Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chess/Archive 9

Analysed games on youtube - spam?
An anonymous user has been adding links to quite a lot of annotated games on Youtube. See e.g. the external links section at Bobby Fischer or Mikhail Tal. I'm in two minds about them. On one hand, the links go up almost as soon as they go up on youtube, which is a fairly sure sign of self-promotion. On the other hand, I watched one (R.Byrne-Fischer) and it was moderately enjoyable, and I don't know of other free chess videos out there. So what action, if any, should be taken. Leave them? Delete as spam? Or something else, e.g. request the user to register? Peter Ballard 00:17, 23 July 2007 (UTC)


 * More and more are being added. I'd very much like to see some discussion on this. Peter Ballard 02:12, 24 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I watched one completely (Letelier vs Fischer). It is pretty good but it does make a mistake that corrected, but I thought it should not have had that in there (i.e. redo it or edit it).  But it was pretty good.  I didn't see and commercial interest or self-promotion in there.  If there were any of that found, it should go.  I'm on the fence, but I am not against letting them stay.  Bubba73 (talk), 03:34, 24 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I think they're cool, but I'm concerned primarily because potentially there are nearly an unlimited number of these links that could be added to articles. Fischer alone could easily get more than 100, and I don't think any chess pages should have multiple youtube links of this sort.  If possible it would be better to have a link to a search results page that lists the relevant videos rather than individual links to each one.  (I have related but slightly different concerns over the "Notable games" sections.) Quale 14:50, 24 July 2007 (UTC)


 * A single YouTube search result for each player could be added to that player's links. this, for example, lists all Tal's. Good idea?  E LIMINATOR JR  TALK  15:55, 24 July 2007 (UTC)


 * We should treat links to these videos the same way we treat links to annotated games. Should we maybe develop a consensus on that related issue? youngvalter 02:22, 25 July 2007 (UTC)


 * The style guide External links says to avoid putting search results in the External links section. Nevertheless, in this case, I think that would be an improvement. I think the long term solution is to have a Wikipedia database or template for all chess players' games, so that we aren't locked into favouring chessgames.com, letplaychess.com, or anyone else. Walter Chan: what do you mean, how do we treat links to annotated games at the moment? Peter Ballard 02:25, 25 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm guessing he means that we don't have an agreed policy for links to annotated games, but should. I don't think we really have (m)any links to annotated games, just links to raw game scores (associated with forum style comments in the case of chessgames.com).  Personally I think that our "Notable games" sections aren't really appropriate, mainly because they violate WP:OR (who says these particular games are notable?) and they act as another way to get external links into the article (that's what the External links section is for).  The sections are often too long, and the descriptions of the games tend to have WP:TONE problems. Quale 04:00, 25 July 2007 (UTC)


 * One thing about the YouTube games, we don't know who is doing it and his qualifications. (At least I didn't see it.)  We don't know the source of his annotation.  Bubba73 (talk), 04:06, 25 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Indeed. The youtube videos all have a "letsplaychess.com" tag. On the web, letsplaychess.com redirects to chessworld.net. There's no indication at chessworld.net who the annotaters might be. Peter Ballard 04:12, 25 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Apologies for inserting myself into a long dormant thread, but it appears that the videos are done by "Tryfon Gavriel, Fide 2170" (see this revision of the Anand article). At first I thought this would violate WP:RS requirements for reliable sources, but the videos aren't actually used as sources.  I do think it calls into question their value as external links.  GM analysis would be great, IM analysis from a well-known chess writer or instructor (e.g., Edward Lasker, Jeremy Silman, Graham Burgess,  Jacob Aagaard, etc.) could be good, but untitled player analysis does not seem appropriate to me, even in external links. Quale 21:16, 6 October 2007 (UTC)


 * After thinking it over, I'm not a big fan of the "Notable games" sections on chess biographies either. If the games are truly notable, e.g. they represent a major achievement or serve as an excellent illustration of a player's style, they should be incorporated into the main text of the article. Otherwise they should be removed. I think links to annotated games should be treated the same way as well. youngvalter 01:16, 27 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I just noticed Quale's edit of 6-Oct-2007. Edits by an untitled player should probably be removed. Peter Ballard (talk) 12:04, 26 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I have neutralised the links in Bobby Fischer, as they cannot be considered as reliable source, and they seem to be done by a "weak" player. Please tell me where there are some others and I will neutralise them as well. I do not delete them directly in case Wikipedia policies change one day. SyG (talk) 11:09, 2 January 2008 (UTC)


 * (p.s. by "neutralise" SyG means what I would call "commented out"). If they're unreliable, then just remove them. If we change our minds we can get them back from the Article History. I've removed them from Mikhail Tal today because I was editing it for another reason, and I'll remove them from others as I find them. Peter Ballard (talk) 11:41, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Chinese Chess Championship
I posted the following message on the wikiproject China, however, maybe somebody on here might be able to help: "Recently, the List of national chess championships has grown considerably and now we cover all major nations, except for China (which is getting very strong at traditional chess). It would be nice to cover China as well. However, I can't find a list with winners in English. I found two lists in Chinese however:  (men and women) and  (men only). It would be great if someone who can read Chinese would be so kind to translate this list (men and women) and put it in the article Chinese Chess Championship. For an example of another national chess championship, see for instance Japanese Chess Championship or Spanish Chess Championship. Shouldn't be too much work for China since the championship started in 1957 (1979 for women), with a lot of duplicated names." Best regards, Voorlandt 09:25, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Ok I managed to translate the page myself, largely with the help of, and the transliterations in wikipedia. I am pretty sure everything is correct, still would be grateful if someone could check it over. Voorlandt (talk) 19:54, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

