Talk:List of strong chess tournaments

since 2005
Strong tournaments since 2005 need to be added. Bubba73 (talk), 05:37, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Done, and hopefully my choices aren't too controversial. I've said in the intro that only tournaments with standard time controls are included, which seems to be the case but wasn't mentioned before. youngvalter 03:42, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

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


 * I totally agree with Peter's viewpoint here. I set the article up, not as a work in progress, but as a 'complete' list of collective expert opinion on the strongest tournaments - hence my original tournament list was an awful lot shorter, as I spent some time flicking between the many referenced sources to hopefully include only the "most important". Unfortunately, despite this being made clear in the preamble, other authors have since continued to add many more tournaments to the point that I have had to alter the preamble to read " ... takes as its foundation the collective opinion of chess experts and journalists ... ", which is decidedly wishy-washy, but otherwise the references become a nonsense. I could revisit my original list and put this in a "strongest" section of expert opinion, followed by an "also strong" list, or alternatively Peter or someone else could attempt their own version - I would certainly be OK with either. Any thoughts? Brittle heaven 09:58, 24 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Brittle heaven, I like your idea of having two lists. How many sources did you use to compile your list? It's just that if the sources are older then some newer tournaments will get excluded - the Linares tournaments of the early '90s spring to mind. And how short was the list? 10-20 tournaments would seem reasonable to me. youngvalter 16:04, 14 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I think the list should be fairly inclusive. I also think we should stay with a single list, but broken up into sections by years and annotated.  If multiple sources list a tournament as strong, it should go in.  The Chess Kings, Volume 1 by Calvin Olson is an interesting history taking a more scholarly approach, trying to avoid the anecdotal nature of most chess histories.  The book has a very good bibliography and useful appendices.  "Appendix B: Major Tournament and Their Winners for Vol. 1 (1859–1939)" is 4 pages long.  (Although the appendix says "1859–1939" it actually starts with London 1851.)  Since the period of 1939 to date has many more strong tournaments than this earlier period did, I think any good list is going to be pretty long.  My suggestion is that the list should be broken up into sections by years.  This could be done several ways, but I think two sections, 1851–1969 and 1970 to date, could work well.  Each tournament before 1970 should be annotated with each reference that lists it as a strong tournament.  This would allow the article reader to judge the strength of the claim.  The tournaments since 1971 should instead list the FIDE category rating.  This provides an objective means of determining which tournaments are strongest within a given year, since rating inflation isn't an issue over a very short period of time.  Each year the top two to five tournaments or so should be listed.  This leaves 1970 in a hole, because although FIDE started using Elo ratings in 1970, the category system wasn't introduced until the following year.  I think we can manage one year of tournaments without too much controversy.  If we want to indicate the very strongest tournaments, they could be listed in bold.  Olson does this in The Chess Kings, and has about 36 tournaments before 1940 so listed (about one out of every seven of the total).  Quale 17:41, 14 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I think it might be a good idea to joint both lists (List of strong chess tournaments and List of mini chess tournaments), and then to divide a new list into pieces, like in the German Wikipedia (see, http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_der_bedeutendsten_Schachturniere). Mibelz 11:11, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

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

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


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

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

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

Fair use rationale for Image:Lake Hopatcong ct.jpeg
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BetacommandBot (talk) 22:46, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Aims of this article?
I feel this may be a good time to resurrect the unresolved discussion above, the original thoughts behind the creation of this article, and where it should go in the future. It started its life as a list of 'the best tournaments of all time' as voted by many noted historians (as matched the original references). This was explained in the preamble along with the criteria for inclusion. For reasons of comparability and consistency, the historians had chosen only to consider regular tournaments over a certain size. Not national championships (otherwise the USSR Champs would have dominated the list), not Candidates Tournaments, Interzonals etc. for much the same reason; these were inevitably very strong tournaments by virtue of their purpose and magnitude of prize, and couldn't be put on an equal footing with regular tournaments. Hence, events like Zurich 1953 (recently added here) were always intentionally excluded. Necessarily, the list only reflected the tournaments selected by historians (otherwise it was original research) and it was therefore, effectively, a more or less complete list on its creation. Soon after the article's creation however, it became a dumping ground for every strong tournament in chess history and maybe this was a fault of the article's title. Consequently, as Peter Ballard points out above, there has become a need for a new, definitive 'best ever' list, based on expert opinion, which as I've explained, was how this article started its life. I believe we also need to redefine the purpose of this article by rewriting the introduction (including any guidelines on what is open for inclusion). If there is a consensus on the best way forward, it could be added to the Wikiproject 'things to do' agenda. Any views? Brittle heaven (talk) 00:35, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
 * It was me that added 'Zurich International Chess Tournament 1953'. I see the reason is doesn't belong here now. I was mistaken by the title and the intro which having re-read does say that such things are excluded. What I was expecting from this page is something like this or thisChessCreator (talk) 00:55, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I think you explain the scope of this article very well, ie regular strong chess tournaments, without national and world championship qualifying tournaments. There is indeed need for an article which lists only the strongest tournaments. In any case, I think the format of this article is not so good. I very much like the way the german wikipedia does it Liste_der_bedeutendsten_Schachturniere. Perhaps we could have a main page, just like the german wikipedia, but listing only the strongest, and then subpages 1801-1900, 1901-1949, etc... Then there is also the List_of_mini_chess_tournaments, not sure how that will fit in. Voorlandt (talk) 09:13, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

