, but I'm not sure. Bubba73 (talk), 23:04, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
Correction, Hungarian does not have its own article in MCO (13), so it would be Low. Bubba73 (talk), 23:13, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
The most important openings have High importance. I went through MCO-13, and unless I made errors, all of the rest that have their on chapter there have Mid importance. So the rest can be assigned Low importance. Bubba73 (talk), 02:45, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

More cats for chess people?

Do you think we need more categories for chess-related bios? Right now we have only Category:Chess players, Category:Chess problemists, and Category:International Judges of Chess Compositions. We have some bios of people who are primarily known for administrative/organizational/executive contributions to chess, and it isn't easy to find a cat for them. Possible new cats:

One of my concerns are that a Chess writers cat might be too broad and include too many people. I think it should include only authors of chess books or regular newspaper or magazine columns. My other concern is finding a good name for the officials/organizers/executives cat. If we had more cats for bios we should consider creating a new subcat of the main Chess category to include all the bio cats. Any thoughts? Quale 02:35, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

As I've discovered, there is a huge number of chess bios. (I've tagged probably 200+, and I keep finding them.) However, (1) I'm not sure if there are enough patrons/atibters/officials, and (2) most of them are (or were) players also. So I'm undecided. Bubba73 (talk), 02:45, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
My main intent in proposing the new chess bio categories was simply more accurate and useful categorizations. Clearly it won't have any practical effect on the size of the main Chess players category because of the small numbers involved, and also as you point out most chess bios in any of the new categories would still remain in the Chess players cat. There doesn't seem to be a great clamor in favor of more chess bio cats, so I think I'll leave it alone for now. As far as the very large Chess players cat goes, we currently have it broken down by nation (Category:Chess players by nationality). We could consider subcats by century. The early century subcats would be helpful through at least the 19th, but I'm not sure overall it would have much impact because the 20th century and 21st century chess player cats would be large. Quale 05:32, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Play through game scores?

I believe it would be desirable to allow readers to play through the game scores (or partial game scores) appearing in the articles with, say, a Javascript viewer. Not to allow a reader to make arbitrary chess moves, just to play through a score. The game score viewer itself could be in a protected space to prevent non-admins from monkeying with it. Possible counter-arguments: Difficulty; bloat in the game scores to accommodate the viewer; errors. Thoughts? (BTW I don't have the expertise to do this myself.) --Wfaxon 11:28, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Now, we use external links to a reliable and free database of games, most often chessgames.com. See for example Mikhail Tal, section Notable chess games.--Ioannes Pragensis 16:57, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
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