David Howell Reference
Does anyone know the exact issue of New In Chess which covers David Howell's knockout of a tournament director - is it No 3 2005?--ZincBelief (talk) 16:54, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Assessment of articles
Sorry if there's somewhere else I should be asking this/somewhere that already tells me, I'm new to this. If an article has been assessed once but improved since, is there any way of getting it reassessed? Circular chess is currently rated as "start" but I've done quite a bit of work on it since. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Chile Nose Jam (talk • contribs) 22:54, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
 * First, thanks for the improvements you have done on Circular chess, especially the World Championship section, this clearly increases the quality and the utility of the article. If you want someone to review your article you can submit it in WikiProject Chess/Review, it will bring some fresh eyes with new ideas to expand the article further. However, I think the current assessment as "Start" is still accurate and I personally would not rate this article higher for the moment, for example because there are too few references. Keep up the good work! SyG (talk) 21:55, 23 November 2007 (UTC)


 * I just looked at the article and (1) it needs more links. I added several.  (2) the theory section needs better references.  It sounds like it could be original research.  (3) more information on tactics and checkmates would be nice. Bubba73 (talk), 03:24, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Chess on FAR
Chess is currently on featured article review. 64.231.243.178 23:20, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Fischer-Petrosian, 1971, game 3, move 33
What is the correct white move 33? There is a disagreement among sources, see Talk:Threefold repetition. Bubba73 (talk), 05:16, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

World Championship 1886
I have created my first World Championship page. It is called World Chess Championship 1886 I haven't done detailed analysis due to lack of time/ability (I am approximately 1750 ELO/146 ECF). Just wondering if people like the format that I have done it in. If anybody has any more interesting facts/analysis, please feel free to add to it! Andy4226uk (talk) 01:27, 7 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Andy - I really like the format/layout of this (and your second) chess article; it's very bold and direct and we certainly have a few editors here who will add some extra text along the way. If no-one beats me to it, I'll add some detail about the venue, start date etc. Not sure why that WCC template doesn't adjust to the page width - hopefully, that's solvable in time. Keep up the good work and stay away from the Quayside, or your studies will suffer - I speak from experience! Brittle heaven (talk) 00:14, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Chessgames.com article
The Chessgames.com article was deleted not too long ago for failing to establish notability. A new version is being crafted at User:ZeroOne/ChessGames.com with the help of the Chessgames.com members. Please, read the article and improve as you like! Be bold but remember to leave good edit summaries. &mdash;ZeroOne ( talk / @ ) 02:12, 8 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I think it is good. If you need any information from the old article, I know an administrator who will get it back for you.  Bubba73 (talk), 02:19, 8 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks, but the old article was userified before it was deleted and can still be seen in the history of the current article. &mdash;ZeroOne ( talk / @ ) 13:36, 8 December 2007 (UTC)


 * You have made it much better than it was when it was deleted. Put it back up!  Bubba73 (talk), 21:38, 9 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the encouragement! There are still a few points that need to be worked out, namely those that are tagged "[citation needed]". But we are working on them in Chessgames.com and it shouldn't take long anymore. &mdash;ZeroOne ( talk / @ ) 23:47, 9 December 2007 (UTC)


 * In my opinion the new version reads too much like an advertisement for chessgames.com. However I agree that chessgames.com is notable and deserves an article. Perhaps the clearest indication of its notability is the number of WP articles which link to game scores on chessgames.com. Peter Ballard (talk) 00:00, 10 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your comment! Would you care to elaborate, how does it sound like an advertisement? &mdash;ZeroOne ( talk / @ ) 10:37, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

The article is now up at ChessGames.com! &mdash;ZeroOne ( talk / @ ) 01:00, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Chess diagram program
I talked about writing a program to generate chess diagrams for Wikipedia, and I've finally done it. It runs on Windows. Select the piece or symbol you want to drop on the chessboard in the list on the left, then click on the square. There are also areas to enter a header and footer and buttons to clear, etc. Every time you click on the board, the template is updated. Changing the footer or header does not update the diagram, but there is a button to make it update. The diagram is shown in an area on the right and you can copy and paste it. However, there is an option to have it automatically put the diagram in your clipboard, so then all you have to do is paste. This option is on by default. It is called WikiChessDiagram.exe and you can download the program here. It is freeware. I started it last night (shortly after returning from my daughter's scholastic chess tournament) and finished it today. I'm also using a new ISP for hosting the file - I'll get a web page for downloading later. Let me know of any problems, suggestions, of comments. Bubba73 (talk), 21:34, 9 December 2007 (UTC)


 * PS - I used it earlier today to make a new diagram that was added to Pawnless chess endgames. Bubba73 (talk), 21:49, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

FAR for Chess
Chess has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. --Kaypoh (talk) 08:11, 10 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the info. Pragensis has already started to address the concerns, and I will try to work on it as well in order to be sure that Chess keeps its high quality SyG (talk) 11:34, 15 December 2007 (UTC)


