Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chess/Archive 18

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New Barnstar for Chess

A new File:Barnstar for Chess.png is now available for any Wikipedian to use:

Barnstar for Chess

To use it, you just need to specify what size to use, since the uploaded version is rather large. For example, the above image is specified to appear as 200px wide. H Padleckas (talk) 08:34, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

That's great, many thanks ! SyG (talk) 08:17, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

I have created a template with this picture, see Template:Chess Barnstar. SyG (talk) 15:43, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Some new chess articles

I created two stubs recently: Karen Grigorian and American Chess Bulletin. Couldn't find out much else about them, so any help expanding or improving them would be great. I'm hoping to contribute a bit more to the chess articles around here (mainly the biographies and the history ones), and have a few books ready to go through. If I want advice, is this the best place to come? Oh, one other thing: I failed to get around to doing an in the news item on the London Chess Classic, but I'm thinking that when the new list comes out in January, that some hook could be done on Magnus Carlsen being the new number one, and the youngest as well. Again, it depends whether it gets much beyond the normal chess columns and websites, as ITN has fairly strict standards on what to include. Last question: is there a way to get a list of new articles? Ah, I see... User:AlexNewArtBot/ChessSearchResult. Possibly a false positive here. :-) Carcharoth (talk) 12:26, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, this is a good place to ask about chess articles. Bubba73 ^{(Who's attacking me now?)}, 04:35, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

Chess categories

I recently created and tagged Category:Chess memorial tournaments. It may be better as a list (see here for a userspace list), but I thought I'd see if a category would work. I used "class=category" in the wikiproject tag, but I could only see templates among the NA-Class articles tagged by this WikiProject. Are categories meant to be tagged or not, or is there another tag to use, or snapshots of the categories maintained somewhere? Carcharoth (talk) 04:22, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

Style issues

Per WP:MOSNUM#Numbers as figures or words, small whole numbers in text should usually be spelled out: one, two, three, ... nine. This also applies to ordinal numbers: first, second, third, ... So it is "first place", not "1st place". These can be abbreviated in a table or info box.

Cryptic things like "=1st 37 YUG-ch" should be written out. We can deciper that, but many readers can't. Wikipedia is not Twitter. Write out what you mean: "tied for first place in the 37th Yugoslov championship", and link to Yugoslav Chess Championship if it isn't already linked.

Don't start sentences with digits, e.g. "12. Qh4". Bubba73 ^{(Who's attacking me now?)}, 17:33, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

For instance, this diff shows a good faith change where the editor apparantly did not know that "1st=" meant a tie. Bubba73 ^{(Who's attacking me now?)}, 06:45, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Happy new year !!

I wish a great year 2010 to all members of the WikiProject Chess ! SyG (talk) 23:05, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

(just to explain: it is already 1st January in France, where I am located...) SyG (talk) 23:06, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

FIDE ratings

I don't know if this was already discussed here however now that FIDE switched to 2 months rating lists, it seems that many players will have outdated ratings here. I wonder if there is any sense in keeping them, maybe we should just have the peak rating.  Dr. Loosmark  23:27, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

I fully agree. Bubba73 and I made that suggestion on more than one occasion when there were only four ratings lists per year. On the other hand, somewhere I argued to keep every player with a peak rating over 2700 in the table of top rated players in methods for comparing top chess players throughout history. It was clear to others early on that this wasn't a good idea, but only later after the table grew really too large did I realize I was wrong. (The table was trimmed to the top 20 peak ratings.) Quale (talk) 05:30, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Right. I don't think it is very significant that a player's rating was 2473 one one list and then 2461 on the next list two months later. And there are hundreds of players with current ratings. Bubba73 ^{(Who's attacking me now?)}, 06:14, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Chess arbiter

From Talk:International Arbiter (I got no answer) :

Hi there, I wrote an article corresponding to this one on fr: and when I plugged in the interwiki link, I wondered about the title of this article. A chess arbiter is not necessarily an international arbiter, the title of FIDE arbiter also exists. Moreover, national federations and chess organizations that are not linked to FIDE (e.g. the FSGT in France) also have their arbiter titles. So, I believe this article should be renamed either chess arbiter or arbiter (chess), depending on your naming conventions. Since I am not used to the procedures on en:, I am leaving this up to you.

