Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chess

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Wikipedia:WikiProject Chess page.
Please sign and date your posts by typing four tildes (~~~~). Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic. New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Ask questions, get answers.	Be polite Assume good faith No personal attacks Be welcoming
Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

WikiProject Chess Shortcut: WP:CHESS
Navigation Menu
Project Page	talk
Assessment	talk
Review	talk
Chess Portal
Extend Menu Chess Templates Category FAQ talk FAQ Format of chess articles FAQ Etiquette FAQ Articles Assessment FAQ Miscellaneous

Skip to: Bottom of page

Archives

/FAQ /Archive 1, /Archive 2 /Archive 3, /Archive 4 /Archive 5, /Archive 6 /Archive 7, /Archive 8 /Archive 9, /Archive 10

Contents 1 Link to FIDE ratings 2 What is a piece? 3 Nice feedback left on Wikibooks Chess 3.1 Thanks 4 Link to FIDE rules 5 pawn symbol 6 Wizard's Chess 7 Where should "chess notation" go? 8 I'm here :-) 9 Possible spam 10 Re-assessment of many articles for quality. 11 Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ľudovít Lehen 12 William Samuel Viner 13 Chess variants 14 Do we need this article? 15 First-move advantage in chess passed A-class 15.1 Statistics section 15.2 Minor points 15.3 All concerns addressed? 15.4 GA Class 15.5 Close out the nomination? 16 Problem with the chess portal? 17 Anyone got a crosstable book? 18 Queen sacrifice 19 Antonio Fistonić 20 World Chess Championship 21 Existing articles on weak players 22 General notability guidelines for chess players 23 GA-review of Alexander Alekhine 24 Interregnum of World Chess Champions - proposed merge 25 World Chess Championship - more sources; "official / unofficial" is broken 26 Detailed playing results as tables 27 Important history articles on the Web, e.g. Winter's 28 GA review of First-move advantage in chess 29 Merge K 30 possible linkspam

[edit] Link to FIDE ratings

www.FIDE.com has been changed, and it appears that now you have to link to http://66.232.119.96/ratings/ instead of www.fide.com/ratings for player ratings. Bubba73 (talk), 05:04, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

I fixed Template:fide so that it works again, but I wouldn't be surprised if FIDE makes more changes to their website so that we need to update the template once more, possibly even to use fide.com as before. The template is very simple, so just about anyone can make this kind of fix if needed. This is an excellent example of why it is better to use Template:fide and Template:chessgames player rather than hard-coding those external links into the page. I think we should consider creating a template for http://www.olimpbase.org as well. Quale (talk) 05:43, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

I wasn't aware of the existence of either of those templates. They should definitely be mentioned in the Templates section of this project page as they're very useful. Pawnkingthree (talk) 09:13, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] What is a piece?

We need to say something about the two different meanings of "piece", depending on the context. This is especially important in articles that non-chessplayers are likely to read. For instance, see the talk page of Immortal game, "What is a piece?" section. It is in List of chess terms#Piece, and we can link to that. But is there a better way to do it? Perhaps a short article that explains the two different contexts that can be linked to, or maybe expand the Chess Terms one a little? Bubba73 (talk), 18:14, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

It a good question and highly confusing even when English is not your second language!

It says in the Immortal game LEAD "He gives up both rooks and then his queen, checkmating his opponent with his three remaining pieces". Later it says White has been able to use his remaining pieces - two knights and a bishop - to force mate.

piece = all but pawns. So Q, R, B, N, K.

pieces = all pieces K, Q, R, B, N, P or and confusingly a collection of piece being pieces.

The lead is okay, because it's talking about checkmating - this is the context and that is done with exactly three pieces. However more confusion comes because in the final position White giving mate has a total of four pieces (two knights, a bishop and a King) and ten pieces (two knights, a bishop, a King and 6 pawns). SunCreator (talk) 18:46, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm not aware of two different meanings. To me it's always been clear- a "piece" refers to either knight, bishop, rook, queen or king, but not pawns. If pieces and pawns are referred to then the term is "chessmen", or just "men". Maybe it's old fashioned now but it's what I was taught!Pawnkingthree (talk) 22:49, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Can't say I've used the word 'Chessmen' but have read it. Isn't the word difficult if one of the 'Chessmen' is a women, the Queen? SunCreator (talk) 00:30, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

"Piece" as both meanings, see Chess terminology#Piece. And from Burgess: "Can be used to signify either any chess piece, or a major or minor piece, as opposed to a pawn. Generally the context makes the meaning clear." Bubba73 (talk), 00:31, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Of course "piece" can be used loosely to refer to pawns but as it has a more specific meaning I think that should be avoided, to avoid confusion. The main chess article, for example, says each side begins the game with sixteen pieces; that should say eight pieces and eight pawns, or sixteen chessmen (alhough I take SunCreator's point about the queen). Pawnkingthree (talk) 08:29, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

That particular thing was debated once, and it was decided that each side has sixteen physical pieces. That's what the references say too. Bubba73 (talk), 14:31, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Am I the only one who thinks that "generally the context makes the meaning clear" a la Burgess isn't good enough? It clearly does cause confusion, as the Immortal game Talk page shows. Why don't we just stick to the proper, specific meaning?Pawnkingthree (talk) 14:54, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

It is proper to use it both ways, as in the two references. Also see how FIDE laws of chess uses the word - it is inthere over 60 times, and every one is in the general sense. Do you want the touch-move rule to read "if a player touches a piece or a pawn or his king..."? I don't think so. Bubba73 (talk), 15:19, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

See above where I mentioned "chessman" or "man" as an alternative. But I won't pursue the point any further as I don't seem to be getting any support:) Pawnkingthree (talk) 15:27, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

As far as Immortal game, I changed the first link to minor piece. That should work for that article, but not all. The difference is explained in Chess terms#Piece and now it is in the lead of Chess piece. Bubba73 (talk), 16:09, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for those changes. Pawnkingthree (talk) 16:13, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Nice feedback left on Wikibooks Chess

[edit] Thanks

I would just like to say that I am extremely grateful for these pages. I can't afford any chess books (I don't get allowance or get paid for any chores by my parents) so the only resource I have is the internet through the library. I don't know how many people have thanked you all for taking the trouble to post this information up, but I'd like to just be another person to tell you that I've been reading all of this! I just hope that some wiki mod doesn't show up and delete the pages saying it's too much information, because I've seen articles cut down a lot because of it. Anyway, you guys can just delete this after a bit, but I just wanted to give a thank you because this is the best!

From edit history [1]. Thought you might like to know someone does appreciate our work. SunCreator (talk) 14:48, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

It seems to me that there is a lot more about chess in Wikipedia than in Wikibooks. The Wikibooks stuff seems limited and isn't updated much. Bubba73 (talk), 14:54, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, this is sadly true. Seems that many editors are not aware or are not wanting to help out. There has been significant improvements to the last few weeks, including the setting up of a Wikibooks:Chess project, a public watchlist for the chess articles and a Chess opening template for navigation which is now established on every relevant chess page. I'm sure it will grow over time, but for now it is a bit thin in many areas. SunCreator (talk) 15:37, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

I understand why editors are that way. I'm that way myself. Wikibooks doesn't seem to have many readers compared to Wikipedia. Wikipedia shows up at the top of Google searches but not Wikibooks. Since I'm giving my time to try to help people, I want to do it where it will do some good. Bubba73 (talk), 16:36, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Link to FIDE rules

Since FIDE changed their website, the link to the Laws of Chess has changed. This is referenced in a number of places. The new link is FIDE Laws of chess. I've changed it at the end of rules of chess, but the old page is referenced in several articles, I think.

Strangely, it is very hard to get to this page on the new website. If you go to Handbook and click on "Laws of Chess", all you get is the appendix for adjourned games, blind players, etc. Bubba73 (talk), 14:51, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] pawn symbol

Chess pieces
	King
	Queen
	Rook
	Bishop
	Knight
	Pawn

Is it easy to get a better symbol for a pawn for use in the "chess pieces" table and in the diagrams? The one in Chess symbols in Unicode looks much better. Bubba73 (talk), 05:27, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Wizard's Chess

I'm going to remove this from the list of articles to create. While I suggested it should be a separate from Magical objects in Harry Potter and an interesting one from a chess perspective because of this from Jeremy Silman. The problem is that I can't establish notability for "Wizard's Chess" on it's own. The Jeremy Silman link is not an independent source and while the Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone film/book is quite significant it's only one scene. If anyone knows of this articles notability that I've missed please let me know. SunCreator (talk) 13:01, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Where should "chess notation" go?

1. Where should "chess notation" go, if it is only used in one section - at the top of the article or at the top of that section? Bubba73 (talk), 02:55, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
2. When an article referrs to squares by their algebraic designation, but no moves, should "chess notation" be used?

My opinion: top and yes. Bubba73 (talk), 03:45, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Without too much thinking, I would tend to agree. SyG (talk) 06:13, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Bubba and SyG. The first one (where) for no real particular reason except that I find templates in the middle of articles to be uglier than templates at the top of articles. The second one (when) is because the template is unobtrusive and useful for any article where chess notation is used, and naming of squares are a part of notation. Sjakkalle (Check!) 06:21, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

If it's an article about Chess then at the top, if it's Biography about a person then in the section that applies. Your most like referring to how it's done in Bobby Fischer, in that article it seems out of proportion to have it at the top. SunCreator (talk) 13:04, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Plus yes, to the second part, although would be interested to see an example to check. SunCreator (talk) 13:12, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, the change in Bobby Fischer is what brought it up. For the other question, Pawn (chess) used to have "chess notation", but it was removed on April 11. There are no moves in the article, but squares are named by their algebraic coordinates. Bubba73 (talk), 14:49, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] I'm here :-)

In the next time I'll be here for articles about chess composers (see my userpage). Hopefully you won't get too annoyed with me. :-) Oh, please tell me again where to add new articles! --Con^structor 00:40, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Welcome to the WikiProject Chess, we always love to have new contributors on board! Don't hesitate to ask the community for help, advice or comments. Have fun! SyG (talk) 07:24, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Ok, will look through the archives. Hopefully I'll find it. Yes, I always have fun! Hey, don't get too acquainted to me, I'll leave when the articles are done. :-) --Con^structor 17:54, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

