Talk:List of strong chess tournaments

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[edit] since 2005

Strong tournaments since 2005 need to be added. Bubba73 (talk), 05:37, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Done, and hopefully my choices aren't too controversial. I've said in the intro that only tournaments with standard time controls are included, which seems to be the case but wasn't mentioned before. youngvalter 03:42, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Separate section for the most important tournaments

This list is so long it's hard to distinguish the moderately important tournaments from the really important ones. By "really important" I mean the major tournaments of the day which helped show who was best in the world, and which warrant their own page (as some already do). e.g. London 1851, St. Petersburg 1895-95 and 1914, Nottingham 1936, AVRO 1938 etc. Perhaps these can belong in a separate, smaller section at the start. I don't think any post-1948 tournaments qualify because by then the Candidates + Interzonals were more important than anything else. (Perhaps a separate section for post-1993 for the breakdown in the official cycles, but that's a separate issue). Peter Ballard 01:34, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

I totally agree with Peter's viewpoint here. I set the article up, not as a work in progress, but as a 'complete' list of collective expert opinion on the strongest tournaments - hence my original tournament list was an awful lot shorter, as I spent some time flicking between the many referenced sources to hopefully include only the "most important". Unfortunately, despite this being made clear in the preamble, other authors have since continued to add many more tournaments to the point that I have had to alter the preamble to read " ... takes as its foundation the collective opinion of chess experts and journalists ... ", which is decidedly wishy-washy, but otherwise the references become a nonsense. I could revisit my original list and put this in a "strongest" section of expert opinion, followed by an "also strong" list, or alternatively Peter or someone else could attempt their own version - I would certainly be OK with either. Any thoughts? Brittle heaven 09:58, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
Brittle heaven, I like your idea of having two lists. How many sources did you use to compile your list? It's just that if the sources are older then some newer tournaments will get excluded - the Linares tournaments of the early '90s spring to mind. And how short was the list? 10-20 tournaments would seem reasonable to me. youngvalter 16:04, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
I think the list should be fairly inclusive. I also think we should stay with a single list, but broken up into sections by years and annotated. If multiple sources list a tournament as strong, it should go in. The Chess Kings, Volume 1 by Calvin Olson is an interesting history taking a more scholarly approach, trying to avoid the anecdotal nature of most chess histories. The book has a very good bibliography and useful appendices. "Appendix B: Major Tournament and Their Winners for Vol. 1 (1859–1939)" is 4 pages long. (Although the appendix says "1859–1939" it actually starts with London 1851.) Since the period of 1939 to date has many more strong tournaments than this earlier period did, I think any good list is going to be pretty long. My suggestion is that the list should be broken up into sections by years. This could be done several ways, but I think two sections, 1851–1969 and 1970 to date, could work well. Each tournament before 1970 should be annotated with each reference that lists it as a strong tournament. This would allow the article reader to judge the strength of the claim. The tournaments since 1971 should instead list the FIDE category rating. This provides an objective means of determining which tournaments are strongest within a given year, since rating inflation isn't an issue over a very short period of time. Each year the top two to five tournaments or so should be listed. This leaves 1970 in a hole, because although FIDE started using Elo ratings in 1970, the category system wasn't introduced until the following year. I think we can manage one year of tournaments without too much controversy. If we want to indicate the very strongest tournaments, they could be listed in bold. Olson does this in The Chess Kings, and has about 36 tournaments before 1940 so listed (about one out of every seven of the total). Quale 17:41, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
I think it might be a good idea to joint both lists (List of strong chess tournaments and List of mini chess tournaments), and then to divide a new list into pieces, like in the German Wikipedia (see, http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_der_bedeutendsten_Schachturniere). Mibelz 11:11, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] by years

I broke the list up by 25-year ranges, but the ones from 1900 on probably need to be broken up by decades. Bubba73 (talk), 21:45, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] FIDE category

For tournaments since the FIDE rating system started, it would be good to list the FIDE category of the tournament. Bubba73 (talk), 21:48, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

The article says "No attempt is made at comparing the relative strengths of tournaments in the list, as this is the subject of inconclusive debate amongst experts." FIDE categgores could be used for this. Bubba73 (talk), 23:30, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Links to articles

I've put a few links to articles in the list - London 1851, AVRO 1938, Nottingham 1936, etc. But there are so few such articles that I'm wondering if it would be better to collect all such links to articles about the tournaments under "see also", or something like "list of tournament articles". Thoughts? Bubba73 (talk), 06:31, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Does Lone Pine qualify as a strong tournament?

The Lone Pine International was pretty strong. Does it deserve to be listed? Bubba73 (talk), 01:15, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Fair use rationale for Image:Lake Hopatcong ct.jpeg

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BetacommandBot (talk) 22:46, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Aims of this article?

I feel this may be a good time to resurrect the unresolved discussion above, the original thoughts behind the creation of this article, and where it should go in the future. It started its life as a list of 'the best tournaments of all time' as voted by many noted historians (as matched the original references). This was explained in the preamble along with the criteria for inclusion. For reasons of comparability and consistency, the historians had chosen only to consider regular tournaments over a certain size. Not national championships (otherwise the USSR Champs would have dominated the list), not Candidates Tournaments, Interzonals etc. for much the same reason; these were inevitably very strong tournaments by virtue of their purpose and magnitude of prize, and couldn't be put on an equal footing with regular tournaments. Hence, events like Zurich 1953 (recently added here) were always intentionally excluded. Necessarily, the list only reflected the tournaments selected by historians (otherwise it was original research) and it was therefore, effectively, a more or less complete list on its creation. Soon after the article's creation however, it became a dumping ground for every strong tournament in chess history and maybe this was a fault of the article's title. Consequently, as Peter Ballard points out above, there has become a need for a new, definitive 'best ever' list, based on expert opinion, which as I've explained, was how this article started its life. I believe we also need to redefine the purpose of this article by rewriting the introduction (including any guidelines on what is open for inclusion). If there is a consensus on the best way forward, it could be added to the Wikiproject 'things to do' agenda. Any views? Brittle heaven (talk) 00:35, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

It was me that added 'Zurich International Chess Tournament 1953'. I see the reason is doesn't belong here now. I was mistaken by the title and the intro which having re-read does say that such things are excluded. What I was expecting from this page is something like this or thisChessCreator (talk) 00:55, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
I think you explain the scope of this article very well, ie regular strong chess tournaments, without national and world championship qualifying tournaments. There is indeed need for an article which lists only the strongest tournaments. In any case, I think the format of this article is not so good. I very much like the way the german wikipedia does it de:Liste_der_bedeutendsten_Schachturniere. Perhaps we could have a main page, just like the german wikipedia, but listing only the strongest, and then subpages 1801-1900, 1901-1949, etc... Then there is also the List_of_mini_chess_tournaments, not sure how that will fit in. Voorlandt (talk) 09:13, 22 March 2008 (UTC)