Also, there are international arbiters in other sports, e.g. soccer. Oyp (talk) 20:32, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, we need an article on chess arbiter or Arbiter (chess). Right now there are a lot of links to International Arbiter that would be better served by an article like this. Bubba73 ^{(Who's attacking me now?)}, 22:36, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree. I'd probably favour Arbiter (chess) for consistency withGrandmaster (chess), but I guess either would do. Brittle heaven (talk) 23:43, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

problem editor

There is a problem editor editing Samuel Sevian. He is a new member of the project, but is causing problems with that article. Bubba73 ^{(Who's attacking me now?)}, 01:09, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

What kind of problems?  Dr. Loosmark  01:15, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

First, the article has many problems. Secondly, the article said things like "3 years ago" and "in February" without saying what year. I tagged them but the editor removed them. I put them back in recently. Also, I took out a sentence saying that he was going to be playing in some future tournament because WP is not a crystal ball. He put it back in and I took it out again. Please look at that article and its talk page. Bubba73 ^{(Who's attacking me now?)}, 02:16, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

And he has removed them again. Bubba73 ^{(Who's attacking me now?)}, 02:19, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

PS - I think the editor is almost certainly a child. Bubba73 ^{(Who's attacking me now?)}, 02:29, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

I read through some of your dealings with him - you did well to keep your patience; he gets very aggressive and rude. As you say, probably a kid who enjoys playing the tough guy thanks to his online anonimity. It's a very borderline acceptable/unacceptable article with little notability and very badly written. As far as I can see, the only shred of justification for keeping it is Sevian's high Elo, the best for his age in the world - I checked at the FIDE site. Brittle heaven (talk) 00:19, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

He is doing the exact same on fr:, and his French is even worse than his English. I nominated his page on Samuel for deletion there, and it is going towards the trash can. Oyp (talk) 19:28, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

He is not a child, he is a 17-year-old Canadian. Now, the only remaining questions are why he behaves as if he were seven years younger, and how a Canadian's English and French can both be that bad. Not that I really care, of course. Oyp (talk) 22:57, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

OK, I was judging by his behavior, which is childish. Bubba73 ^{(Who's attacking me now?)}, 23:31, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Once again, he removed the templates for grammar / notability / etc. and cleared the talk page. I am not sure why nobody has nominated the page for deletion yet. If someone cares to do something about it… Oyp (talk) 16:01, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

EdJohnston is an admin, he seems to be on top of it. A 17-year-old is still pretty much a child. He says that I am like his high school teacher... :-) Bubba73 ^{(Who's attacking me now?)}, 16:16, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

(Indent) Nominated for deletion. SunCreator (talk) 18:04, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

He is at it again, removing the warning messages, including "considered for deletion". Oyp (talk) 20:14, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

So you guys are having a discussion behind my back to criticize me and call me a child... Seriously how low can you get. EdJohnston went you act arrogant and like you can do wat ever you want. Then yes your acting like how alot of high school teachers act. Alot of them lack proper social, so they use dictatorship. Do wat i want or punish you. And about me being rude? Are you kidding me, just because sweared like 1 or 2 time. Wat about how you guys are trolling the page that i made and calling me a child and insult my writing skills?. Also this issues is about me make an article that attract people that have way to much free time and then they put thing that make the article look bad. If people want help, like i sayed before i am fine whit that. But you do nothing... all you guys are doing is trying destroy this article.

Oyp don't added useless thing ther is o ready a citation by an International master that wrote an article about him is the LA times. And if you want more citation i recommend you look for them yourself. —Preceding unsigned comment added by GSP-Rush (talk • contribs) 20:39, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

You are listed as a member of this project, so its talk page is hardly behind your back. As far as your writing skills, do you want me to point out 10 errors in those two paragraphs? Or how about 20? Bubba73 ^{(Who's attacking me now?)}, 22:13, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

First off if you guys know that am 17 that because of my chess.com profile. Now if you read carefully on that profile you see that i come form Canada, Quebec ( the only French province in Canada). You never thought to yourself ,maby his French? Ther is no spelling error but yes ther are grammar error but i never studied the English language. I learn how talk, and then i learn how to type on my own. I think that my English is actually very good for someone who thought it to himself. Also it not acting childish it being a dick. But it justified because you guys are just focus on sabotaging the only article i made. Now if the admit and the people on wikipedia would give advice, try improve the article ther wouldn't be problem. But all guys do is ask things that you can't get yourself.