This is wikipedia—the articles are never done! You probably know about this already, but you can look at Category:Chess problemists and Category:Chess problems to see what we have now on chess problems. I don't think any of the most active members of WP:CHESS have a strong interest in chess composition, so this area of our coverage could be improved. Thanks for your help. Quale (talk) 18:28, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Since you probably don't know - I'm one of the most active writers on de about this. So I know what Wikipedia is. --Con^structor 19:08, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

You might be able to improve Deutsche Schachzeitung then, if you like. I just created it. I used some material from de:Deutsche Schachzeitung, but I don't read (or speak) German, so I couldn't make out all of the German language article (which has no sources listed anyway). You could also talk to the goof who removed the interwiki link I added there, since unless things are very different on the German language wikipedia, interwiki links don't constitute "no improvement" or "vandalism". Quale (talk) 19:18, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Now there are sources listed! --Con^structor 18:26, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

I'll take a look at this later! --Con^structor 21:38, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

He says, it was probably due to a database issue and a wrong click on "back" in the browser and "revert" (without looking at the interwiki first). See his reply in german here. At the moment there are lots of database issues on de (one reason I don't want to continue as much there at the moment). --Con^structor 22:58, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Welcome aboard! It is great to have new people joining the project. To answer your question, new articles should be added in the List of chess topics. Happy editing!Voorlandt (talk) 19:57, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! That was what I meant! --Con^structor 21:38, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Possible spam

User:Sv9 seems to be adding external links to YouTube videos. The person in the video (Serguei Vorojtsov) has initials SV, so this is likely the same person. I watched one video, and it seemed OK to me, but what do others think about them staying in? Bubba73 (talk), 05:16, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Are these the same as the ones discussed at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chess/Archive 9? In this case the consensus was delete, so I have been slowly deleting them as I have found them. In general, I think only IM or GM analysis is notable for the external links section. Peter Ballard (talk) 06:24, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

I have looked at one of the videos posted by User:Sv9, the one on Paul Morphy. The quality was rather poor: no explanation of the first 6 moves (by then, Morphy already had an overwhelming advantage!), no strategic consideration, no alternatives considered, etc. The presentator is certainly a great chessplayer, but not a good teacher I am afraid. This video did not bring a lot more information than a PGN.

Regarding our general attitude towards videos, I would propose the following principles:

• judge each video separately, on the basis of what value it brings to the article
• for a given article, retain at most one video in the external links (only the best one, arguably)
• judge each video on the insight it would bring to the mainstream reader, i.e. generally a very weak player.

SyG (talk) 07:34, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

About User:Sv9, here are some facts:

• The first 4 edits he did were to upload images about Serguei Vorojtsov solving classical mechanics problems.
• His 5th edit was to add Serguei Vorojtsov in the article List of YouTube celebrities (now really...); strangely enough that was deleted rapidly :-)
• His following edits were to add videos made by Serguei Vorojtsov on chess articles.
• It seems he also tried to create an article about Serguei Vorojtsov, but that was speedy deleted.

Of course we should foremost WP:AGF and not jump to quick conclusions about his real identity and his intentions for Wikipedia... SyG (talk) 07:47, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

My vote is just to blanket delete. I watched Levitsky-Marshall. It was entertaining, but not instructive at all and contained a 'full on' advert for a chess sales site at the end. These are just elaborate advertisements in my opinion and Peter Ballard is right to remind us of the past discussions. 'Bidmonfa' are currently taking over the biographies too - their worth seems to rely solely on a photo - and as we have a growing number here on wiki, I can't see why we should support them either. I think we need to be vigilant and remove everything except Chessgames.com, which brings a range of 'wiki editor-friendly' tools (database, reasonably reliable biography data, forum discussion of topical and historical issues ... etc.) and most importantly, no blatant advertising. Brittle heaven (talk) 08:10, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Can't find the links to the videos in question. My take would be to judge each video separately and include only those that bring value to the article. SunCreator (talk) 10:24, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Found three of them now on the history. They are not very good in presentation, nor useful to the topic matter. Did like Lasker's King hunt game, perhaps we can make use of that game(the game not the video) in the future. SunCreator (talk) 10:38, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Brittle heaven. Quale (talk) 10:46, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

I watched the Evans-Reshevsky one, and it stops just before the famous desparado swindle, and give an advertisement. I think it should go, and SyG has deleted it. Bubba73 (talk), 14:44, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

I added a few chess videos to the Hebrew WIKI. I did not see any advertisement so I think the best would be to judge every game by itself. By the way - most readers do not play chess at any rated level so the sentence "I think only IM or GM analysis is notable for the external links section" is a bit too much. Most players (99.99% of the WIKI readers) can benefit from an analysis of a 2000 rated player (much weaker than a master but still a capable player) as what he can show them is much to much for them. The delicate points that an IM or a GM can show them they would not understand anyway, and they do not have the patience to spend a few hours so that they may see his point. And remember that a video is very short, usually, and you can not get into deep explanations. For this kind of analysis we have chessbase (or other products - please do not think that this is an advertisement) and books. --Niemzowitsch (talk) 12:44, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Re-assessment of many articles for quality.

Have been re-assessed over 200+ chess articles in the last few days. All B-Class and above or Top/High importance, over 200 articles in total.

Results are presented in a neat sortable table. I would post it here but it's rather big(!). It has really useful figures like traffic statistics, class and importance. Because the table is sortable it's really ideal to compare, say quality against important and importance against daily traffic.

The table can be found at Chess assessment, along with a link to how the assessment figures are worked out. SunCreator (talk) 16:51, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

That is quite a feat, well done! Very useful to have a general idea of where we should put our efforts first. SyG (talk) 19:39, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

A crazy intense few hours! Where do you think efforts should be put as a result of this information? SunCreator (talk) 21:39, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for this. The idea of awarding points to every article Wikipedia:WikiProject Chess/Assessment has its merits. But the current system can definitely be improved on. Some suggestions for improvement:

• Although the system claims to be indicative for quality, it very much focusses on quantity. An article should be of a length suitable for the subject, so short well written articles get punished in this system.
• Things like spelling, grammar, tone, style and stylistic issues are ignored. These are all extremely important for an FA push. As an example, proper referencing is totally ignore. (eg First move advantage in chess has currently the most points, but fails to cite websites correctly (they miss the access/retrieved date).
• Negative points get awarded for the article not chess project focused. As far as I know, quality has nothing to do with the subject matter. Personally, I would not award negative points, but only positive. EG +3 for completeness, +2 for style, etc..

Voorlandt (talk) 20:24, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

That is indeed a lot of good work. One thing I noticed is that with a few exceptions, 7 points or higher is a B (or higher).

However, Voorlandt has a valid point about quality versus quantity. There is a lot to say about World Chess Championship, but how much is there to be said about Castling? This also applies to references. For inztance, the MoS says that it is OK for a short article to have just a list of references instead of inline references. A short article may have no inline references but have the Oxford Companion listed as a reference, and that could be sufficient. Also, about the table of contents - that depends on the number of sections the article has and a setting in your preferences tells how many sections are required to show to TOC. But good work overall. Bubba73 (talk), 21:25, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

I never knew that about the TOC setting, you learn something everyday. :) SunCreator (talk) 21:43, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Yes, thank for your ideas. It does indeed give weight to quantity. I don't think there is any claim to be indicative for quality, if so it's likely a typo! There is a trade off between assessing an article in a reasonable time span and looking for a more refined detail. Perhaps the next review of a article will be the more refined type but for a lesser number of articles. Checking to the level of cite websites correctly would be rather time consuming I would imagine and somewhat hindering because only web references can easily be checked unless you have the various books in question. One thing that comes to focus is articles that nearing completion but still have little content. I'm not sure such articles could ever achieve GA status, so perhaps they are better off to be merged with other articles? Or maybe not, but those type of articles are the ones that seem to be struggling, although even then an article like en passant should be able to get to 9 or 10 points which puts it clearly in the area where all such articles are equivalent to B-Class. SunCreator (talk) 21:38, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Yea, en passant is an interesting example. It is the only one with 6 points that is B, and most of the ones with 7 points or more are B or higher. I've worked on the article and I am the one that raized it to B a days ago. It gets 400+ hits per day, so a lot of people are reading it. But I think it is fairly complete, and I can't think of anything else to day about it. Bubba73 (talk), 22:29, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

More on en passant, the content rating of 2 points says it has 3-4 paragraphs, but I count 7, not counting the "illustration" section that has three diagrams with captions but no paragraph, per se. The rating of 1 point for references says 3-4, but there is one external link to a game, five books listed as general references, plus an external link to the FIDE laws (which should really be a reference.) Bubba73 (talk), 22:52, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Five paragraphs. 3-5 for 2 points.(sorry 5 was absence from summary before). Three paragraphs before the TOC and two in 'Historical context'. One line sentence not counted. Diagram captions aren't counted unless they are a mouthful, which these are not. There are six references as you correctly highlight and that count as 2 ref points not one, my mistake seems references been added since it was assessed. External links don't count. My recommendation for this article is to somehow make an animation, it's really hard to grasp without seeing it in action at least once. I remember as a beginner how tricky this idea is. SunCreator (talk) 23:09, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

There are the three snapshot diagrams. I don't know how to make an animation. Also, I count seven paragraphs: Lead: 3, example in opening: 1 (admittedly one sentence, but includes moves and diagram caption), example in game: 1 (three sentences plus diagram captions and moves), history: 2. Bubba73 (talk), 23:32, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

GIMP would do it, it's free, it can do it, but it's rather tedious unless you are a bit advanced at using software. If you go that route, I might be able to at least piont the right way, I have GIMP but know it can be quite unproductive time wise.

