Talk:Chess opening

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[edit] Great article!

What a good article! I don't remember ever seeing an article so large and comprehensive, written by so many editors, with such a good organization and consistent style and tone. Bubba73 (talk), 05:47, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, overall it's not bad. There are two things I can think of that could make it even better:
  1. A section on the historical development of openings would be a really good addition.
  2. A lot of the article is devoted to listing and classifying openings. I wonder if it wouldn't be better to direct readers to other pages for this - using pages like King's Pawn Game and Indian defence for instance. Irregular openings basically duplicates the section in this article - maybe we should just direct readers there. And couldn't/shouldn't Semi-open game and Closed game have their own articles?
- youngvalter 22:43, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
You make good suggestions. In particular, I agree that semi-open and closed need articles. And there is Open Game which may have a lot of duplication with King's Pawn Game. Bubba73 (talk), 03:17, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
In this case this page came first, and irregular openings was copied from it. That doesn't mean that reorganization wouldn't be good. A fair place to start might be to consider trimming the list of Open games to just the well-known openings, and directing the reader to another page for the complete list. Open Game would be a reasonable page, and it also was copied directly from this article. As a survey I like that this article gives an overview of of open, semi-open, closed, semi-closed, etc. openings in one spot. I think this is a convenience for the reader rather than requiring going to 4 or 5 separate articles. If this article mentioned only the most important openings in each of the classifications and left the complete lists for the subpages, we could remove Hungarian Defense, Konstantinopolsky Opening, Rousseau Gambit, etc. as these are really too minor for a high-level overview. Quale 06:34, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
A section on historical development of the openings would be outstanding. Potentially there is enough to say to require a separate page, but the first thing to do is find some good references. I think Raymond Keene wrote a book (in 1985?) specifically on this subject, but I've never seen it. Some of John Watson's works might also help, as might Richard Réti and Aron Nimzovitch. Even H.J.R. Murray can probably help for early developments (until 1900). Quale 06:34, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
I thought about it some more, and I think cutting down on the number of openings mentioned as suggested would improve the article. Perhaps it should directly mention roughly only the openings rated as Category:High-importance chess articles as discussed at WT:CHESS. I think this should include a few extra king's pawn openings that aren't commonly played but are well-known to beginners and club players (Guioco Piano, Scotch, King's Gambit, etc.). I said "roughly only" because I don't think any opening in Unusual first moves for White rates high importance, but we still need to say something about them. Probably we could keep the prose paragraph that explains why they are unusual without giving any of their (fairly obscure) names and cut the list, directing the reader to the irregular openings page for details. If we did this, the extra space could be used for a better description of the important openings (Ruy and Sicilian are short-changed here, among others) and we could put some more diagrams back. I can work on this tonight, unless someone else gets there first. Quale 14:04, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Summary style

I got a start on splitting detail into subpages summary style, working on Open Game and creating Semi-Open Game and Closed Game. The Indian systems are next up. We already have a Indian defences page, which has a few good bits not in the Indian systems section but there's a lot to merge from this page. It's harder to know what to do with the Chess opening#Other Black responses to 1.d4 section since this isn't a satisfactory page title. Perhaps we could create a Semi-Closed Game page. Semi-closed isn't as common terminology as Open, Semi-open, and Closed, but it is used. Strictly Semi-open semi-closed should also include the Indian defenses, but we could direct readers to the Indian defenses page and then cover the Dutch, the Polish, and the rest. Quale 06:26, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Excellent work! The diagrams under their respective category headers are great! :) --ZeroOne (talk | @) 12:20, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

  • Thanks. Way back when (early 2005 I think), this page did have some diagrams, but coverage was uneven. When we systematically expanded coverage to practically every main opening (not variations and subvars), we lost the diagrams because there wasn't room for them all. By trimming the coverage to only the most important openings I thought we could put some diagrams back. I used a trick described on WP:PIC to try to get the diagrams to automatically float and wrap into columns adapting to different screen widths. It works well on Firefox, but not on some versions of IE. Quale 14:37, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] White has 3 knights...

White snuck another knight onto the board in the illustration of the Queen's Indian Defense. Knights appear on b1, g1, and c3. Anybody know how to fix that? --Badger151 04:33, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

  • Thanks for pointing this out. I made the same mistake in Indian defence. I've fixed the diagrams. Quale 05:16, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Technical Question

Why does this page take so long to load up? Does anyone else have this problem? Is it to do with the layout of the game diagrams? Moonraker12 08:28, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Some small suggestions

Really nice article, especially considering its large scope. A few small suggestions:

  • The intro should make explicit the 2 meanings of "opening": stage of game; sequence of moves.
  • The "center control" topic goes on too long about "classical" vs hypermodern view of the center - I think it would be better with 30% fewer words.
  • It might be good to pull together the various statements of general aims in the opening (basic development; Fine's view; Silman's view) before describing specific opening "tasks".
  • And of course more citations are needed. Philcha (talk) 13:57, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
Regarding general aims in the opening, basic development etc. It seems to me the issue arose before on Rules of Chess and the objection was WP:NOT 'Wikipedia is not a guide or instruction manual'. Whether that applies here I'm not sure, but give it consideration. ChessCreator (talk) 12:40, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
I don't think there would be a problem with WP:NOT. Bubba73 (talk), 17:33, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] What about 1... c5 ?