Also it clear states in the new paper article that he was the first to achieve 2000 rating. Ther is no mention of the youngest USFC rating. Now yes he did achieve it true the USFC but why wouldn't that be important. You see NM title has very big reputation for the chess community in the USA. Nicholas Nip even went TV for accomplishment. Now wat i don't seem to understand is that betting the youngest expert wouldn't be a big deal but NM would?. I think that NM is more important but Expert is also very important. And yes it clearly states that ther talking about it as an all-time record and not the USA. —Preceding unsigned comment added by GSP-Rush (talk • contribs) 23:18, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

No, I definitely did not think you were French. This is because I read what you wrote on the French language Wikipedia, and one really has to bend it hard to make it look like French, one reason being that every other word is English. By the way, since the delay is expired and all nine people who cared to participate voted delete, your article on fr: should be going to the trash can today. As for deletion on en:, I am not participating because the criteria may well be different. I understand that English speakers may care about a record relevant only in the USA; the rest of the world definitely does not. Oyp (talk) 23:46, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

My opinion is that GSP-Rush is a troll who is making grammar mistakes on purpose.  Dr. Loosmark  00:35, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

We have not tried to sabotage the article - we have suggested improvements. Take a look at other articles and see how they are written. Read the basic Wikipedia policies on style, references, etc. There is a good listing of them on your talk page. If you are 17 then you have probably had to write term papers. Eikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a blog, so the writing in its articles should at least be as good as a good high school term paper. Bubba73 ^{(Who's attacking me now?)}, 01:41, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

GSP-Rush, the guys at the Chess project are very helpful, knowledge and enthusiast - I'll working with several articles, although for the last time year or to I've worked on other topics. If the Samuel Sevian article can be saved, Chess project can help you to do it. Things that will greatly its prospects include:

• High-quality references, formatted in a standard layout. To understand "High-quality references", read WP:V - which is too important that everyone assumes that everyone knows its short name. Format looks complex, but there's a terrific tool called refTools which is really easy to use - see User:Philcha#Tools
• WP's guideline WP:N, another important that everyone assumes that everyone knows its short name. Usually competitors below the top class are included in WP. However, Samuel Sevian is so good at such a young age that there may be a especial case - if you follow advice the Chess project, and don't get aggressive. Look for sources that compare Samuel Sevian with other very young, very strong players, e.g. Samuel Reshevsky. Bobby Fischer looks less good so youngest, and soource on that may help. I suggest you read Child prodigy, which includes the Polgar sisters - the strongest of these gone into the top 10.
• Ask Chess project to check your English prose - there's no shame in that, in fact most editors find it difficult to fix their English prose, and trade favours with other editors. --Philcha (talk)

itsyourturn.com spam?

I've noticed a lot of chess pages include itsyourturn.com spam.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ASearch&search=itsyourturn.com&go=Go

It's like someone adds in a subtle variation which for some reason demands a link to their website for explanation. I don't think it would hurt wikipedia to remove these, or rewrite them in a generic sense, so that every chess game type doesn't have itsyourturn.com plastered all over it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.87.217.123 (talk) 03:38, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Hardly every chess game. The site is linked eight times in total and some of those are not chess related. I'm not sure it does comply with WP:EL however, but it does seem as least partly relevent. SunCreator (talk) 21:01, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Samuel Sevian

Samuel Sevian survived the AfD. I think the article has way too many trivial details about each of his tournaments and each rating change. Please give an opinion. Bubba73 ^{(Who's attacking me now?)}, 04:03, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree it is trivia. Have replied on talk page. Talk:Samuel_Sevian#too_many_trivial_details SunCreator (talk) 14:32, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

After I left this message I spent a lot of time on cleaning it up. Too much for such an unimportant article. Bubba73 ^{(Who's attacking me now?)}, 16:00, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree. Krakatoa (talk) 03:40, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Too much information?

There is a disagreement at Samuel Sevian. One section is a list of all of his most recent tournaments and their corresponding rating change. I think this is too much unnecessary information. Even top players such as Bobby Fischer and Garry Kasparov don't have this level of detail, and they played in notable tournaments instead of the non-notable tournaments Sevian played in.