 * The FAR is already closed, the result is "keep".--Ioannes Pragensis (talk) 08:25, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Edward Lasker
Which was the last move in his game vs. Thomas in London and when it was? en.wiki gives Kd2, mentioning year 1911 (as a book Шахматные миниатюры by A. Roizman does), de.wiki - 0-0-0, mentioning year 1912 (as a book Шахматный лекторий by O. Yermakoff does). 89.201.57.201 (talk) 20:43, 26 December 2007 (UTC)


 * chessgames.com gives 17. Rh2+ as the last move. Bubba73 (talk), 20:55, 26 December 2007 (UTC)


 * The ChessBase database gives 18. Kd2## as the last move (as the article says). 18. 0-0-0 also checkmates, and is cooler.  Sources say the game was in 1911.  Bubba73 (talk), 00:40, 27 December 2007 (UTC)


 * "The World's Great Chess Games", by Reuben Fine, (McKay, 1976, p.147) gives it as London 1912, with the last move 18 Kd2#. I've also read elsewhere that the last move was Kd2, not 0-0-0. Peter Ballard (talk) 11:22, 27 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm pretty sure Peter is right, since I recall the Kd2# is the final move even though 0-0-0# would have been cooler in my opinion also. The best source for this would probably be Lasker's own books.  I seem to recall that he discusses this game in Chess for Fun and Chess for Blood, but somehow I lost track of my copy (an inexpensive Dover reprint) several years ago.  He also writes about the surprising new drawing position that Emanuel Lasker found against him at New York 1924. Quale (talk) 16:41, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Julio Kaplan
Some new templates have been included in this article; I can't say I like them - templates for templates' sake? For one thing, a large percentage of biographical articles relate to players who have represented their country - do they all need one of these templates? I hope not. Maybe this and the medal (honours) info. could be added as an option on the existing player profile template, if thought to be helpful. Any views? Brittle heaven (talk) 11:04, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I appreciate the attempt to add some color and visual interest to our chess bios (if only we had more photos we could use), but I also don't like the templates and think they should be removed. Adding to the player profile template is possible, but may be awkward as many players have played many times on several different boards in international team events (Chess Olympiad, European Team Chess Championship) and often for more than one country. Quale (talk) 16:30, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Photographs. Anyone looking for a worthy New Year project?
We still need photos/images of many high profile players who otherwise have good articles. Looking around wikipedia, it seems that copyright can be waived in some circumstances eg. the subject is deceased, there are no free alternatives available, etc. An excellent example is the photo with very comprehensive and hopefully easily replicated template attached to the Frank Parr article.

[I am no copyright law expert though, so if anyone can see a flaw in this strategy, then please discuss!]

Of course, first port of call is 'Wiki Commons' to see what is already available. Otherwise reproductions from books, magazines and the internet can all be considered I guess.

Leading (deceased) players still missing a photo include, in no particular order, Paul Keres Tony Miles Max Euwe Erich Eliskases Carlos Torre Repetto Wolfgang Unzicker John Wisker Henry Bird Richard Reti Karl Robatsch Akiba Rubinstein Reuben Fine Arnold Denker Jan Hein Donner Mir Sultan Khan CHO'D Alexander Daniel Yanofsky Miguel Najdorf Samuel Reshevsky Rudolf Spielmann Vera Menchik Ludek Pachman Harry Golombek Lev Polugaevsky Viacheslav Ragozin Amos Burn and I'm sure many others that you'll feel I've missed - please feel free to add them to this list.

Is there anyone out there who is good with images and has some time on their hands? All volounteers welcome! Brittle heaven (talk) 02:58, 30 December 2007 (UTC).


 * And I think we need a good one for Bobby Fisher taken during his prime, about 1970-72, or perhaps a year or two outside that range. We've been having problems getting one that is OK copyright wise.  I asked the USCF if they had one that was free from copyright restictions, and they said no.  Bubba73 (talk), 06:14, 10 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Also need one for Lev Alburt (not deceased) Bubba73 (talk), 02:43, 11 January 2008 (UTC)


 * This ongoing wishlist has been transferred to the Project page - see Articles ... which miss a photo. Thanks. Brittle heaven (talk) 03:00, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Also need Mikhail Tal, and better ones of Capablanca, Spassky and Smyslov. Bubba73 (talk), 03:04, 11 January 2008 (UTC)


 * The Bettmann Archive has some free images, but I couldn't find any chess players. Bubba73 (talk), 03:13, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Chess around the world
I am not entirely happy with the title, which I took in analogy to Football around the world, but I think the article itself is useful. It replaces and expands on the List of national chess championships. For now, I have added every country in the Category:Chess by country (89 of about 160 countries that are member of FIDE). I also added a section on supernational chess federations and championships. Some questions: Voorlandt (talk) 10:49, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Any suggestions on the title?
 * Could someone check the layout? It looks ok on my screen (1 line per country) but on some older monitors it might not.
 * The following supernational tournaments are in terrible state: Pan American Chess Championship, African Chess Championship, Arab Chess Championship and South American Chess Championship. Would be nice to see complete winners list in either of those. In relation to Arab chess: wikipedia obviously has a biased coverage towards western culture and we would do well trying to close the gap a little for a chess. Players like Mohammed Al-Modiahki (Player of the Century within the Arab Countries; Gold at Chess Olympiad 1996) and Hichem Hamdouchi  obviously need an article.
 * We have a good coverage of the national championships; but some articles are still in the old format. Compare Jamaican Chess Championship having a sortable wikitable with U.S. Chess Championship.
 * I am not sure if we should try to add all countries to Chess around the world. If we would, the article could also replace FIDE Federations. Thinking about merging these two might actually be a good idea.
 * Lastly, the addresses from the official websites of the federations are from the FIDE website, but not all are listed there. With google I have found quite a few that were missing. I am sure I have missed a few though. So any help/corrections appreciated.