Very nice article indeed, only was I surprised to see no coverage of the black response 1...c5. Is there a specific reason other than no editor has worked it so far? --Childhood's End (talk) 23:42, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, 1. e4 c5 is poorly covered in this article, would recommend you see Sicilian Defence and it's subpages. If you are willing, add a ...c5 section yourself. ChessCreator (talk) 23:48, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
I disagree. The level of coverage of the Sicilian in the article currently is perfectly appropriate for this survey. If the coverage of the Sicilian were expanded here, then so should be the coverage of every other popular opening. That would be out of place here. Quale (talk) 03:03, 8 April 2008 (UTC) On second thought, I should temper that a little. The Sicilian is popular enough that it could get about 2 to 3 more sentences in this article, but no single opening deserves more than that here. Quale (talk) 03:07, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
For 1.e4 e5, a section exists, 'Open_games (1.e4 e5)' with 6 diagrams with resulting openings explained and listed. 1.e4 c5 has one diagram with little explanation and no resulting opening. In modern chess and for many years, 1. e4 c5 has been the most common reply to 1.e4. However I would agree that's not been reflected in literature as 1.e4 e5 has quite a historical significant, and knowing that most people interested in the Sicilian would be for modern purposes it is perhaps best they are lead into the Sicilian Defence article anyway. ChessCreator (talk) 12:02, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
You're comparing apples and oranges a bit here, but you're right that this is due to historical reasons. 1.e4 e5 is not a single opening so it is not comparable to 1.e4 c5. 1.e4 e5 gets a whole section because that's the way that openings are broken down in opening books (Open Games vs. Semi-Open Games). The Sicilian is just one of several popular Semi-Open Games, and the Semi-Open Games together get a section just as the Open Games together get a section. Also the resulting "openings" after 1.e4 c5 are variations, while the resulting openings after 1.e4 e5 are in fact still considered separate openings, not variations of the double king's pawn opening. (Unfair? Maybe, but that's the way it is. Everything after 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 could and probably should be considered variations of a single opening, but that isn't how the nomenclature developed. This effect is particularly pronounced in the Queen's pawn openings, where mere "variations" are often more important than most king's pawn "openings".) The Sicilian as a whole is then comparable to the individual Open Games (Sicilian to Scotch Game or Sicilian to Ruy Lopez), not to all the open games combined. In that comparison the Sicilian could deserve slightly more coverage here than say the Scotch, but remember that because no individual opening should be given more than two or three sentences here, there isn't going to be much differentiation. We have several levels of articles on the openings, so we only include the very most important openings in this top level survey, including of course those most popular (today and in the past) and a few others for didactic purposes. (If amount of coverage were based strictly on importance, the irregular openings wouldn't get mentioned here at all, and that wouldn't work.) The Open Game, Semi-Open Game, Closed Game, Semi-Closed Game, Indian Defence, and Irregular opening second level survey articles can include more detail. (Some of these articles could use improvement.) The greatest amount of detail should be in the individual article on the opening, and possibly sub-articles on specific variations for the most popular or important openings. This is an application of summary style. If you want to see what the article looks like when individual openings get sections rather than organizing with high level divisions we use now, look at the page on 11 March 2005. We improved the article a lot in the three weeks following. Quale (talk) 20:24, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
I think the article's biggest problem is that it goes into far too much detail about particular opeinigs and families of openings.
I'd keep the useful list of opening terminology, and promote "Anti-" to a sub-heading on the samelevel as the rest of the terms.
I'll edit "Classification of chess openings" to repeat the x-link to List of chess openings.
I'd be happy to see the material about open, semi-open and closed games moved (or even removed). Besides being too detailed, it's misleading as there are open, semi-open and closed variations in many openings. For example: French Defense is usually fairly closed but the Rubinstein Variation is at least semi-open and and so is one wild line in the usually very closed Winawer variation; the Nimzo-Indian varies from closed (Samisch variation) to at least semi-open; and the Closed Morphy Defence to the Ruy Lopez is usually very closed despite starting with 1. e4; e5.
OTOH the article should say say something about transpositions and how they can open up a very wide range of choices and can be used to lure an opponent into unfamiliar or uncomfortable territory (see e.g. Transpo Tricks in Chess. This should perhaps go into "Aims of the opening". Philcha (talk) 12:07, 12 April 2008 (UTC)