world champ 1948
Why isn't World Chess Championship 1948 listed? Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 15:27, 30 October 2010 (UTC)


 * The introduction still explains some of the rationale used when the article was originally put together, although I had to change lots of it. Fundamentally, I combined into one list the various expert opinions on the strongest tournaments of all time (and sourced them); these excluded National Champs, Interzonals, Candidates, World Champs etc. Naturally, those events would be the strongest and comparison with regular tournaments would be pointless - like comparing apples to oranges. Shortly after I wrote the article, many editors began adding random tournament results, seeing the article as a giant repository, and this immediately made a nonsense of the article's original purpose. I tried to protect its integrity for a while, but soon had to give up on it. It's now just a random list of tournament winners and should undoubtedly have a different, more relevant introduction. As you suggest, there may now be no need to exclude anything at all, as there is effectively no particular rationale for inclusion. As random lists go however, it should be noted that the German wiki version is vastly superior (see the article page interwiki link). User:Voorlandt and I briefly discussed copying it over, but there's quite a bit of work involved, given that Germanic transliterations are used throughout. Brittle heaven (talk) 00:06, 31 October 2010 (UTC)


 * I think it should be more selective, as you intended. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 00:17, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Convert to table

 * I have a proposition to convert this list into table with columns: year, tournament, host city, dates, winner. Similar to table in the article about 2017 in chess. 91.124.117.29 (talk) 22:29, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

Strength of tournaments
The previous list was filled with too many mid tier tournaments which diluted it, and also a couple of team tournaments, national championships etc. So I've applied stricter criteria to the entire list where a strong tournament must have at least two top 10 players, according to either the official ratings or Chessmetrics. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Qindarka (talk • contribs) 04:43, 3 February 2019 (UTC)

Strength of tournaments & Table
I support the above idea of converting it into table. It would be easier to compare the tournaments. Also type of chess played should be included (there was one legendary tournament in blitz in Herceg Novi).

My proposal is regarding the strength of tournaments. Of course there are tournaments that maybe wouldn't fall in the list by these factors but are considered legendary for some, maybe subjective, reasons by chess historians and as such deserve to be included. Those tournaments should be somehow marked. These objective categories would be Table form would allow easy comparison between tournaments by the above categories. 213.149.51.126 (talk) 18:00, 12 February 2019 (UTC)
 * average rating of players
 * highest rating of player
 * number of world champions participating (former, actual, later; rapid, blitz, classic)
 * percentage of GMs against all players participating
 * FIDE assigned level/grade
 * number of top 10 players at the time of the tournament participating
 * number of players participating
 * point difference between first and third (or fifth).


 * It would of course be nice to achieve that level of objectivity but there are several issues.


 * i) Ratings and even the GM title are relatively recent. There are plenty of strong tournaments in the past where players had no rating or even official titles. So compiling average rating, number of grandmasters etc in a very strong tournament such as Nottingham 1936 won't get us anything. We also don't have a great way to determine top 10 players before the rating lists were introduced. I had been using Chessmetrics but it has its problems.


 * ii) Ratings of the top players are constantly increasing. A tournament with a rating average of 2600 or so would be extremely strong back in the 1970s, containing multiple top 10 players whereas a tournament with rating average of 2600 today would barely include any top 100 players. Whether this is because of rating inflation or improvement in the standard of play, ratings cannot be used to show the relative 'topness' of the players of the time.