Timeline of chess
I recently browsed our article and shortly afterwards had reason to visit Bill Wall's useful (typos aside) Chess History and Chronology, which can be viewed at http://www.geocities.com:80/SiliconValley/Lab/7378/history.txt. It occurred to me that Wall's helpful resource could disappear at any time and all of that compiling work would be lost forever. Presumably, his material could be copied or merged with ours, as it is only a collection of facts and has no original (copyrighted) content. At the very least, it made me wonder if our article should aspire to a more ambitious and comprehensive account of historical facts. I suppose, on the negative side, the more momentous events would be less easily found amongst a large list of facts and it may be difficult to decide what merits inclusion - however, guidelines could be drawn up to tackle this latter point, and I do like the idea of a central repository for all those 'one-off' chess facts that otherwise disappear into the ether because they don't warrant a separate article. Any thoughts? -- Brittle heaven (talk) 12:23, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Sites like Bill Wall's always present a dilemma: they can provide material that's hard to find elsewhere; but it's hard to check their accuracy, and as Brittle heaven says there's a risk they may disappear. That's not an idle fear - when writing articles about Web usability I found a superb article on colour schemes Colour Choices on Web Pages: Contrast vs Readability and liked it so much I wanted to ensure that it wouldn't vanish; so I emailed the author; a reply from her husband told me she'd recently died and he'd be delighted if I took a back-up copy (although it's still online at present). So I've emailed Bill Wall about asking about back-up / alternative sites and will let you know when he replies. Philcha (talk) 14:44, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Just got an "undeliverable" response to my email to Bill Wall, so the email address on his index page is dead. He still blogs at chess.com and I've seen his profile there. I'm not a member of chess.com and have no wish to register (I have too many registrations already). Do we have a member of chess.com who could contact him to ask about back-up / alternative sites? Philcha (talk) 15:17, 6 January 2008 (UTC)


 * At least some of Wall's work seems to be on the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, see http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.geocities.com:80/SiliconValley/Lab/7378/history.txt for versions of his timeline going back to Feb 2002. (Of course we can't rely on the Wayback Machine in general.) We could merge Wall's timeline work with ours, but everything we put in our timeline should be verified by a reliable source before it goes in, which Wall's work (in general, not just his timeline) is not.  It can be a very useful guide to research, but we shouldn't cite it as a source.  (Of course even wikipedia timeline articles are often very poorly sourced.  If the claim is wikilinked, the target article might provide sources and verification.  If it isn't linked or the link targets don't source the claim, it should be sourced in the timeline itself.)  It would be fine to link to Wall in External links.  I agree that our chess timeline article should be greatly improved.  We have much useful information already in articles that could be extracted for a timeline.  I'd also like to have a series of "YYYY in chess" articles.  These would be individual years for recent years, but decades or centuries for earlier times.  Now would be a great time to get the ball rolling with 2007 in chess.  Anyone with a stack of last year's chess magazines or the willingness to go through last year's TWIC issues could get it started. If we had a full set of "YYYY in chess" articles, it wouldn't be hard to extract the highlights for the timeline.  These articles could provide an outlet for the exhaustive detail which I think is nice to have, but which would overwhelm the main timeline as Bubba73 points out.  Quale (talk) 17:13, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Sounds like a good approach; I will take a copy of Bill Wall's page (just in case it goes - it has a lot of births/deaths and title award dates and other stuff that would be difficult to track down, if not mentioned in any of the standard texts), but otherwise I like the idea of having "YYYY in chess" articles feed into our Timeline article in due course. I have a copy of the (Burgess/Gambit, 1999) book Chess Highlights of the 20th Century and this may help considerably with the pre-millennium years. Brittle heaven (talk) 19:25, 6 January 2008 (UTC)