I discounted middle bits as short sentences. While technically short sentences can be paragraphs if it's got some a few full stops. I've not counted that, counting two full lines of text and more, stretching into the third line at least. The third paragraph as in the lead is about the minimum. SunCreator (talk) 23:49, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

OK. My point is not to argue about this article or how paragraphs/references are counted. But this article does show how an article can say about all there is to be said about a subject, yet get a relatively low rating. As I said, I don't know much more it can say. It says more than rulebooks and chess encyclopedias. It has the lead, a simple illustration, an example from the opening, an example from an interesting game where first it was not used and then it was used to checkmate, and some history. In some other articles (touch-move rule, threefold repetition, castling) I've added some "human interest" stuff, and fifty move rule has a bit where Kasparov and Karpov could have claimed the draw but didn't. But I don't know much else this article needs, other than the annimation you suggest. Bubba73 (talk), 00:00, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Your right in concept here there are some articles like En passant and ICCF numeric notation that can't go beyond B-Class. If I understand correctly En passant is to small to meet GA-articles criteria. This leaves the question what to do with it. Should we be happy when it's a complete B-Class article or aim to go higher by say adding it to another article as a section, perhaps a section in Rules of chess, although can imagine this would cause unbalancing of Rules of chess article. It's a question I don't know the answer to, but would like to hear comments. SunCreator (talk) 00:19, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

I think it should be left as its own article. It is already discussed in the Rules article, this is more in-depth. Making this a section in Rules would make that article out of balance. Bubba73 (talk), 00:27, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Been reading through some FA discussion and seems no technical small size limitation to an article, however apparently small articles don't get submitted to the FA process. Not familiar enough with FA/GA workings to know why that is. SunCreator (talk) 00:40, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't think articles such as en passant should ever be FA. I don't think our goal should be make every chess article a FA. I think FA should be reserved for a select number of our articles with the widest appeal. Of course, non-FA articles should be as good as they need to be. Bubba73 (talk), 01:58, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree that FA is not a required endpoint for all articles. I haven't followed GA criteria closely, but the GA process is fairly widely considered broken (by many at WP:Mathematics for instance, and they have many more "good" articles than we do). In general the whole article review process concentrates heavily on what an article looks like on the surface level (lots of purty pictures, a certain ratio of inline cites/sentence, a certain number of sentences, paragraphs, and sections, etc.) It's basically an accounting exercise that rarely pays much attention at all to what the article actually says.

I think this discussion itself pretty much answers the question of why short articles don't get submitted to FA. I think worshiping the cult of the large article is harmful to writing a good encyclopedia. I actually have no problem with the end point for many small articles being B-class, and don't consider that to be a problem or an insult. On the other hand, I think a small, policy and guideline compliant, substantially complete, referenced article deserves a B-class rating unless it really is so small that it is a stub that ought to be merged. ICCF numeric notation vastly exceeds a should-be-merged stub, and in my opinion is not far from B-class now. Quale (talk) 03:08, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Revised table with 400 articles assessed. Added extra columns including column suggesting articles most in need of improvement. SunCreator (talk) 01:57, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Are you doing that all by hand (no software to help)? Either way, that seems like a ton of work. We appreciate it. Bubba73 (talk), 03:09, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

It's largely manual but I'm using Microsoft Excel to store, add up, sort and format. I'm not sure if that counts as 'software'. It's been a ton of work to setup, but adding new ones is quite straightforward, but I don't intend expanding more then the covered 400 articles as all top importance, high importance and B-Class articles are included.. SunCreator (talk) 11:48, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ľudovít Lehen

Members of the WikiProject are asked to help ascertain the notability of Ľudovít Lehen at this AfD. Many thanks. --Dweller (talk) 13:43, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] William Samuel Viner

William Samuel Viner seems to be a copyright violation. The original source is very good and I think it could be rewritten to avoid the copyvio and be a good article. If anyone who is interested in Australian chess or just in chess bios in general would care to rewrite it, that would be great. I should do it, but I don't have the energy for that project right now and the copyvio can't be allowed to remain for long. Quale (talk) 03:51, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Chess variants

Where does WP:CHESS begin and end with chess variants. I noticed some Shogi variants that are not assessed within the chess project. SunCreator (talk) 20:32, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

A good criterion would be inclusion in the classified encyclopedia of chess variants (by David Pritchard). I also think that inclusion in this book is a minimum requirement for the inclusion of a chess variant in wikipedia (minimum, definitely not sufficient, as some only get one or two lines in the book). On the Shogi variants, Pritchard spends about 10 pages on them. If you have examples, I can look them up to see if they are there. Voorlandt (talk) 20:43, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Easiest to include the Shogi variant template(right), also a few Shogi related topics as follows: GNU Shogi, Kifu , Tsumeshogi, XShogi SunCreator (talk) 20:56, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Shogi variants
Standard shogi (9×9, drops)
Small variants
Microshogi (4×5)
Minishogi (5×5)
Kyoto shogi (5×5)
Judkins shogi (6×6)
Whale shogi (6×6)
Tori shogi (7×7)
Yari shogi (7×9)
Heian shogi (8×8 or 9×8, 12th c.)
Standard-size variants
Sho shogi (9×9, 16th c.)
Cannon shogi (9×9)
Hasami shogi (9×9, 9 or 18 pc.)
Hand shogi (9×9, 19 pc., 10 in hand)
Annan shogi (9×9, neighbors influence movement)
Unashogi (9×9, all drops)
Large variants
Wa shogi (11×11)
Chu shogi (12×12)
Heian dai shogi (13×13)
Dai shogi (15×15)
Tenjiku shogi (16×16)
Dai-dai shōgi (17×17)
Maka dai-dai shōgi (19×19)
Kō shōgi (19×19)
Tai shogi (25×25)
Taikyoku shogi (36×36)
Three- and four-player variants
Sannin shogi (7×7×7 hexagonal board, three-person)
Yonin shogi (9×9, four-person)

Hmmm that is a lot of variants. I am really not sure what is best. Clearly Shogi (very similar to Crazyhouse) is a chess variant. Gets over 10 pages in Pritchard's encyclopedia (for comparison, Bughouse chess gets two pages). Perhaps the easiest (and least controversial?) decision would be to include no shogi variants (but of course still Shogi). Judging case by case is in any case hard. Voorlandt (talk) 10:31, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Do we need this article?

Do we need ECO A03? I haven't checked to see if there are others like it, but a year or so ago I think that we generally agreed that we don't need an article on each ECO code. Bubba73 (talk), 03:14, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

All of the rest of the A and B codes are in there as redirects to list of chess openings. Bubba73 (talk), 03:25, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Seems pretty worthless to me. If we want to list all the ECO codes, the Encyclopedia of Chess Openings article or someplace like that is the place to do so. I think very few readers, be they strong chessplayers or weak, are ever going to find or use the ECO A03 article. I say we get rid of the thing. Krakatoa (talk) 06:17, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree, let's try to avoid having hundreds of stubs while one single article can do better. SyG (talk) 06:38, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm going to make it a redirect then. Bubba73 (talk), 15:11, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

We don't need them no. I recently redirected ECO_A01 and ECO_A02. There is quite a lot but I think they are all redirected now. SunCreator (talk) 16:36, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

There are A00-99 and B00-99, all were redirects except A03, and I made it a redirect. Bubba73 (talk), 16:45, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] First-move advantage in chess passed A-class

On 3rd May 2008, the article First-move advantage in chess has successfully passed the A-class review! The number of "quality articles" (say GA-class and higher) goes from 5 to 6, a 20% increase! Thanks to Krakatoa for his immense work on the article, and to Bubba73, SyG, SunCreator, Voorlandt, Quale and others for their critical reviews. The detail of the review can be found at Wikipedia:WikiProject Chess/Review or in the table hereunder: SyG (talk) 08:00, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks to everyone for your suggestions, help with the article, and votes! Woo hoo! Krakatoa (talk) 15:41, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Nomination by Krakatoa

This article, primarily written by me, is, I think, very well-researched and referenced, covers the topic thoroughly, and as best I can tell, satisfies all the criteria for A-class. Quale wrote on the article's talk page, "I think it's very good, and your sections and section titles are much better than the ones I was thinking about. I'm bumping the rating to B. I would say it's an A-class article, but many WP:CHESS members think that the project A-rating requires a (semi-)formal review." Krakatoa (talk) 15:59, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Review by Bubba73: conclusion was "Support"

It is certainly a very fine article, well researched and documented. I have only two minor style issues, and they are not that big and could go either way. Capitalization of "black" and "white". Usually these are when they are substitutes for a player's name, otherwise not, e.g. "then Black played..." when referring to a person, but "... the black queen... ". So maybe these should not be caps in the article. But I'm not sure. Percent. The "%" character is used several times, and the style is that "%" is used in scientific work and in tables, info boxes etc, and that "percent" is used otherwise in text. This is no big deal. Bubba73 (talk), 16:18, 12 April 2008 (UTC) I've tried to address the % issue now, substituting "percent" where reasonably possible. But I think doing so in a sentence like this would result in a nightmare: "Streeter found that overall White scored +38% =31% -31% (total 53.5%); in 1851-78, White scored +46% =14% -40% (total 53%); in 1881-1914, White scored +37% =32% -31% (total 53%); in 1914-32, White scored +37% =37% -26% (total 55.5%)." Compare "Streeter found that overall White scored +38 percent =31 percent -31 percent (total 53.5 percent); in 1851-78, White scored +46 percent =14 percent -40 percent (total 53 percent); in 1881-1914, White scored +37 percent =32 percent -31 percent (total 53 percent); in 1914-32, White scored +37 percent =37 percent -26 percent (total 55.5 percent)." Unbelievably long, cumbersome, and ugly; the reader will be asleep by the time he/she staggers to the end of that sentence. I think that in effect, a sentence like this one is a "table," so use of the % symbol rather than the word is appropriate. As for capitalization of "white" and "black," I think the article does so appropriately. I don't believe that a phrase like "the black queen" ever occurs in it. Invariably, the article uses the two words to refer to the player(s) conducting the white or black pieces. I think that in that context "White" and "Black" are correct and almost universally used. See, e.g., The Oxford Companion to Chess (1st ed. 1984), p. 297 (article on "SCHLIEMANN DEFENCE") ("By playing 3...f5 Black weakens the diagonal a2-g8, but Jaenisch felt that his move might be practicable because White has not placed his light bishop on this diagonal."); Suba, Dynamic Chess Strategy, p. 134 ("Even the symmetrical variations of some openings present White with a critical moment at an early stage and he cannot progress without making concessions to Black."); Watson, Secrets of Modern Chess Strategy: Advances Since Nimzowitsch, p. 231 (among many other examples on this page and those following, "White maintained a 56%/44% winning percentage for most of the century . . . . But it is also true that some of the world's top players have scored brilliantly with Black."). Krakatoa (talk) 17:44, 12 April 2008 (UTC) I asked about the use of white and black on the help desk. I got two replies and they agreed with my thinking: Wikipedia:Help_desk#capitalization_of_.22white.22_and_.22black.22_in_chess. Bubba73 (talk), 14:42, 13 April 2008 (UTC) Here is what you asked: "This is a style issue - when should "white" and "black" be capitalized when talking about chess? My understanding is that they should only be capitalized when substituting for a proper name, such as "... White played the queen...", and not otherwise, such as "the black pieces". Is that correct?" I don't believe the article ever uses a phrase like "black pieces"/"Black pieces" so your example doesn't seem apropros. The article uses "White" and "Black" to refer to the collective results of persons playing the white pieces and persons playing the black pieces, respectively. As I said above, that as far as I can tell is the approach universally taken by chess writers (I cited the Oxford Companion to Chess, Suba, and Watson, and can add more if you like). What sentences in the article do you consider defective in this respect? To give a hypothetical, do you think that in a sentence like, "Statistics show that White scores 55 percent and Black 45 percent." "White" and "Black" should be lower-case, e.g. "Statistics show that white scores 55 percent and black 45 percent?" As I say, I think few if any chess writers outside of Wikipedia would write the latter. Krakatoa (talk) 18:24, 13 April 2008 (UTC) I know that there are respected books that use Black and White that way, but there are plenty that don't. My understanding is that it should be like a proper name - caps when substituting for a proper name. In the case of this article, it is talking about an abstract player of the white or black pieces, not a particular player. I'm no expert, and could go either way, but I think not caps unless they are substitutes for proper names of a particular person is in keeping with our style. Bubba73 (talk), 18:57, 13 April 2008 (UTC) OK, if "White" and "Black" are used as if a proper name would be used, even though there is no specific person, I think that is OK. So it would be "... the black queen... " versus "... Black's queen...", since in the second case, it is taking the place of a proper name. So I'm OK with that. Bubba73 (talk), 23:26, 13 April 2008 (UTC) Approve From what Bubba73 has written hereunder, I will consider he approves the article as A-class, unless he states otherwise here. SyG (talk) 17:21, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Review by SyG: conclusion was "Support"

