Talk:Finesse

Trump Coup and Coup en Passant
To User:207.176.159.90: I see you prefer those two articles to be merged here, but you should discuss that first. As you see, I disagree with that, and here are my reasons: Unrelated: you're certainly welcome to stay anonymous, but your arguments will have more weight if you register a user account. Besides, if a disagreement occurs (as in this case), it's recommended that you discuss it first on article's talk page before making a radical edit. Duja 15:05, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
 * 1) This article is already too long. General Wikipedia style is to split suchthose two sectio articles into separate ones provided that the sub-subject is encyclopedic enough. See Summary style, Article size. This is, in my opinion, obviously the case with those two.
 * 2) Trump Coup and Coup en Passant are not just finesses. Those are far more advanced techniques, requiring correct ending to be reached, having a finesse just as a "final cut". For example, a trump coup requires the declarer to purposefully shorten his trumps in most cases.
 * 3) Finally, the previous versions correctly mentioned them in context of finesse, then linked to separate articles. What's wrong with that?

In response:


 * 1) I disagree about the article being too long with the two coups included. It's a perfectly reasonable length without needing to send people jumping off to a separate article.  In fact the "rule of thumb"  given in Article size says that articles under 20K bytes usually should not be split, and this one was just over 15K bytes (as of the last version with the coups included). I also feel that the two coups are not "encyclopedic enough" to stand as separate articles when there is a strongly related subject that they could as well be merged into.  Splitting them makes no more sense to me than splitting out "two-way finesse" into a separate article.
 * 2) I do concede the point about requiring a correct ending to be set up;  I just don't think it's important enough to force the coups into separate articles when the actual execution of the tactic, when you get to it, is the same.  (And particularly not two separate small articles.)
 * 3) The reason it's better to cover them inline is that it's easier for the reader if the description refers back to terms defined in the same article than to terms defined elsewhere.

I consider that these arguments stand on their own merits without me needing to register to prove anything. And if this counts as a radical edit, I was not the one who first made it without discussion. On the other hand, I was the one who introduced the material into this page in the first place, so you might argue that that counts. I'm half inclined to make one last try at reverting the split,  but I'll stop here and see if anyone else has an opinion.

(Incidentally, I am not the only anonymous user who has edited Wikipedia pages from this IP address, nor is this the only IP address that I have made anonymous edits from. However, I'm pretty sure I am the only person who has edited this page from this IP address.)

207.176.159.90 01:39, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Backward finesse
I think a merge of the existing article Backward finesse into the Finesse article would be fine. But the Finesse article already has 12 entries (some of them debatable), and we don't yet have Backward, Intra, and "Chinese" finesses. There's also the Fake Finesse and the associated Gasper Coup. And probably others I'm not thinking of right now. I have no suggestion, and maybe there's no problem with an article that contains so many headings. Incidentally, the term "Chinese finesse" is almost surely offensive, and perhaps we should follow www.bridghands lead by terming it a Pseudo Finesse. Xlmvp 03:41, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Huh? Where do you pick 'em up? I must say I've never heard of those. There are many headings indeed, and I don't like it either, but I don't see how to avoid them (the inclusion of semi-related coups at the bottom is result of a compromise you can see above). OK, I googled for "Intra-finesse".
 * I'll merge the Backward for now, add the intra and pseudo, and reorganize the article slightly. Duja 07:46, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
 * There. It's still on the longish side, but on the other hand splitting could lead to too many small articles. I'm open to suggestions though... Duja 09:08, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Terminology
I suppose many players may not know this, but there is a very precise terminology in finesses. In "Watson's Classic Book on the Play of the Hand at Bridge", a discussion is made early on of this terminology. To wit:


 * One finesses 'against' an opponent's honor.
 * One finesses one's 'own' honor.

In the classic AQ position, the queen is finessed; the king is finessed against.

ralian (talk) 19:50, 11 July 2008 (UTC)