 * There are categories for some years, such as Category:1913 in chess. These will help.  Bubba73 (talk), 03:21, 7 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Right. Check out Category:Years in chess for all of them.  It was probably a dumb idea (I think I can say dumb, since I'm the one who did it) to create individual year categories for the nineteenth century.  Probably should have gone with cats by century for 10th through 18th centuries, by decade in the 19th century, and then by year since 1901.  This can be cleaned up at some point if needed. Quale (talk) 04:37, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Article about Soviet School of Chess?
Do we need an article about the "Soviet School of Chess"? Aspects worth covering: Kotov and Yudovich's book "The Soviet School of Chess" (I don't have a copy, so would need help with this bit); whether it was a "school" in the intellectual / artistic sense or just a hegemony; the Soviet coaching system; common tendencies of Soviet players (flexible interpretation of principles of chess strategy, of which one of the early manifestations was Bronstein's handling of the King's Indian; common openings, e.g. in the early 1970s as Black they liked the Tartakower variation of the QGD and 3 or 4 lines in the Closed Morphy Defence to the Ruy Lopez, as White almost all favoured 1. e4). Philcha (talk) 14:54, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes. As you point out, it's been the subject of at least one book (and shorter scholarly discussion as well), so it's eminently encyclopedic. This could be the subject of an excellent article.  Quale (talk) 17:16, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Before we go too far, we should probably consider the merits of doing 'Schools of chess' as one article with sub-sections, or else carry on doing them all individually - Hypermodernism (chess) already exists. The Oxford Companion to Chess carries a fairly good summary of each and so provides one obvious source. Brittle heaven (talk) 18:14, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
 * That's reasonable too. Another idea (not mutually exclusive) would be to create Chess in the Soviet Union.  I've long wanted "Chess in xxx" articles.  (I mentioned Chess in the United States some time ago on this talk page at  but haven't done anything about it).  The only existing article of that sort right now is Chess in China, but I wouldn't recommend the current state of that article as a pattern to follow.  A Chess in the Soviet Union article could cover some of the same ground as a Soviet school article.  We would want to avoid duplication if we had both. Quale (talk) 01:46, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Category:Chinese chess players
This category name is highly confusing, since Chinese chess is the common English name for a different board game, and one would naturally expect it to be filled with players of Chinese chess. Any suggestions on renaming it? 70.51.9.174 (talk) 07:47, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I considered that issue a bit before I created the cat. Since it fits the pattern used by all the categories in Category:Chess players by nationality I used it anyway.  Chinese chess is a redirect—the parent article is xiangqi—so if Chinese chess players are ever categorized by country, presumably the cat would be Category:Chinese xiangqi players.  We could put an explanation on Category:Chinese chess players to point out that it doesn't refer to xiangqi. Quale (talk) 15:55, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
 * This category rename request is currently being discussed at CFD 2008 January 5. Quale (talk) 04:32, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
 * It would be better if the category name were clearer, since "chinese chess" is not that unusual, and is more common that "xiangqi" in English... Category: Chinese players of chess also seems good. If a restriction note is placed on the category, it will need to be patrolled. 70.55.87.75 (talk) 05:23, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

FIDE tournament categories
The fairly new article Reggio Emilia chess tournament mentions categories, the FIDE system for ranking the strength of a tournament. I don't think we explain the category system anywhere. Does anyone want to take that on? Where would the best place to put a description be: new article (under what name?), a new section on the FIDE page, or a new section on the Elo rating system page? Wherever it might go, it would be handy if it was easy to link. We could add category ratings to more chess tournament articles, such as Corus chess tournament and List of strong chess tournaments (in both cases only for tournaments after 1970). Quale (talk) 21:27, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
 * The List_of_chess_terms, mentions it. However, a full page might be better indeed. Perhaps with a top 10 and a few examples. Voorlandt (talk) 21:44, 7 January 2008 (UTC)


 * There is a brief paragraph at Elo rating system that I added a couple of weeks ago. It could be expanded.


 * On a related note, what are the FIDE individual categories for ratings? Kasparov says "even a category 3 player would see it" - surely he isn't talking about a player in a category 3 tournament, but something akin to a USCF class C player?  I looked for information on these individual categories, but I couldn't find anything.  Europeans are probably more familair with it.  Bubba73 (talk), 21:49, 7 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks—I'm not too clever. I forgot to look at List of chess terms (I've edited that page, I should have remembered that it was there), and I didn't look closely at Elo rating system, I just foolishly asserted it wasn't there.  I think Kasparov might be referring to a system used to rate chess players in the Soviet Union (and maybe subsequently in Russia).  This is an interesting subject that we should describe in Chess in the Soviet Union.  The Soviets had an elaborate classification scheme, much more rigorous (in the sense of difficulty, not mathematical precision) than the FIDE title scheme.  Harkness wrote about it in his chess handbooks.  Category 5 was the lowest and category 1 the highest.  Above category 1 was Master Candidate followed by Master.  The very top was Grandmaster of the Soviet Union.  I suppose Kasparov might have been category 3 around age 10, maybe younger.  I blathered on about this a bit at Talk:Abram Model. Quale (talk) 00:53, 8 January 2008 (UTC)


 * That's probably it for Kasparov's comment. It is in one of the first four "My Great Predecessor" books, but I don't remember where.  It is not explained in the book.  Bubba73 (talk), 02:07, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

The Chess Olympiads
Just thought I mention it here: Almost all chess olympiads (see Category:Chess Olympiads) have an article now! This is great news, however the recently created articles are all stubs. I am not sure whether User:Gollenaiven is planning to expand them. Voorlandt (talk) 21:33, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Stalemate disambiguation?
I started some discussion on the talk page of the stalemate article regarding breaking out the general usage of the term into its own article, and how to handle the subsequent necessary disambiguation, redirects, etc. Baccyak4H (Yak!) 16:17, 9 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Zugzwang is in a very similar situation. There is some discussion about Zugzwang in game theory in the introduction, but the bulk of the article is about chess, and is in one long section "Zugzwang in chess".  Bubba73 (talk), 17:04, 10 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, it has been a few days. I say go ahead and do it.  Bubba73 (talk), 02:22, 19 January 2008 (UTC)