Approve Given that the comments in my review hereabover have found solutions, I approve that this article should be given A-class, on the basis of this version. Of course there is still room for improvement so I am not sure the article would do it to FA-class. For example the interesting comments made by Voorlandt on the Talk page of the article about the relativity of the advantage depending on the level of players. But as long as there is no source it is difficult to work further on that. SyG (talk) 09:26, 19 April 2008 (UTC) Comment Hereunder are my comments and proposals for improvements, based on the review of this version of the article. in the Lead The link between the first sentence and the second one may not be clear for an outsider, because in the first sentence we talk about "advantage" and in the second one we talk about "more chances to win", without doing an explicit link between these two notions. After all, an "advantage" could also be "less chances to lose" ? Y Done I think I've tied these up, see what you think. Krakatoa (talk) 02:41, 16 April 2008 (UTC) The expression "scoring between 53 and 56 percent overall" in the second sentence is unclear for an outsider, even if it is explained in later sections. It may be understood that White wins 53% of the games, which is not what is meant. Y Done note added to explain this Krakatoa (talk) 02:41, 16 April 2008 (UTC) The word "theorists" may not be clear for an outsider. What is a theorist, especially regarding chess ? Y Done As mentioned below, in response to SunCreator, I intend to write an article on chess theory (i.e. opening, middlegame, endgame theory) and link to that. The expression "best play by both sides" may be worth a link to something (an article on Game theory ?) because for a non-game expert it may not be clear. Y Done Not sure what to link to; doesn't seem to be addressed in game theory. Krakatoa (talk) 02:41, 16 April 2008 (UTC) There is some discussion of that at Endgame tablebase, but not enough in my opinion. Perhaps that could be a small article, or probably better a term. Bubba73 (talk), 02:49, 16 April 2008 (UTC) I have added a link to the "perfect play" section of Solved game, so I consider this DONE. SyG (talk) 17:21, 18 April 2008 (UTC) In the sentence "the game should conclude in a win for White or a draw", why not adding a link to Draw (chess) ?Y Done I also created a chess term for "win" and linked to that. Krakatoa (talk) 02:41, 16 April 2008 (UTC) There is an obvious typo in the sentence "a game of chess should conclude in a draw with best draw". I will correct that. Y Done The first sentence implies that White actually has an advantage, which is not proven by anyone. At first I thought that this was a problem and maybe the sentence should be phrased like "the probable advantage", but now I think it is not so bad because the third sentence clearly states that there is consensus on that. Y Done I take it this is OK, then. Krakatoa (talk) 02:41, 16 April 2008 (UTC) The Lead does not reflect the last paragraph of the last section, in which it is hinted that moving first may not be an advantage. Y Done in the section "First move statistics" Maybe the first paragraph would look better as a table. I don't know how to do this. Maybe someone else could do this? Krakatoa (talk) 02:41, 16 April 2008 (UTC) I've added a table. I'm not sure if how it looks is appropriate. With/without border, what should be listed, to go at the beginning/middle or end of paragraph. All questions I don't have a clear answer to. SunCreator (talk) 11:33, 18 April 2008 (UTC). The use of signs +, = and - is not explained, nor is the way to reach a total percentage. Y Done The phrasing "More recently (in 2005)" is a bit redundant and heavy, the first two words would be sufficient. Y Done I do not understand the structure of the second paragraph. It looks like just a list of evidences, which is good but could read better with one or two sentences to add fluidity or insight.Y Done I added an explanatory sentence at the beginning of the paragraph. in the section "Drawn with best play" I find the formulation "The classical view is that White's objective is to extend" a bit heavy because of the repetition of "is". Why not something like "In the classical view, White's objective is to extend" ? But as I am not a native English-speaker, please tell me if I am wrong.Y Done sentence rewritten Krakatoa (talk) 02:41, 16 April 2008 (UTC) In the first sentence I would replace the verb "secure" by "reach", otherwise the reader may think that equality always remains once achieved.Y Done What assesses Weaver Adams as "prominent" ? Y Done Wrote reference explaining this. Krakatoa (talk) 02:41, 16 April 2008 (UTC) In the second sentence of the second paragraph, I do not understand why the first letter of the quote is in upper case. Is it compliant with WP:MOS ? Y Done I think so. Look at these examples given (not addressing this exact point, admittedly) under Wikipedia:MOS#Quotation_marks: Correct: Arthur said, "The situation is deplorable." (The period is part of the quoted text.) Correct: Martha asked, "Are you coming?" Krakatoa (talk) 03:07, 16 April 2008 (UTC) I agree. Bubba73 (talk), 03:15, 16 April 2008 (UTC) allright then, DONE for me. SyG (talk) 17:46, 18 April 2008 (UTC) According to WP:ELLIPSES, I think the three dots in the quote of Watson should be in brackets, like [...] Y Done I don't see why. The guideline you cite says "An ellipsis does not normally need square brackets around it, since its function is usually obvious—especially if the guidelines above are followed. But square brackets may optionally be used for precision, to make it clear that the ellipsis is not itself quoted; this is usually only necessary if the quoted passage also uses three period in it to indicate a pause or suspension." The quoted passage doesn't use three periods in it, so square brackets are not necessary. Krakatoa (talk) 03:07, 16 April 2008 (UTC) Right. The brackets are generally only used around an ellipsis if you use an ellipsis in a quote that already has one. Bubba73 (talk), 03:14, 16 April 2008 (UTC) allright then, DONE for me. SyG (talk) 17:46, 18 April 2008 (UTC) in the section "White to Play and Win" According to WP:HEAD, the names of sections shall not include "special characters", although I am not sure the character " should be considered as special.Y Done I find it problematic to name the section with the title of a book, while this section talks about other things than the book.Y Done I have removed the quotation marks, so the title now is not just an allusion to the book. I think the title is a good one to tersely capure the concept -- especially since I reference Berliner saying that he is a disciple of Adams. Krakatoa (talk) 02:41, 16 April 2008 (UTC) The player Horowitz shall be refered to by his full name (i.e. including surname), in order to be consistent with all the others and to avoid any REDIRECT link. Y Done I have slightly changed the link in order to avoid any REDIRECT. SyG (talk) 17:46, 18 April 2008 (UTC) Hans Berliner should be presented as "a former World [...]" and not "the former World [...]". Y Done Jeremy Silman should be presented as "International Master" and not "IM", in order to be consistent with all the others.Y Done I think I've addressed this. The first International Master I cited, I used "International Master," for the next one I used IM and then just an unwikified "IM" thereafter. OK, not a big deal anyway, DONE for me. SyG (talk) 17:46, 18 April 2008 (UTC) Randy Bauer and Taylor Kingston are quoted but their credibility is not explained. Why are they authoritative ? It seems Randy Bauer is not even an IM ?Y Done I removed the text references to Bauer and Kingston (though they're still mentioned as references). They're respected reviewers, I think, but I don't know what (if anything) their titles are. I don't think either is an IM. As I say, I would dearly love to get hold of the Watson review, in which case I would probably just quote him and forget about Bauer and Kingston altogether. Krakatoa (talk) 02:41, 16 April 2008 (UTC) There is an undue space before the 26th reference. I will correct that. Y Done in the section "Modern perspectives" There are undue spaces in "1. e4" and "1. d4" in the quotation of Kaufman. Y Done Originally, I quoted him as he wrote it (same thing with others who wrote "1 e4" and such). For the sake of consistency, I've changed this sort of thing to "1.e4" and "1.d4" with a parenthetical note added to the reference "(notation form changed)." Krakatoa (talk) 02:41, 16 April 2008 (UTC) others Are there no players/experts who have argued that Black may have an advantage ? Y Done Rowson has a chapter on Black's advantages. I am inclined to add subsections to the article on "The nature of White's advantage(s)" and "The nature of Black's advantage(s)." I think the new sections you added are great to present Black's points. DONE for me. SyG (talk) 17:46, 18 April 2008 (UTC) Shall we speak about players who have better statistics with black than with White (maybe Morozevich ?, although I have not checked his statistics) ? Perhaps, if you know of such players. I've never heard of any GMs who consistently score better with Black than with White. I would think that there would probably have to be some significant number of such players, not just one, to make it worth writing about. Krakatoa (talk) 02:41, 16 April 2008 (UTC) I happened upon a thread at chessgames.com talking about Morozevich's excellent results with Black. On this page malthrope writes, "Just looking quickly over his stats here on CG.com we get... Database of 969 games with Moro winning 410 times... Wins with White 220 (53.66%) Wins with Black 190 (46.34%)" I haven't checked the math, but if malthrope is right even Morozevich does better with White than Black (I'm assuming that the 969 games are split roughly evenly between the two colors). Krakatoa (talk) 05:07, 16 April 2008 (UTC) Shall we speak about those openings like the exchange variation of the French defence where it is sometimes felt that Black has a kind of advantage even if the position is symetric, precisely because White has to move first ? Y Done I've added sections on "Reversed openings" and "Symmetrical openings" and the problems those pose for White, and specifically discuss the Exchange French. Krakatoa (talk) 02:41, 16 April 2008 (UTC) There is no section "See also". It is not compulsory to have some, but I find they add some value. Y Done All in all I am really impressed by this article. It is factual, precise and well-referenced on a subject that is really not easy. At the end of this review I would like to propose it to GA-class at least. For A-class, let's wait until the end of this review :) SyG (talk) 20:01, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Review by SunCreator: conclusion was "Support"

