Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Blitzkrieg (chess strategy)

This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion of the article below. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page rather than here so that this page is preserved as an historic record.
The result of the debate was no consensus to delete, but there is a consensus to discard the content. Therefore redirect to Scholar's Mate. Sjakkalle (Check!) 15:00, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Blitzkrieg (chess strategy)

The entire article text is: "Blitzkrieg (German for "lightning war") is a chess strategy in which a player can win the game in four moves." The article is completely bogus. There are 4-move checkmates, but they aren't strategies, just blunders by the losing side. Blitzkrieg is a German word with the meaning given, but it isn't the name of any chess strategy. There is no useful content that can be put at Blitzkrieg (chess strategy) because that term does not exist and it names no concept in chess. Quale 18:20, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

• Delete Actually this looks as if it could be a garbled account of a very fast form of the game played under extreme time constraints, called Blitz chess, also known speed chess. I'll leave a message on the user talk page of User:Xiong Chiamiov to see if he can help us make sense of it. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 19:20, 24 May 2005 (UTC)
• Noting that nothing links to it, I will vote delete for now. I think it's mean to describe Blitz chess. Ashibaka (tock) 19:35, 24 May 2005 (UTC)
• Delete and I would also vote to delete if it were "real". We don't need articles on every possible way to win Chess, any more than we'd need similar articles about Candyland or Pac-Man. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 20:41, May 24, 2005 (UTC)
  • However, a consensus seems to exist that WP needs such articles about Pok-accented-e-mon. Barno 00:01, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
  • Well we do have an article about every way to win at chess. It is the checkmate article. More seriously, some of the opening traps are named, mentioned in many books, and are notable. Take a look at Category:Chess traps for some of them. In fact the bar for notability for chess opening articles was set very low after a near unanimous keep vote on the Hippopotamus Defense. But I have voted delete anyway, since Blitzkrieg isn't a chess term. Sjakkalle 06:39, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. See Scholar's mate. Nestea 21:06, 24 May 2005 (UTC)
• It is Scholar's mate, but I have never known it called as such. In the book I learned chess from, The Kid's Book of Chess, by Harvey Kidder, it is described as "Blitzkrieg: The Quick Game". I will let you decide what to do, since it is apparently not very commonly known by this name. Xiong Chiamiov 22:31, May 24, 2005 (UTC)
  • Thanks for the explanation. I don't think this terminology is common. Perhaps it's even unique to Harvey Kidder? Other wikipedians will let us know if they're familiar with it. Quale 02:04, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. Jacob1207 23:48, 24 May 2005 (UTC)
• Redirect to Scholar's mate. I've heard that game referred to as the blitzkrieg game (might very well have been from the Kidder book mentioned above). -- Jonel 03:01, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. It is not a chess term and there is no chess content in the article. I remember nominating an article like this some time ago, it was the Napoleon Gambit which would have been deleted had it not been for the fact that there was a rather obscure gambit in the Scotch Game with that exact name. As for being mentioned in a book, that is not good enough. Heffalump (chess term) is not valid for an encyclopedia article, even though Simon Webb in his Chess for Tigers book has a chapter entitled How to trap Heffalumps. Sjakkalle 06:39, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
• Keep or Redirect to Scholar's mate. I would lead towards keep though, as it is generally newbies who try to use this move in chess, and it is newbies who would use a term like "blitzkrieg". Should be expanded though. Internodeuser 08:28, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
• Redirect to Scholar's mate 02:54, 26 May 2005 (UTC)
• Abstain (Was redirect to Scholar's mate, but I changed it --Bubba73 02:56, 27 May 2005 (UTC)). I've also heard young players speak of "Blitz" and this is probably what they mean, so there should probably be a Blitz (chess) redirecting to it also.--Bubba73 04:29, 26 May 2005 (UTC)
  • Blitz Chess is completely different from Scholar's Mate. Scholar's mate is a four move checkmate often seen in tournaments with schoolchildren, perhaps that is where the name comes from. Blitz chess is simply regular chess with a time limit of five minutes per side. Sjakkalle 06:15, 26 May 2005 (UTC)
    • I know that Blitz is fast chess, but I help out with my daughter's scholastic chess club and local tournaments, and I've heard some players speaking of "blitz" in the context of a tactic. I gather from the context that they are referring to some sort of rapid attack on the king, likely a scholar's mate, but I'm not sure if that's what they mean.--Bubba73 18:12, 26 May 2005 (UTC)
    • I've heard that form referred to as "speed chess" or "five-minute", with the term "blitz chess" meaning an even faster game, in which all moves must be made immediately, with no pause for thought at all. JamesMLane 07:50, 26 May 2005 (UTC)
      • There are even more terms for it, "lightning chess" for instance. One minute per side is often referred to as "bullet chess". Exactly ten seconds per move, is called "rapid transit chess" (I have heard people refer to that as "gong chess" as well). But the question here is if "Blitzkrieg" is a valid term for a chess strategy. Sjakkalle 10:02, 26 May 2005 (UTC)
    • Bubba73, I think Sjakkalle's point is that it would be a mistake to create Blitz (chess) as a redirect to Scholar's Mate, because Blitz chess has an entirely unrelated meaning and already has an article that correctly describes what it means in the chess world. Personally I think conflating "blitzkrieg" with Scholar's Mate with a redirect is an error that will only cause confusion because blitz has a long established meaning in chess that has nothing to do with 4-move mates. Of course WP does not only document correct usage of terms but also common misusages, but it's a shame to use WP to promote uncommon incorrect usages. And no, I really don't want to add anything to the Scholar's Mate page to say that it is sometimes called blitzkrieg. I've played chess for about 35 years and have over 100 books in my chess library and I've never seen or heard that usage. Quale 21:41, 26 May 2005 (UTC)
      • Your point is well taken, so skip the idea of "Blitz (chess)". I've been playing longer than that, but I don't have as many books (50 or so). I never heard Blitz used in context as a tactic until about a year ago when I heard it used by scholastic players, and since then I've heard it 2 or 3 times. "These young people today..." --Bubba73 22:25, 26 May 2005 (UTC) I'm changing my vote to abstain. --Bubba73 02:56, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
        • Interesting. I'm not around any young chess players these days, so it's very possible that this is a usage that I simply haven't encountered. I couldn't find any support for it on google, which is a little odd because there are quite a few scholastic chess resources on the web and it seems likely that something would turn up. "The Oxford Companion to Chess" says that blitzkrieg is another name for the chess variant progressive chess. That would make it a suitable redirect target for blitzkrieg (chess), but naturally not blitzkrieg (chess strategy). Thanks for the info. Quale 07:21, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
          • It might be a colloquialism. In the school club they play without clocks and in the tournaments they mostly play without clocks, but play game/30, so they can't be referring to a 5-minute game. A quote "I won with a blitz". It might mean a rapid attack on the king, similar to scholar's mate. There must be victims of scholor's mate at the tournaments because some games finish in under 2 minutes, sometimes under 1 minute. --Bubba73 14:27, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
        • Also forgot to add: thanks for your recent work on Chess terminology. Quale 07:52, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
• Redirect to Scholar's mate. JamesMLane 07:50, 26 May 2005 (UTC)
• Redirect to Scholar's mate.--Nabla 00:40, 2005 Jun 8 (UTC)

This page is now preserved as an archive of the debate and, like some other VfD subpages, is no longer 'live'. Subsequent comments on the issue, the deletion, or the decision-making process should be placed on the relevant 'live' pages. Please do not edit this page.