 * There's insufficient non-chess content in both Stalemate and Zugzwang to justify a split. Philcha (talk) 11:39, 19 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, that means that the articles should stay basically as they are, and non-chess uses can be discussed in the intro and probably have their own section (probably at the end) and the bulk of the article can be assumed to be about chess, and the section headings "stalemate in chess" and "zugzwang in chess" can be eliminated. (Not the text in the sections, just the headings, and change === to == .) Bubba73 (talk), 02:44, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Links to www.365chess.com
The new user Bitopar is adding some links to www.365chess.com in a lot of chess articles, e.g. in List of chess openings or in Vassily Ivanchuk. See its "User contributions" for the total list. I have some questions about that: SyG (talk) 19:42, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
 * should this site be considered as a relevant one for such links ?
 * isn't it a bit redundant to put some links to www.chessgames.com and some others to www.365chess.com in the same article ?
 * as these links are the first and only contributions from this user, should we be extra careful (e.g. is it breaking some kind of policy somewhere) ?
 * Given the high enthusiasm this section seems to provoke, I am considering being bold and deleting all the links altogether. SyG (talk) 21:17, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Having looked at the contributions, they all seem relevant and useful in the context of those pages. ChessCreator (talk) 23:26, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Is there a good example for an analysed game
I recently edited Polish Immortal to make it clearer to read. I used a table, which could be considered bad style. I wondered if there was any example as to how it should be done.

LaurenceHygate (talk) 14:57, 21 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Putting it in that format does make it show up nicer than just plain text. It is a lot more work, though.  Bubba73 (talk), 15:19, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Some decent examples Immortal game, Evergreen game and The Game of the Century (chess) ChessCreator (talk) 00:58, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Scoring hard to understand
At Talk:José Raúl Capablanca it has been pointed out that the way we give scores is hard to understand if you don't know what the system is. That is, (+11 -9 =4) is not clear to many people, and the same for 9.5/12. This will be a major undertaking to change since it is in probably over 1,000 articles.

In several of the articles I've tried to write it out in words, but the problem is too large. I also see problems with "=1st" etc. For one thing, the MoS says that small numbers should spelled out, so it should be "equal first place" or "tied for first place" - something like that. I've changed a lot of these, but there are thousands of them.

Finally, since scores are either an integer or half-integer, I do not like ".5" amd ".0" scores. I think 9 and 9½ are better than 9.0 and 9.5. Bubba73 (talk), 17:32, 21 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes, I certainly agree with your final point. Most editors are hopefully catching on that the ½ symbol exists at the foot of the editing box amongst the diacritics. Probably, a few don't see it on their keyboard and just take the easy option - 0.5. Regarding the scoring system, I actually think (+3 -2 =7) is easy enough to understand. It probably throws you a bit first time you see it, but you soon work it out. The hardest one to explain to the layperson is your Talk:José Raúl Capablanca 6-4 example - not sure why people use that one. Just to add another to the mix, Chess pros nowadays use phrases like "I'd like to end up plus two" - see Magnus Carlsen's interview from the current Corus tournament. I don't think there are any easy answers, you pick up the meanings of these terms as you get more familiar with chess - you can't know everything instantly. Perhaps an explanation under "Score" or "Result" or "Tournament" or with links to all three, in List of chess terms is the simplest way forward? Brittle heaven (talk) 20:07, 21 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes, maybe continue to use (+3 -2 =7), etc, but link so some explination of it. Bubba73 (talk), 20:40, 21 January 2008 (UTC)


 * One way to deal with that would be to create an article on scoring explaining all that, and then put a warning and a link at the beginning of each article, like we already do for chess notation. Another (tedious) one would be to add a Footnote, for example (+3 -2 =7)² when the "²" footnote would indicate, "(+3 -2 =7) means 3 games won, 2 games lost and 7 games drawn". SyG (talk) 21:06, 21 January 2008 (UTC)


 * I like the idea of having an article on scoring that explains all of that and then either (+3 -2 =7) the first time it comes up, or have a system like that can go at the top of the article.  Bubba73 (talk), 21:23, 21 January 2008 (UTC)


 * These are good ideas. I agree that the 6–4 notation is hard to understand, and I suggest as an informal rule of style for the chess wikiproject that we avoid using it for tournament results.  It's good for match scores, where reporting Fischer–Spassky 1972 as 12½–8½ makes more sense than saying Fischer scored 12½/21.  The +=− or +−= notation is probably easy to handle.  It isn't too hard to puzzle out and we could update the articles to explain it by example at the first use, for example "... won the match with three wins, five draws, and two losses (+3=5−2)" and then simply use the +=− notation without further explanation in the remainder of the article.  I think a chess scoring article would be good in general, since there's a lot of ground that could be covered there.  The fact that draws are scored ½ isn't obvious (in ice hockey at least in the U.S. ties are scored 1, wins are scored 2), and it would be good to describe how that came to be.  (Early tournaments and matches tended to ignore draws, only wins counted, and some World Championships matches have been scored that way.)  Also we need a good spot to describe tournament crosstables (the brief explanation I wrote up in list of chess terms isn't really enough).  Then there's the way that Swiss system crosstables are usually done that's a bit different than for round-robin.  I don't think we have any Swiss system crosstables in our articles (at least yet), but it's useful to explain anyway because people may encounter them somewhere else. This could also include a brief description of the many ways ties are handled in matches and tournaments, linking to more detailed explanations in separate articles like tie-breaking in Swiss system tournaments.  In defense of 9.0 and 9.5 I can say that I have sometimes used it in tables to make the numbers line up better.  With either align=right or align=center it can look better with the decimals than the fraction. Maybe there's some way to use non-breaking spaces or some such hackery to improve the alignment when using fractions. (On the other hand I've probably used 9.5 in text a few times out of laziness too.)  Quale (talk) 02:42, 22 January 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree that we need an article explaining all of this stuff, and I think the best way to go is with the "chess notation" method at the top of the article. I don't think 6-4 is that hard to unserstand, because you often hear of sports teams being "6 and 4".  But in that terminology, a draw is usually "6-4-1" (6 wins, 4 draws, 1 tie), rather than 6½-4½.  Bubba73 (talk), 02:58, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Another pet peeve, but one that isn't too widespread. In many cases you see things such as "URS-ch24". We know that means the 24th USSR championship (or is it the 1924 championship). but most people would not know that. Bubba73 (talk), 03:43, 22 January 2008 (UTC)