Comment (Moved from the articles talk page.): Don't think headings should be in quotes. "Drawn with best play", "White to play and win" and Statistics is a short ambiguous(on it's own) word for a title.Y Done Done a peer review and this is bits I think apply. Please expand the lead to conform with guidelines at Wikipedia:Lead. The article should have an appropriate number of paragraphs as is shown on WP:LEAD, and should adequately summarize the article. The lead is to be as concise as possible while still covering the whole article. It seems to do that. Y Done Consider adding more links to the article; per Wikipedia:Manual of Style (links) and Wikipedia:Build the web, create links to relevant articles.[?] Y Done If there is not a free use image in the top right corner of the article, please try to find and include one.[?] Y Done This article is a bit too short, and therefore may not be as comprehensive as WP:WIAFA critera 1(b) is looking for. Please see if anything can be expanded upon.[?]Y Done As done in WP:FOOTNOTE, footnotes usually are located right after a punctuation mark (as recommended by the CMS, but not mandatory), such that there is no space in between. For example, the sun is larger than the moon [2]. is usually written as the sun is larger than the moon.[2][?]Y Done Reflist 2 has come under criticism as it doesn't show well on various browsers and for some it makes the wording so small it can't be read. Y Done SunCreator (talk) 15:37, 13 April 2008 (UTC) I've added links, and created a few articles and sub-articles to make links to, so I think that is pretty much done. Please link anything else that you think should be linked. I do intend to create a chess theory article, and link to that when I talk about "theorists," but that will take some work. (I want to talk about opening theory, middlegame theory, and endgame theory.) As for the lead, the guideline says it can be "up to four paragraphs" and should summarize the article well. The current lead is one paragraph (while doesn't violate the guideline, since no minimum length is specified), and I think it summarizes the article well. So I think I've addressed all the items in your peer review. Krakatoa (talk) 02:06, 16 April 2008 (UTC) The thing you linked to is entitled "Multiple columns deemed bad." I don't see how that applies to this article -- its reference list only has one column. Note 1 is followed by note 2, then note 3, note 4, and so on until the last note, which is at the bottom. That's one column, right? Krakatoa (talk) 23:43, 15 April 2008 (UTC) For me (using Firefox browser) it shows as two columns that's because it's using {{reflist|2}}} to use only one column it would just be {{reflist}}. SunCreator (talk) 23:56, 15 April 2008 (UTC) I've made the change now. I would not apply this to other article but only here because I think the idea is to push this article to Featured article level. SunCreator (talk) 00:07, 16 April 2008 (UTC) Thanks. Neanderthal that I am, I use Internet Explorer, so I couldn't see the problem. I'm gratified to think that you think the article could be a Featured Article. As you know, we have precious few chess article (0.2%) above even B-class. Krakatoa (talk) 01:56, 16 April 2008 (UTC) [edit] Statistics section I think consideration should be given to splitting up this section and include in other parts of the article. It's sure it's fine in context but a section with statistics might not be to welcomed by some reviewers. SunCreator (talk) 19:21, 13 April 2008 (UTC) To my mind, the statistics section is in a way the most significant part of the article. It's all well and good to debate, in a vacuum, propositions like, "does White win by force from the starting position"?, "does White have an advantage, and if so, how much?", "does Black have the advantage, because White has to commit himself first?", and so on. The statistics section provides data against which such questions must be considered -- i.e. it's hard to claim that White wins by force if Black scores around 45% (including in games by the strongest players). I also think it would be weird to split this information up, apportioning a sentence to this section, a sentence to that section, and so on. All of the information in the "First move statistics" section is closed related and belongs together. Krakatoa (talk) 22:20, 15 April 2008 (UTC) I think the statistics are important and should remain in the article. Bubba73 (talk), 22:46, 15 April 2008 (UTC) They are important. Two more suggestions, how about renaming the section so the word 'Statistics' is not included. how about moving the section down to the end of the articles order, so that it like a concluding section. SunCreator (talk) 23:03, 15 April 2008 (UTC) What is one supposed to name it without using the word "statistics"? "Winning percentages"? How is that better? What's the bugaboo about statistics? Krakatoa (talk) 23:37, 15 April 2008 (UTC) I'm not wild about moving the statistics section down to the end. It provides important information necessary to evaluate the relative plausibility of the "Drawn with best play" and "White to play and win" arguments. It's really hiding the ball to put it at the end ("hiding the lede," as some would put it). Does putting it at the beginning violate any Wikipedia principle? Krakatoa (talk) 23:49, 15 April 2008 (UTC) Okay, is see you;ve renamed it, that seems good. I can't recall where I read about it. It wasn't a guideline, but rather some talk page but I'm unable to locate it to recheck it's context. The nearest I found is Wikipedia:NOT#STATS but that doesn't apply because this article has the statistics nicely explained. SunCreator (talk) 00:12, 16 April 2008 (UTC) [edit] Minor points From this version. How about caption below the image of Wilhelm Steinitz. At first glance the image looks unrelated to the topic. I don't want to add OR, but if there is something along the lines of "Wilhelm Steinitz considered chess a draw with best play", that would enhance the image. Y Done Review tool, still thinks lead is inadequate. Looking at a (good length) suggestion of Wikipedia:Lead here, it seems sensible to expand the lead to be two paragraphs. Reading the FA criteria I get the idea that concise is better, if so then it's great as it is. SunCreator (talk) 08:58, 22 April 2008 (UTC) Use of capitalisation "White" "white" "Black" "black", especially in winning percentages section is not consistent. Are we happy that it's correct? Y Done I think(!?). +38% =31% −31% (total 53.5%) looks unattractive. How about some other way, perhaps "Win 38% Draw 31 % Lose 31%" or putting it in full "White wins 38% draws 31%, and loses 31% giving an overall result of 53.5%". Or even removing some of it given that it's now duplicated to the table. Y Done "concluded that White scored 54.1767% plus 0.001164 times White's Elo rating advantage, treating White's rating advantage as +390 if it is better than +390, or -460 if it is worse than -460." ref 10. This doesn't make sense to me at all. It is very interesting that the external reference recommends 35-[elo]-point rating deficit for White to compensate for White's advantage(!). Would seem useful to this article. Is "Hodgson-Arkell" self evident? Rather then say "Hodgson versus Arkell" and why not go to full names Julian Hodgson-Keith Arkell? Why are some moves bold while others "1.Nf3 Nf6 2.g3 g6 3.Bg2 Bg7 4.0-0 0-0 5.d3 d6" are not? Ref 70 (Reinhard-Fischer game) is not as you might at first expect(with Fischer's claim), perhaps the comma should go outside the reference, or the sentence reworded to be clear what reference refers to what? Is sentence wording "defended tenaciously" with ref 79 (Portisch-Tal game) OR? Y Done (changed wording) Solvable? How about adding something as discussed in Talk:First_move_advantage_in_chess#Can_it_be_solved Article has more then enough content already. SunCreator (talk) 16:49, 23 April 2008 (UTC) In "See also" is it best to use Draw (chess) or Draw? Y Done as it's been removed. Further reading is not in alphabetical order as suggest by Wikipedia:Guide_to_layout#Further_reading Y Done Wikipedia linking doesn't seem to like ISBN-10 and ISBN-13, perhaps it should just be ISBN. Applies to some references as well as some future reading books. Y Done SunCreator (talk) 14:26, 19 April 2008 (UTC) Something needs to be done about "+38% =31% −31%" there, and in hundreds of other articles. Bubba73 (talk), 15:38, 19 April 2008 (UTC) Y Done (as to this article, not the hundreds of others; now we use W38 D31 D31 format, which I (Krakatoa) think is clearer to non-chess players).

Review by Voorlandt: conclusion was "Support"

Support This article is very well written and nicely referenced. I therefore support upgrading this article to class A. Two minor comments. I am not sure I like the statistics table, since it doesn't add very much. Instead perhaps a few other more interesting statistics can be added. I started a threat on the talk page of the article with suggestions. If the table stays, it would be nice to centre it on the page, or even better to have the text left and the table right in that section (like the chessdiagrams below, nicely embedded in the text). Currently the article is in the Category:Chess. As the category page says: "It should list very few, if any, article pages directly and should mainly contain subcategories". Perhaps it would be nice to create a master category chess theory, where this article would feel very much at home. Subcategories could include Category:Chess tactics, Category:Chess strategy, Category:Chess traps and Category:Chess openings. This would be very much in line with what we have done to all the chess bio categories, we grouped them in one master category Category:Chess biographies. For FA, the web links in the reference should be changed, that is, they should mention when the webpage was retrieved (or accessed), for the format see Wikipedia:Embedded_citations Y Done Voorlandt (talk) 07:31, 19 April 2008