 * Qindarka (talk) 02:54, 24 February 2019 (UTC)


 * inflation of the rating is a problem. but again it tells information, but not by itself. I listed a number of categories which combined would tell a story about a tournament, it's strength. Rating would not be a single indicator. Just with average rating, number of top 10 players and total number of players participating you can make an   educated guess about the strength of a tournament. now you have a list which seems (/is) arbitrary, and allows no exact comparison of tournaments.  Those strong tournaments of the past where there is no data can't be helped, but you could't be more wrong about So compiling ... won't get us anything. you've got 70 years (and growing) of history where that can be applied. point diff, number of world champions, number of players participating that have already won an international title, number of foreign players participating can be applied to those older tournaments. Those old tournaments can't be helped, but it's gonna be harder and harder to choose which future tournaments to include due to inflation of their number every year.  213.149.62.161 (talk) 02:51, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

--


 * I still think that have a bit more objectivity could help. Inflation / deflation of rating - and which ratings to use, chessmetrics is still one possibility but someone could come up with something else as well - could be solved referring to the distance from the average of the top 10. Or rankings. People obsess on ratings, but one can use average raking of the players. I would also take away the GM title requirement as strong players could be there without top titles (see Kramnik in the 1992 Olympiad). Further the page and the talk page mentions "two players in the top 10", so rankings (and indirectly ratings) are indeed used. I would consider the revised list (as one can see, even a list is subjective)


 * average ranking of players (where possible due to FIDE or relevant rating system)
 * highest ranked player
 * number of world champions or candidates participating (former, actual, later; classical play only as the list focus on classical play)
 * number of top 10 players at the time of the tournament participating (where possible due to FIDE or relevant rating system)
 * number of players participating
 * winning score, like 11/13
 * source - this I find it very important.


 * In general is plenty of work but could be slowly done for at least 90s tournaments and later.


 * I would also point that sources are very important. For example in the most recent edits I read "Removed Hoogeveen 2011. Giri and Vachier-Lagrave were not top 10 players then and it would take them a lot longer to actually reach the top 10." . But without sources - either done by the initial person that added the tournament or the one that removed it - it is unclear whether this claim makes sense. Without sources every tournament - beside well known ones - may be valid or invalid. I think that sources, where possible (and slowly, not everything at once), should be added.


 * For the example of Hoogeveen 2011, the two sources are: https://en.chessbase.com/post/15th-unive-tournament-2011-in-hoogeveen-begins-270213 "double round robin tournament in Holland brings four 2700+ players to the boards: Vladimir Kramnik, Anish Giri, Maxime Vachier Lagrave and Judit Polgar, with an average rating of 2732, making it a Category 20 event." and then the approrpiate rating list of Sept 2011 (as the tournament was in Oct 2011). https://ratings.fide.com/toparc.phtml?cod=197 . The links may expire. In the rating list only Kramnik was in the top 10.


 * If one adds slowly sources like this. Example "see rating list FIDE month X.Y and see this article for the participants", it could help a ton to make the article of higher quality and less subjective, as others could verify it too without relying on few knowledgeable of which reliablity is unknown to many. Fortunately for the moment (as of 2021) and hopefully it will get better, there are plenty of public chess databases that can help provide records of tournaments. If the list of "more objective" values is not added at least I'd like to see sources for the tournaments and relative ratings (mostly for 1970s and later tournaments at least).


 * --Pier4r (talk) 18:41, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

other tournaments
What about
 * Zagreb 1975 Gyula Sax, 2519 average ELO (among others V. Ceškovski, G. P. Tringov, Lj. Ljubojević, U. Andersson, G. P. Kuzmin, R. Keene, M. Matulović)
 * Zagreb 2018 Baskaran Adhiban, 2636 average ELO, 12 out of 12 players were GMs — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.149.62.161 (talk) 02:30, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

It should mention the time control
The list is obviously a list about tournaments played with classical (or slow) time controls. Otherwise lots of recent tournaments with faster time controls should be included.

There should be a disclaimer about it otherwise people not following chess closely may not realize it. --Pier4r (talk) 11:55, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

Quatar master 2015
https://chess-results.com/tnr199261.aspx?lan=1&art=1&flag=30&turdet=YES why is it not mentioned? For Swiss or large tournaments I think one could consider the top10 seeds and see if those were strong enough. I think the tournament qualifies. Carlsen, Kramnik, Wesley and Giri were in the top10 IIRC. 77.183.132.188 (talk) 18:35, 24 August 2023 (UTC)