 * And you are right about using ".5" and ".0" in tables - use them to make it easy to line up columns. Bubba73 (talk), 15:08, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Petrisoan as editor of 64
Golombek's encyclopedia says that Tigran Petrosian was editor of 64 (chess magazine) until 1977, but I've read in several places that he was fired from that job following the match he lost to Fischer in 1971. Did he get that job back after a short time? Bubba73 (talk), 17:04, 22 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Whoops, I think I got it wrong. Seems he was fired after his 1977 lost match to Korchnoi.  Bubba73 (talk), 17:07, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

checkmate with two bishops
All of the conventional wisdom in the literature I can recall says to force the king into any corner and then checkmate the king in the corner or on a square on the edge next to the corner. Basic Chess Endings by Fine and Benko says that on page 3. But on page 4 they give a forced checkmate that is a square farther from the corner. In their example, the king was forced into the corner first. (1) Can this checkmate two squares from the corner be forced without first forcing the king into the corner? (2) Can it be forced on the edge three squares from the corner? Bubba73 (talk), 04:01, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

"chess notation" missing from many bios
Many of the bios give a sample game or moves of an opening, but they don't have , Just going through some of the US champions, I found eight that needed the tag. Bubba73 (talk), 03:01, 24 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Since then I've found many more bios that need "chess notation". I added it to all I found that needed it.  Bubba73 (talk), 02:53, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Recent change tp the chess diagram template?
Has there been a recent change to the chess diagram template? All of a sudden, diagrams that have a blank before the header are treating it like regular text when there is a leading space - putting it in a box and using fix-spacing font. Bubba73 (talk), 04:29, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I fixed it. There was a change to the template today to clean it up, and it introduced a subtle problem.  The second parameter (used for the diagram title) was moved to start a new line in the template.  A leading space in the parameter would cause the wikimedia software to treat the line as preformated text. Quale (talk) 04:50, 25 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks, that was the easy way! I had "fixed" several of the diagrams. Bubba73 (talk), 05:02, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Speaking of photos
Speaking of photos, I found a very interesting (at least I think so) of World Chess Championship 1948 - all five players together. Check it out. Bubba73 (talk), 02:44, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
 * That's nice. I added a famous photo to Hastings 1895 chess tournament.  It has a lot more than five people in it, but you still have me beat three World Champions to two. Quale (talk) 03:13, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

About some removed links
SyG suggested bringing the discussion here.

Some time ago I added some links to 365Chess.com in sections like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_chess_openings and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopaedia_of_Chess_Openings that pointed to http://www.365chess.com/eco.php or http://www.365chess.com/eco/A00_Polish_(Sokolsky)_opening/games

Yesterday SyG started the deletion of all these links. Here is what we talked until now:


 * Hi SyG. You're doing a great job as an editor! I like very much the chess section of the wikipedia and I use it everyday. Congratulations!


 * I have noticed you removed some links to 365Chess.com from sections like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_chess_openings and others.


 * I would like to explain my pont of view.


 * Why 365chess.com should be present at wikipedia project?


 * Mainly for two reasons:


 * 1. 365Chess.com is completely free.
 * There are links related to sites that are not completely free because you get only part of the features they offer if you decide not to pay a monthly fee. In the other hand you can browse the entire database of 365chess.com without paying anything. This is much like the wikipedia inspiration.


 * 2. 365Chess.com has the biggest searchable database online
 * It has more than 2.5 million chess games and you can search and browse it completely free. I'm sure it's a great contribution to the chess community.


 * It's true that the link I mentioned is similar to the other external links that the article already have but from 365chess.com list of openings you can reach an entire collection of games played with that opening. I think it's a very relevant difference.


 * I tried to be not so extense in my thoughts. Thank you for your time and I will wait your response in order to add that links again.