Conclusion by SyG: A-class was reached

[edit] All concerns addressed? As best I can tell, all the concerns expressed about the article (by Bubba73, SyG, and SunCreator) have now been addressed, and I think to the satisfaction of the proponents of those concerns? A couple of other random things: (1) I like SunCreator's table (under "Winning Percentages"), but it looks a little funky to me. Is there a way to make the horizontal line for database 1475-2008 go all the way across, and to make all the vertical lines go all the way down? (2) I think the first two words in the article title should be hyphenated: First-move advantage in chess. Anyone else have an opinion on that? Thanks for all your help with the article! Krakatoa (talk) 06:28, 19 April 2008 (UTC) I am not sure I understand your comment on the statistics table, as in my browser there is a horizontal line all the way across, but I am using Firefox. Is it because you may be using Internet Explorer ? I agree the current title may be slightly confusing, as someone may think it is about the first "move advantage" that a player gets in chess. I would like to have the opinion of other editors before we change it, though. As you can see above I have changed my assessment from Comment to Approve for A-class. As Bubba73's comments seemed to imply he agreed as well, we just need the following steps: get the approval of a third reviewer. Both SunCreator (on this page) and Voorlandt (on the Talk page of the article) have done a review and provided some comments, but none has clearly stated they approved the A-class. wait until 3rd May 2008, as the article has been nominated on 12th April and the review needs to last at least three weeks. (frustrating, clearly, but gives enough time to everyone to join in). wait one week after the last comment has been made, in order to ensure noone has a last-minute objection to be made. SyG (talk) 09:42, 19 April 2008 (UTC) Agree that it's A Class. Will look at table display issue in various browsers. SunCreator (talk) 11:41, 19 April 2008 (UTC) Above, I also said I support the A class. However they are plenty of comments here that can improve the article (see for instance Bubba's comments, and my comment on the refs). A lot of them minor, so they should be easy to fix. Can something be done about the layout of this review? It is very hard to follow as comments are scattered all over the place in no hierarchical structure. Perhaps all comments that are no longer relevant can be removed, and all other comments grouped? Voorlandt (talk) 16:27, 20 April 2008 (UTC) I approve. The title should probably be "First-move" ... An alternative is "The advantage of the first move in chess", and I don't like that. Bubba73 (talk), 15:13, 19 April 2008 (UTC) Y Done Hearing no objections, I've moved the article to First-move advantage in chess. Krakatoa (talk) 02:52, 24 April 2008 (UTC) [edit] GA Class To me this article seems GA class right now, should it be proposed as GA or should it continue to be improved and go for FA class? SunCreator (talk) 20:08, 17 April 2008 (UTC) Yes, whatever is decided about A-class, I intend to propose it to the GA nominations. For information, Alexander Alekhine is currently pending there. SyG (talk) 21:05, 17 April 2008 (UTC) I will support it for GA. Is GA considered below A? Bubba73 (talk), 21:10, 17 April 2008 (UTC) As far as I understand it is a bit different, as A-class is defined by each WikiProject, while both FA-class and GA-class have "transversal" processes about reviews (meaning any subject can be proposed). In some WikiProjects the A-class is considered just a corridor before FA-class, in others it can be a definite state. For example Bughouse Chess will have a very hard time to become FA-class because some of the remaining issues (e.g. history) just need sources that do not appear to exist! SyG (talk) 15:04, 18 April 2008 (UTC) [edit] Close out the nomination? I count four Supports (Bubba73, SyG, SunCreator, and Voorlandt), one more than necessary, and no opposition. It's officially May 3 Wikipedia time, and I believe more than one week since the last comment. Does someone want to close out the nomination? Krakatoa (talk) 02:42, 3 May 2008 (UTC) Yes, I see noone opposing to this article being uprated, so I shall close the review and declare this article has successfully passed the A-class review. Well done, and thanks to all for your work! SyG (talk) 07:26, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Problem with the chess portal?

There seems to be a problem with the chess portal, specifically the recently added article First-move advantage in chess. Now that it's an A-class article, it's been added four places on the Selected article list. If one looks at, say, space 10, First-move advantage in chess appears to be the article assigned to that space. But if one clicks on the space 10 link on the left, it shows the article for Emanuel Lasker. The same thing happens, with a different article instead of the Lasker one, if one clicks on any of the other three places to which the article is assigned. Can someone fix this, please? Thanks! Krakatoa (talk) 15:50, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, my mistake, I will fix that immediately. SyG (talk) 16:51, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. Krakatoa (talk) 23:53, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Anyone got a crosstable book?

The recent article the American Chess Congress has complete crosstables for all nine editions except the 1921 eight American Chess Congress in Atlantic City. I added a few results from what I could find online, but it would be nice if we could complete it. It is probably covered in either of:

• Gaige, Jeremy (1974), Chess Tournament Crosstables: Vol IV: 1921-1930, Philadelphia 
• Di Felice, Gino (2006), Chess Results, 1921-1930: A Comprehensive Record with 940 Tournament Crosstables and 210 Match Scores, McFarland, ISBN 978-0786426423 

I hope someone can help out! Voorlandt (talk) 20:21, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Queen sacrifice

Queen sacrifice is listed on the main page as needing work, and it does. Or do we really need an article on queen sacs seperate from sacrifice (chess)? None of the three chess encyclopedias that I have have an article "queen sacrifice". Bubba73 (talk), 15:05, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

For the time being I do not see why "queen sacrifice" could not be merged into "sacrifice". I prefer to have one consistent article that several stubs. SyG (talk) 15:38, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, the article has just been improved. Bubba73 (talk), 16:08, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

It could also be merged into Queen (chess). Longer term I'm thinking that the piece articles, would be including material about piece use.

For example in the Queen topic you would cover

Opening: Development of Queen into enemy position early (eg Scholars mate, Center Game) and development not into enemy position (eg Nimzo-Indian with Qc2).

Middlegame: Queen attack against enemy king with other pieces eg. pawn(with fixed pawn wedge), Knight(Knight on 5th/6th rank attacking 7th rank pawns), with Bishop=(on weak squares in front of king) also Greek gift sacrifice, with rooks(back rank and 7th rank attacks), Queen Sacrifice

Ending: Queen Vs Pawn, Queen Vs Rooks & Bishop etc

although I recognise there is a requirement to go carefully because of a perception of WP:NOTHOWTO. SunCreator (talk) 01:45, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

I like the idea of covering the articles about the pieces that way. Most of them need improvement. I don't like the idea of merging queen sacrifice with queen (chess); if it is to be merged I think sacrifice (chess) would be better. Bubba73 (talk), 02:50, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

And I don't think "how to" is a problem if you approach it correctly. Don't say what to do - tell how it is done. Don't say "move your queen here", tell what masters have done and have written about. Bubba73 (talk), 04:34, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

I think queen sacrifice has more to do with sacrifices than it has to do with queens, so if it is to be merged, the sacrifice article is the proper target. However, I don't know if this is really necessary, The Art of Sacrifice in Chess has a whole chapter devoted to the queen sacrifice so in terms of notability, I think it is reasonable to call it notable enough for a separate article. Combine this with the certain romanticism there is around sacrificing the queen, and I can understand a certain interest from the reader in having a separate article on queen sacrifices. Also, any merging will need a patient editor who is good at tailoring. The present sacrifice (chess) article looks like a patchwork. It is not a bad or useless article, but I feel the information is a bit all over the place (I'll admit as a contributor to that article that I may have contributed to the problem there), and merging queen sacrifice in with that via the "copy and paste text dump" method will make the problem worse. Sjakkalle (Check!) 11:48, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree that queen sacrifice is sufficiently notable. I can think of some games to illustrate "real" queen sacs. If anyone wants to follow this up, post a mesage on my Talk page.

Ditto sacrifice (chess). Themes I can think of include:

• Real vs pseudo-sacs. Not a rigid distinction, it's bounded by calculation range.
• Positional vs tactical sacs.
• Big sacs (e.g. Q) vs small ones (P, exchange).
• Common sacs, e.g.: of B on h7 or f7 (by White) and on h2 or f2 (by Black); exchange sacs, especially on c6 / c3; various sacs by White on e6 in Sicilian.
• Gambit openings, including "gambits" played later, e.g. Chatard-Alekhine in orthodox French, some variations of (semi-)Slav.
• How to deal with sacs: take and try to defend; partial or total return of sac'd material at an opportune moment; ignore; counter-attack.

Would probably take at least 2 passes to get it right, as details will have to be spawned into daughter articles. Philcha (talk) 10:24, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

OK, let's keep it but improve it. Bubba73 (talk), 15:13, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Antonio Fistonić

Could someone please search for references for Antonio Fistonić so that the article can be kept? If the person never existed, then the article should be tagged for deletion. --Eastmain (talk) 21:39, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Looks like a good candidate for deletion, could even be a hoax, as 'Fist' appears in both the subject and author's names. He's certainly obscure if Mibelz hasn't heard of him. Brittle heaven (talk) 22:44, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

I have PRODed it. SyG (talk) 05:43, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] World Chess Championship

Sources I've found while researching edits to Wilhelm Steinitz and Adolf Anderssen indicate that the idea of a recognised world champion goes back to the mid-1840s and only gradually became clearer. Among other things that pulls the rung from under the distinction between official and unofficial world champions. I therefore think World Chess Championship needs a rewrite. Talk:World Chess Championship summarises the main points. Please comment there. Philcha (talk) 10:04, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Existing articles on weak players

Biaina Geragousian: Local girls champion of 2004, rated 2000. Should there not be a limit? Guido den Broeder (talk) 07:38, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

There are no formal guidelines for notability of chess players beyond WP:BIO, but generally I would call anyone with a GM title or a national chess championship (general championship that is, not age-based or gender-based) notable since those achievements have been enough to earn a person a mention in paper encyclopedias. Going lower than that is in my opinion a bit iffy, for example I am not entirely sure how IMs should be treated. For the article you cited, I think it is below most notability standards. The tournaments mentioned in the article are for the women's section which is not as strong as the open (not men's) section. (I (with Elo rating 1267) have played against girls with similar achievements (played in international girl's championships) and drawn, and I have a kind of personal notability standard, not supported by any policy, and totally original research, that anyone who I've drawn or defeated in chess are non-notable.) Sjakkalle (Check!) 11:12, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

I do not think she is notable. Also, the fact that there are no references should push us to consider the statements made are false, and then there is nothing left that shows any notability, which would mean deletion. I just hesitate between PROD and AfD. SyG (talk) 21:20, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

A rating of 2000 is notable if you are young enough, but she is 20. And she was in the bottom half of the Junior Championship. Not notable enough, in my opinion. Bubba73 (talk), 21:46, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

I think it's WP:PROD material. In it's current wording and contents I can't see how it's a notable topic. SunCreator (talk) 22:10, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Delete for the same reasons I argued at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Catherine Lip - a national junior chess champion fails the guidelines at WP:BIO, particularly this part: "Participation in and in most cases winning individual tournaments, except the most prestigious events, does not make non-athletic competitors notable. This includes, but is not limited to, poker, bridge, chess, Magic:The Gathering, Starcraft, etc.". Peter Ballard (talk) 09:18, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Please do not continue to be selective with just that text which is misleading but instead read the whole of WP:BIO. If we apply just that above text the majority of Grandmaster are not notable and can also be deleted. SunCreator (talk) 09:36, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

No, because GMs participate at the top level (which is also explained in WP:BIO), national junior champions (unless they go on to significant senior achievements) do not. Peter Ballard (talk) 10:22, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, I do think a lot of grandmasters are not notable (for a general encyclopedy, of course), but I know I am a bit strict in this opinion, so I am not gonna push for it. SyG (talk) 10:27, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

A 7-year-old rated 2005 would be notable. A 20-year-old with that rating is not. Hell, I had a higher rating at age 20. I agree with Peter Ballard that the Catherine Lip precedent indicates that this article should be deleted. As I recall, Ms. Lip's age was comparable, and her rating a little higher (2080 or so). Krakatoa (talk) 11:42, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Regarding GMs, Store norske leksikon has individual articles on Magnus Carlsen, Simen Agdestein, Rune Djurhuus, Jonathan Tisdall and Einar Gausel. Carlsen and Agdestein are arguably more notable than an average GM (Carlsen for being a chess prodigy, Agdestein for being a professional football player as well), but for Tisdall, Gausel, and Djurhuus, they were deemed notable for an encyclopedia by virtue of being grandmasters. With precedence from a paper encyclopedia, I would therefore argue that all GMs are notable for being GMs. Other Norwegian players with individual articles are Svein Johannessen and Olaf Barda, and both of them received an IM title, but no GM title, but their notability is probably tied more to the national chess championships they won, rather than the IM title. Also, the SNL article on "chess" has a list of all Norwegian IMs and GMs as well, so everyone with one of those titles gets a mention on a list, if not a full article, in that paper encyclopedia, and Wikipedia should definitely not be more restrictive than that.

