Talk:Punctuation (chess)

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[edit] Reordering

I reordered the symbols into symbols of increasing effectiveness of a move to make more sense. --70.111.224.85 13:30, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Symbols

Some of the symbols can be a single character, for example ‼. ςפקιДИτς ☺ ☻ 15:18, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

All double punctuation mark SHOULD be single character. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.165.23.31 (talk) 10:03, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit]  !! Brilliant move

This has been added to "!! Brilliant move" or the start of a forced checkmate. I'm not familiar with this. Can a reference be provided? If not, I think it should be removed (unless the consensus is to keep it). Bubba73 (talk), 21:05, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

I've decided to remove that, for now at least. In 39 years of reading chess books, I've never seen "!!" used that way. If there is a citation for that, it should go back in. Bubba73 (talk), 00:04, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
Image:chess zhor 26.png
Image:chess zver 26.png a8 b8 rd c8 d8 e8 f8 g8 kd h8 Image:chess zver 26.png
a7 pd b7 pd c7 rd d7 e7 __ f7 pd g7 pd h7 pd
a6 __ b6 __ c6 __ d6 __ e6 __ f6 g6 __ h6 __
a5 __ b5 __ c5 __ d5 __ e5 f5 __ g5 __ h5 __
a4 __ b4 __ c4 __ d4 __ e4 f4 __ g4 __ h4 __
a3 __ b3 __ c3 __ d3 __ e3 __ f3 g3 __ h3 __
a2 pl b2 pl c2 d2 rl e2 __ f2 pl g2 pl h2 pl
a1 b1 c1 d1 rl e1 f1 g1 kl h1
Image:chess zhor 26.png
Does Rd8+ deserve a "!!"

I agree with the removal. In a position like in the diagram, I would not give a "!!" for Rd8+, nor do I think any annotator would. (I would probably give a "??" for any other move, and perhaps some more question marks for Rc1.) Sjakkalle (Check!) 07:25, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Exactly. I don't think that any move that leads to checkmate should get a !!, only a brilliant one. Bubba73 (talk), 15:32, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit]  ? - poor move, mistake, bad move ..

A discussion came up recently about the use of a single question mark and what that signifies in English. There seems to be a lot of ambiguity about this.

  • Oxford Companion to chess - weak move
  • Nunn's Chess Openings - bad move
  • Batsford Modern Chess Openings - bad or speculative move
  • Scid database software (last official release, version 3.6.1) - poor move
  • Play winning Chess by Yasser Seirawan - poor move
  • Logical Chess: Move by Move, Irving Chernev - a mistake.
  • The Mammoth Book of Chess by Graham Burgess - bad move

Perhaps the main article should mention the various wordings that are attached to '?'. Drkirkby 04:31, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

I am not sure those different definitions for "?" are really in disagreement. To me "bad move", "weak move", and "mistake" are all pretty synonymous terms. Compare that to "!?" where the definitions "interesting move", "risky move", and "enterprising move" have different meanings. Sjakkalle (Check!) 07:08, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Too much editorializing

I think there's far too much editorializing in the Punctuation (chess)#Move evaluation symbols section (the section is poorly named, as well). It should be much punchier and to the point. I suspect that most of the opinions in that section would be hard to source. Compare the description in The Oxford Companion to Chess: under the entry "conventional symbols", for ! the Oxford Companion simply says "good move". What we have is in my opinion not entirely an improvement. I hate to remove people's hard work, but I think this section should be cut down to what we can source. A (brief) general discussion of how the annotations are typically used could be put in a separate section if well-sourced. Quale 04:46, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Yeah... I tend to agree. I made this article back in March 2005 (i.e. infancy) before I came to appreciate the value of sourcing and having references. I think Soltis had an article about "?" and "!" in the March 1997 (I'll need to search) Chess Life. Although written with a somewhat humorous tone, the history and chess stuff in his column is reliable enough. The one thing I remember from that article was that "!" was originally used to denote bad moves. Sjakkalle (Check!) 14:21, 10 September 2007 (UTC)