Masugly (talk) 13:51, 26 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Hello Masugly! I understand you are a new editor, so thanks a lot for the keen interest you put in Wikipedia and in chess. One of the issues we have to run Wikipedia is to avoid it becoming a giant advertiser for websites. I mean that a lot of people run various websites, blogs, FaceBook pages, and add some links to some articles in Wikipedia as an attempt to increase traffic. That means we are often very prudent about what kind of internet link is worth enough to be added to an article.
 * Now I am not saying in any way that www.365Chess.com does not deserve to have links on Wikipedia. I have briefly looked at this website and it seems to be very serious and useful. However I would have at least two concerns about it:
 * Most of the links were added in articles where there were already some similar links to www.chessgames.com, a well-known website that has about the same informations as www.365chess.com. In that sense the link to www.365chess.com was not adding a lot of value to the article.
 * The website www.365chess.com has just been created a few months ago, so there is a slight danger that it could disappear soon. In this case all the links would be broken, meaning we would have to spend a lot of time removing them one by one, which is tedious. Including links to fresh websites is contrary to the External links guideline (see "Longevity" paragraph)
 * Now if you think I am eventually wrong in my opinion, I would suggest to bring the matter to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chess so that we can have some opinions of more people. Happy editing! SyG (talk) 17:24, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Now my opinion

I think that 365Chess.com deserves space here as I said before. As a response to SyG’s concerns: SyG said that some pages have already links to chessgames.com. 365chess.com has an interesting difference from ChessGames.com: it is completely free. In ChessGames.com you can’t browse the entire explorer being a free member and in 365Chess you can see all its levels and there is no premium membership.

I must say that I like ChessGames.com very much. I play regular correspondence chess and I use it a lot as reference. So this is not, in anyway, a discussion against a notable and important website like ChessGames.com. I like to share my point of view about the differences.

Another difference is the quantity of games. ChessGames.com has 455,706 games (as its stats say) and 365Chess.com has more than 3.5 million games. In this aspect I think that 365Chess.com comparable to ChessBase rather to ChessGames.

BTW none of the pages I mentioned above has links to ChessGames.com

Then SyG mentioned that 365Chess.com is a pretty new site and make a reference to the “Longevity”paragraph at the External links Guidelines.

There I can read: “It is very important to consider if the link is likely to remain relevant and acceptable to the article in the foreseeable future. For example, it is not useful to link to a homepage that changes often and merely happens to have a relevant picture or article on its front page at the moment.”

I think this clearly not the case of 365chess.com.It’s noticeable that a lot of effort has been put in its development and I’m sure that nothing indicates that it may disappear in the foreseeable future. I really understand SyG concerns about this point specially but I think there’s nothing to be afraid of.

I don’t want to continue bother you all with a long text but I think the theme deserves a discussion. Thank you all

Masugly (talk) 21:01, 26 January 2008 (UTC)


 * It's a difficult decision for sure - the website looks good and I was half-minded to give it my support, but now we're being peppered by PlanetChess, who also have a 'nice site' and who are replacing their adverts faster than they can be deleted. I personally think we'd struggle to rate all these sites against one another and new ones could spring up at regular intervals, generating new discussions like this every time. Consequently, in the interests of keeping spam and distracting discussions to a minimum, I vote that we take a tough line and remove everything but ChessGames. Brittle heaven (talk) 00:42, 6 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I'll throw in my two pawn's worth. I've looked at 365chess and it looks pretty good to me.  However, I'm concerned about the games.  ChessGames.com has fewer than 500,000 games.  They are trying to get all available games when one olayer is at least a master.  They think that may be around 750,000 games.  365chess has 3,500,000 games.  Most likely, they don't have significantly more master games than ChessGames.  So probably about 87 percent of their games are below master level. I doubt that 365Chess has many master games that ChessGames doesn't have.  Practicall all of the games linked to from WP articles are to master games, so I don't see that 365Chess (as good as it seems to be) has much to offer over ChessGames, for our purposes.  Bubba73 (talk), 01:55, 6 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm all for removing spam, but I am concerned about our unquestioning use of Chessgames.com, which is a commercial company. Peter Ballard (talk) 02:20, 6 February 2008 (UTC)


 * But most of Chessgames.com is free to use and it not only gives access to games - you can also access the forum (read only) and the biographies, which are taken from Whyld (Guinness Book) and Hooper & Whyld (Oxford Companion), which we know are fairly authoritative sources. In this respect, ChessGames is very helpful to editors who don't have those books but would like to check the validity of some of the information contained in an article. That's how I would justify it, anyway 217.23.231.6 (talk) 13:02, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Please add these
I created articles (in de.wikipedia.org) on Johannes Kohtz and Carl Kockelkorn a few days ago and translated them today to english language. Please add these to your page with new chess articles. I don't find it. --Constructor 12:59, 12 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I added them. Briefly, add   on the article Talk page.  Then add the article to the appropriate section of List of chess topics. Quale (talk) 15:33, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Headers quit working in position template?!
Headers have quit working in the chess diagram template. Has something changed? Bubba73 (talk), 03:17, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Template:Chess diagram was deliberately edited to remove the title parameter, but I don't know why. I reverted. Quale (talk) 05:15, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
 * I have no idea how or when I did that, but I was looking at it. Maybe I thought I was editing a copy. Sorry. I'm glad you were able to revert. :-( -Dbabbitt (talk) 01:53, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

When did Tal die?
Every source I could find says that Mikhail Tal died on June 28, except that his gravestone says June 27. This is no big deal, but an editor changed it to the 27th today. What is correct? Bubba73 (talk), 03:32, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
 * I noticed a similar thing with Bobby Fischer recently, it was reported the day after he died and that report date started to be falsely given as the day he died. Would accept Mikhail Tal's gravestone as stronger information than news links. ChessCreator (talk) 00:38, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
 * It is also in Kasparov's book, etc. Of course, one source may have made an error and the rest copied it.  Bubba73 (talk), 03:47, 15 February 2008 (UTC)