Regarding national junior champions, that is more borderline. How would you judge the notability of the reigning Norwegian Cadet Champion, who has received substantial coverage in non-chess media (e.g. [2] [3]) and the front cover in the bimonthly Norwegian chess magazine [4]? From media coverage, I would guess notability standards are met, even with a FIDE rating of 2066. She does not pass the "anyone losing to Sjakkalle is not notable" test (round 3, KM 2004), though in fairness I should point out that she was very young then, and she got her revenge less than a year later. Sjakkalle (Check!) 06:39, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

I have problems with this "substantial media coverage" argument. The two examples you offer look to me like the chess column in the paper, not mainstream non-chess media coverage. In any case, not all media coverage makes a person notable. Often local newspapers have articles on junior champions (in any sport, not just chess), as a "local interest" story. To me, that just doesn't make a person notable enough for an encyclopedia. That's why I think that, except for the truly exceptional prodigies, it is better to wait for significant senior achievements. And I think that's reflected in WP:BIO's guideline that amateur athletes generally need to compete at the highest level to be notable. Peter Ballard (talk) 11:13, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, that is a pretty good observation. Nettavisen is mainstream media, but the notability generated from the chess section of this online newspaper is at best a bit iffy. There will not be any verifiability problems if an article is written with that as a source, but WP:BIO passage is debatable. (Reasonable arguments can be made either way.) However, people like GMs and national champions who have received a separate article in a paper encyclopedia are, by any reasonable definition, "encyclopedic". Sjakkalle (Check!) 11:47, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] General notability guidelines for chess players

If this has not been done before... following on from the above discussion, I'd like to suggest the following (flexible) guidelines for notability, which I think constitute a fair reading of WP:BIO:

• The general rule is that to qualify a player should be a GM, WGM, or national (men's or women's) champion;
• old-time players of GM strength, before the GM title existed (or when it was much harder to attain), may also qualify;
• Well-known chess authors who are not GMs (John L. Watson comes to mind) also qualify;
• As a general rule, winners of junior championships do not qualify (just as they do not in other sports, I believe), but exceptional juniors do. By "exceptional" I guess I mean performances which generate reasonable press (even if only within the chess community), and have people talking about them as a future strong GM. e.g. there were Chessbase stories (and a WP article) on Parimarjan Negi before he obtained the GM title. Peter Ballard (talk) 12:37, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

For the moment I am not completely convinced we need such a categorisation. Why not stick to something simple like: "if someone has received extensive coverage in reliable secondary sources, he is notable. Otherwise he is not." ? SyG (talk) 18:02, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree with SyG's statement above. SunCreator (talk) 11:18, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

I just thought some general guidelines might save having the same arguments over and over in future. But if there's no enthusiasm to discuss this, I'll drop it. Peter Ballard (talk) 10:41, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Your guide seems sensible to me. BTW I don't believe extensive coverage is needed, just non-trivial. Pawnkingthree (talk) 10:50, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Peter - I think guidelines are definitely helpful, as it must be agonising for occasional, or newby contributors to have their works deleted. For instance, someone unfamiliar with the nuances of chess titles might easily imagine that a biography of someone titled International Master would easily qualify, but not necessarily so. Therefore, posting this kind of advice on the Project Page (if we can all agree some content) may help avoid wasted effort. Regarding those (non-juniors) who are ostensibly known for playing the game, I feel there is a split between old and modern times, in that there are a great many people these days who can afford to play and compete in the many Open tournaments around. Consequently, I think '(W)GM-only' (or national champion) is probably the only workable rule. In terms of players from yesteryear, I would be a little more flexible. There was a sizeable, but limited number of players (and I think User:Mibelz corners the market here) who were on the circuit, whose lives have been documented in a minor capacity and whose names have appeared in the crosstables of important tournaments. They may not all have been GM equivalents, but it would be churlish to refuse to acknowledge them. With juniors, I think you have it just about right - it's difficult to be too prescriptive, because it is, at the end of the day, a subjective assessment of whether the player has the news coverage, results and rating potential to suggest they will become a GM. Of course, this should be an easy task where they have just won any of the World / European / Asian etc. youth or junior events. I guess we also have to consider non-players and so I would suggest broadening your acknowledgement of 'authors' to include noted trainers, engine programmers, theorists, benefactors and the like. As it happens, in many cases they will be authors as well. There is an overall parent category 'Chess Biographies', where a few of these people have, rightly or wrongly, now been listed. Brittle heaven (talk) 11:44, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

I think Peter's guideline is good. The only thing I would criticize is that WGM title is in fact inferior than the IM title. --Jisis (talk) 12:13, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

It shouldn't matter whether player is male or female, so player should be GM. If you want WGMs, too, you should also take IMs. Lab-oratory (talk) 12:27, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

The determining factor is notability, not playing strength. For chess notability, the ratings threshold is lower for women than for men. Whether that means setting the bar at WGM or something else is open to debate. Peter Ballard (talk) 12:42, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

The Women's titles are a bit of a tough when determining notability. I'll try to summarize what I figure to be the major arguments in the "Are WGMs more notable than IMs?" question

• WGMs are more notable than IMs because the top level of women's chess are often well-covered championships.
• WGMs are more notable than IMs because women who hold both titles are usually titled with "WGM" rather than "IM".
• WGMs are more notable than IMs because there are far fewer WGMs than IMs (or GMs for that matter).
• WGMs are more notable than IMs because WGMs represent the top level of women's chess which is itself of public interest, while IMs are generally not the top level anything.
• WGMs are not more notable than IMs because the rating requirements for the IM title is higher than for the WGM title.
• WGMs are not more notable than IMs because neither gender has an inherent advantage in chess unlike athletic competitions, and granting WGMs more notability than IMs is a gender-bias in our coverage.

There are probably more arguments on both sides of the debate, but I can say that saying "WGM=>Notable" is not going to increase our number of chess bios by all that much. Sjakkalle (Check!) 13:51, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Are WGMs notable if unimportant IMs are beating them more or less? --Jisis (talk) 19:06, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

"WGMs are more notable than IMs because WGMs represent the top level of women's chess" No, the top level of women's chess is occupied by real GMs who happen to be women, of whom there were 11 as of late 2006: see[5] The whole concept of "women's chess" offends me. Unless one subscribes to the view attributed to Fischer in 1964 -- that "women are all weakies" -- I fail to see why there should be such a thing as a "Woman Grandmaster" title. As the Polgars, Humpy Koneru, Kosteniuk, Gaprindashvili et al. have shown, women can compete successfully with men -- as anyone not a sexist would expect. Can you imagine the outcry if FIDE instituted titles like "Black Grandmaster" and "Hispanic Grandmaster" with ratings several hundred points below "regular" GMs? Krakatoa (talk) 03:37, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Ah, yes, when I said "top level" I was thinking about the typical national, not international level. I completely agree with your being offended by the concept of women's chess, because neither gender has an inherent advantage in this game. Sjakkalle (Check!) 06:05, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Notability is a minefield. I sympathise with the desire to spare newbie editors the pain of seeing their contributions deleted. But:

• Newbie editors don't know about WP:NOTABILITY, let alone WikiProject-specific variants of it ("What's a Wikiproject?").
• Notability depends on point of view. For example some promising kid may be notable to Indians. There are about 1 billion of Indians (I'm not sure whether India's population has overtaken China's), and Indians do a lot of publishing in English. Some day they will pour into en.wkipedia and want to create articles on subjects that are genuinely notable to them. If someone thinks a topic is sufficiently notable to for them to do the work of producing a Start-class article that's WP:NPOV and complies with WP:BIO, it probably is. To take a chess example, Jonathan Penrose is pretty insignificant in world terms but notable in England (he beat Tal, for goodness sake!). If we don't have an Indian equivalent, we will soon enough - Anand's world title will see to that. Philcha (talk) 13:55, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] GA-review of Alexander Alekhine

The GA-review of Alexander Alekhine has started. Please come on the Talk page of the article and see if you can help, so that we get one more article recognised as a good one by the Wikipedia community! SyG (talk) 20:16, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

The GA review wil resume on 26 May. There are still several points that lack refs. Please help! Philcha (talk) 20:05, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

The article Alexander Alekhine has been listed as a Good article! That means the number of chess articles of good quality (FA-class, GA-class and A-class) has reached 7! Surely not an impressive total "per se", but every small step counts. Thanks first to Philcha for his tremendous work on the structure, the references and many other points. Thanks also to the other members of the WikiProject Chess who have taken part in the GA review by working on the article, notably Krakatoa, Mibelz, Pawnkingthree and Gimmetrow. SyG (talk) 21:38, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Many thanks also to:

• SyG for clearing up many of the points that arose during the review, including a lot of citations.
• Quale for doing the vast majority of the grunt-work of converting Alexander Alekhine's detailed results to tables, which left the text free for more interesting stuff. Philcha (talk) 11:33, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Interregnum of World Chess Champions - proposed merge

In Jan 2008 there was a proposal to merge this into the World Chess Championship. There was extensive debate at Talk:Interregnum of World Chess Champions until late April 2008, but nothing since. I suggest the "merger proposed - please discuss" tag should be removed. Philcha (talk) 14:34, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] World Chess Championship - more sources; "official / unofficial" is broken

In the course of researching for articles about individual "world number ones" I've found enough sources about "world champion" to push the historical account back to the mid-1840s, plus a lot of other sources for the rest of the 19th century. The trouble is that using it would:

• Add a good 50% to the general history part of the article (not counting the sketches of top players). It might be necessary to trim the sketches of top players quite severely.
• The additional material IMO shows that the "official / unofficial" distinction is misleading and logically indefensible (Talk:World Chess Championship includes some of the paradoxes when the "official / unofficial" distinction meets the sources I've found). That will have knock-on effects, notably on Wilhelm Steinitz. Please comment at Talk:World Chess Championship. If there are no convincing objections I will start revising in 2 weeks. Philcha (talk) 14:43, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

I've started updating this. There's now a debate at Talk:World Chess Championship#Structure about how it's developing. If you have an opinion, please state it there. Philcha (talk) 00:15, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Detailed playing results as tables

Alexander Alekhine was the first article in which we tried presenting detailed results as tables, because previously the results made most of the the text an indigestible catalogue of results. After the GA review of Alexander Alekhine, Nikki311 suggested it might be a good idea to split the results tables inot a separate "List of .." article, as Alexander Alekhine is currently 93 KB.

I've since tried result tables in Howard Staunton (60 KB), Wilhelm Steinitz (60 KB) and Adolf Anderssen (35 KB), who played chess in the mid to late 19th century, when opportunities for formal competition were much less frequent. IMO comparing Howard Staunton, Wilhelm Steinitz and Adolf Anderssen suggests the amount of text is the most significant influence on length: Staunton and Steinitz were controversial and historically important (like Alekhine), so there was a lot of text to write; Anderssen was simply a nice guy who was world #1 for most of 15 years.

My own feelings are: a consistent format would be helpful to readers; it might be good to see how tables in the same article work out for 1 or 2 other mid to late 20th century players, to see if the same format works in modern conditions, where a GM can play 6 strong tournaments per year. Since producing such tables is not a fun job, I suggest the least laborious way to check whether result tables work for modern players is to see how many tournmants, matches and Olympiads, etc. were played by various modern players - e.g. whose first formal competition (including junior events, etc.) was after 1970 and who are now regarded as retired. A table would be a good way to summarise the results of such a survey, here's a table for the data, starting with a summary for Alekhine, who is the baseline. (the "signature" column will prevent SignBot from complaining and messing up the data). Of the numbers, "Total events" is the most important for the impact on article length.

Player	Date range	No. of individual tournaments	No. of matches	No. of team tournaments	Total events	Your signature
Alexander Alekhine	1907-1946	87	34	5	126	Philcha (talk) 13:09, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

I definitely agree that putting Alekhine's results in a table did a lot for the quality of the article, because when the results are in the text it quickly becomes extremely unlively and boring to read. Your analysis seems to imply that putting the tables in a separate article would not significantly diminish the weight (in kB) of the article, hence for the moment I do not see a reason to create a separate article anymore (am I missing something ?). I think the table format should work for most players, maybe for the most active ones we just have to change the text size ? SyG (talk) 18:18, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Maybe hide/show option could be used if there seems to be too many results for a player? Lab-oratory (talk) 18:41, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

My reasoning was that if we found a more recent player who played e.g. 200 events in his career (Alekhine played 126) we might need to re-think.

Does anyone know how to create and delete sub-pages, so I can actually see what the weight (KB) of Alekhine's tables is? That would be more accurate than my arm-waving analysis that the text is the major factor in the weight of an article.

A hide/show option would reduce the visible size of an article, but not its download weight (KB). Philcha (talk) 19:09, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes. I just meant that if the wikitable is disturbing large it can be hidden. I dont think that kilobytes matter anything. Lab-oratory (talk) 19:22, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

KBs don't matter for readers who are using broadband, but there's a guidline somewhere (IIRC an offshoot of WP:Accessibility) that says we should consider wireless users and users in places where telecoms facilties are poorer. Philcha (talk) 23:01, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

I just realised Karpov would be a good test case, as he's had a 35-year career at the top and, unlike some hyper-durable 19th century players (e.g. Blackburne), had the opportunity to compete as often as he wanted throughout his career. Then I got lucky: Mark Weeks' Karpov's Tournament, Match, and Exhibition Record has a similar tabular format to the one used in Alexander Alekhine (although slightly less detailed), and my browser tells me Week's Karpov page is a little under 7KB. Even making a very pessimistic allowance for the greater detail of the format used in Alexander Alekhine, I think it's very unlikely that result tables for Karpov would significantly exceed 10 KB. I therefore have no reservations about using the tabular format for the results of recent top-class players. Philcha (talk) 12:27, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Important history articles on the Web, e.g. Winter's

It's been bugging me for a while that some important sources for chess history, notably Winter's, are Web-based and therefore will go offline some day, and this would seriously undermine several chess-related articles - and of course we'll get no warning until it happens. I've experimented with including in footnotes references to the original documents cited by chess history Web pages, but now I've come across 2 real show-stoppers - How Capablanca Became World Champion and Capablanca’s Reply to Lasker both contian a huge amount of information about Lasker's abdication in favour of Capa, and the first one also says a clause in the 1913 agreement between Dr Lasker and Rubinstein said the title would pass to Rubinstein if Lasker abdicated; and both cite so many original sources that a mere list of them would be be far too long for a footnote and might be similar in size to a fair-sized Wikipedia article.

I know there's a Web archive somewhere, but relying on that is just putting off the inevitable - it might run out of funds, or start purging older entries, etc.

The best idea I can come up with at present is to create one of more sub-pages (of Emanuel Lasker in this instance) and paste into them the excerpts that Winter cites, with none of Winter's comments. This would probably avoid infringement of Winter's copyrights in many cases, but would leave some outstanding issues including:

• Copyright claims of the original publishers. Could we maintain that, since they've been diplayed on Winter's Web pages for a few years, they are fair game?
• Winter's translations of non-English content.

I've used Winter as a leading example, but he is not the only chess historian whose work is published mainly on the Web and who cites sources that would be difficult to trace if the pages went offline - the articles of Trevor Kingston, Tim Harding and Jeremy Spinrad at Chesscafe come to mind.

Does anyone have any suggestions? Philcha (talk) 18:07, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

I noted the problem of sources going away as being a problem for Wikipedia in general and I brought up the discussion at the Village Pump. No one seemed to care. Bubba73 (talk), 18:18, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Source materials can go to wikisource:, but as you note, copyright will often be a problem. Just the fact that something has been available on another website for an extended amount of time probably won't be enough. Letters that have been published in newspapers are probably fair game, but also as you note translations will be a problem as this involves a new copyright on the translation even if the original source is unencumbered. About Winter specifically, a lot of his website material does eventually end up in book form as he publishes compilations from time to time. (Unfortunately these books are rather expensive.) If a source is available both in print and on the web I think it is best to point to both in the references. Quale (talk) 19:24, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

I've done my best with the tortuous negotiations for the 1921 Lasker-Capabanca match, on which Winter quotes extensively from a large number of sources. I've named in a footnote what I hope is the most useful subset of the original sources cited by Winter. To keep the size of the footnote down I've been very selective with the original sources cited in the footnote and with the corresponding points in the Emanuel Lasker article. Please check it out against Winter and comment at Talk:Emanuel Lasker Philcha (talk) 00:38, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

I've just found that all parts of Kmoch's "Grandmasters I Have Known", formerly available at chesscafe.com, are giving 404s. IIRC the "Alekhine" instalment is cited in Alexander Alekhine. I didn't expect my concern to be justified quite so soon. Philcha (talk) 12:10, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

It is a problem, but as long as we include access dates in our web references, if a link disappears, we can at least show that at the time we wrote the article, the source was there. Incidentally, you might find WP:DEADREF useful.Pawnkingthree (talk) 13:47, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

But if a link is gone, that makes a problem with Wikipedia:Verifiability. Bubba73 (talk), 14:26, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

The GMs I Have Known series are now in PDFs. Try http://www.chesscafe.com/text/kmoch01.pdf, http://www.chesscafe.com/text/kmoch02.pdf, http://www.chesscafe.com/text/kmoch03.pdf, http://www.chesscafe.com/text/kmoch04.pdf, http://www.chesscafe.com/text/kmoch05.pdf, http://www.chesscafe.com/text/kmoch06.pdf, http://www.chesscafe.com/text/kmoch07.pdf, and http://www.chesscafe.com/text/kmoch08.pdf. Quale (talk) 14:42, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, Quale! Google can't have got round to updating its index when I posted (12:10, 6 June 2008). One of these will fix a hole in Alexander Alekhine and another will be useful for Emanuel Lasker. I'll have to check other ChessCafe .TXT pages occasionally in case they've been converted to PDF, especially the one containing Howard Staunton's obituary. Philcha (talk) 12:50, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] GA review of First-move advantage in chess

The GA-review of First-move advantage in chess has (finally) started! Due to a new procedure for GA reviews it is not taking place on the Talk page of the article but here. Please come by and see if you can hep! SyG (talk) 19:33, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Merge K

K-value and K Factor (chess) are up for merging into Elo rating system, but I'm not sure there is anything in those articles worth merging. Should they be deleted instead? Bubba73 (talk), 14:25, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

What about a redirect? Easier than merging or deleting.Pawnkingthree (talk) 14:59, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Do you think there is anything in those two articles worth merging? Bubba73 (talk), 17:13, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

The things about K-value and K-factor are already explained rather well in Elo rating system, so probably the two articles are worthless. SyG (talk) 21:00, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

It might be better to just WP:PROD them, then. Bubba73 (talk), 21:07, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

OK, I have PRODed them. SyG (talk) 21:43, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] possible linkspam

There has been some possible linkspam by User:Anik103. Look at the user's contributions and see what you think. Bubba73 (talk), 02:15, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

I agree it is linkspam. However for some articles like Henri Rinck, the article is just a stub so the link could actually help the reader, so I am a bit relunctant to delete all his contributions. Of course, on the other hand, Wikipedia is not Google... SyG (talk) 21:51, 12 June 2008 (UTC)