Please give an opinion on the article's talk page or make a change to the article. Bubba73 ^{(Who's attacking me now?)}, 20:57, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

I totally agree with your evaluation. I have removed those sections but got reverted with an accusation of vandalism.  Dr. Loosmark  16:56, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

First this is not the an appropriate link wp:ISNOT#Content, it talk about the difference between wikipedia and a dictionary whit has nothing to do whit this article. Also you didn't properly quote this part and this part actually favour me WP:NOT#STATS. You see it clearly says that stats sheet can be confusing to the readers. That being sayed we can conclude that the article aren't meant to be confusing to the readers. Witch bring us to keeping the stats since it indicate why his last rating is so far above his rating in the monthly list ( you see the USCF has done an error, it hasn't properly kept track of ther rating changes and it publish the list way before it due release date). Also stating that two ( unknown ) editors in the chess project have given ther opinion isn't inuff you half to specify who and give me a link to wat they sayed. Also they should come on this page read wat i wrote and then comment on it and explain how wat am saying is bad and why they think it should be kept.

Am sorry but you haven't given me any valid arguments on why we should remove it ( actually you favour my cause ). All you did is given me 1 false link and then given me a link that talk about confusing the readers ( witch is wat removing the list would do ). Am gonna half to undo it. Once you give me valid argument and more support then one guy who hasn't justified his opinion ( he just stated something and didn't validate his point ) and 2 random unknown editors whit out the link to ther argument then we might take it off. GSP-Rush (talk) 18:35, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

This is talk for the page please stop taking everything out of context and verify before you agree whit something or not.

Also you could have 100 people on this article that say it should be remove that wouldn't matter. As long as it in the rule of wikipedia and you guys are not able to prove that it not then must stay.

Also to Bubba73 stating that an article is not important show great ignorance, don't state that any approve article is unimportant.

I didn't hear one argument on this page or Samuel Sevian talk page all it is, is Bubba73 stating it in way that make you want to agree and not looking at the other side. Then just agreeing and making a random decision.

And last but not least ther no such thing as to much information. Ther is useful information and useless information. This give a better understand of Samuel Sevian position and tell why ther is a major difference between wat the USCF rating list and his current rating. The USCF made an error if you delete you just pushing people ignorance.GSP-Rush (talk) 18:35, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

See wp:CONSENSUS. Bubba73 ^{(Who's attacking me now?)}, 19:31, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Ah, this looks like a storm in a teacup. Please do not bite the newcomers comes to mind. I suggest a compromise of a summary of something like the Recent tournaments section of Maxime_Vachier-Lagrave. SunCreator (talk) 23:26, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

WP 1.0 bot announcement

This message is being sent to each WikiProject that participates in the WP 1.0 assessment system. On Saturday, January 23, 2010, the WP 1.0 bot will be upgraded. Your project does not need to take any action, but the appearance of your project's summary table will change. The upgrade will make many new, optional features available to all WikiProjects. Additional information is available at the WP 1.0 project homepage. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:06, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Tools to help your project with unreferenced Biographies of living people

List of cleanup articles for your project

If you don't already have this and are interested in creating a list of articles which need cleanup for your wikiproject see: Cleanup listings A list of examples is here

Moving unreferenced blp articles to a special "incubation pages"

If you are interested in moving unreferenced blp articles to a special "incubation page", contact me, User talk:Ikip

Watchlisting all unreferenced articles

If you are interested in watchlisting all of the unreferenced articles once you install Cleanup_listings, contact me, User talk:Ikip

Ikip 02:08, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

name change?

A few weeks ago World Championship in Composing for Individuals was changed to World Championship of Chess Composition. Now there are discussions to change it back, since the former is the actual name. Please see the discussion page and give input. Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 17:07, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Need some help

Dear all,

Hi! I'm from WikiProject Chess at portuguese wikipedia. Unfortunatelly, the only one editing about chess issues there. If you guys don't mind, I'd like to got your opinion about "chess pieces". Here's the thing: Recently pt:Rei (xadrez) received FA status and I've been working on Queen, Rook and Bishop articles. Well I divided king article in five sections: origin and etymology, designing, movement, "King's role during a match" and "The figure of the king in other variants". My first doubt is about this article itself. Did I forget something important? If you guys look at internal links I covered a lot of chess terms and most of refs are in english.

Queens article its almost done but I'm waiting for 3 books I bought to put more refs. This article is a little bit different from king's because I don't have any ideas to explore at designing section (Do you agree?) otherwise I can explore origin and etymology with develop of queen's movement. Move section will be ridiculous because there's nothing cool to explain but I believe it's a required section. At Queen's role I will explore a Queen sacrifice to ilustrate a match, which one do you prefer: A active sacrifice, a passive one (like bobby fischer in the Match of the century) or both? Well, I think that's enough for now. Thanks a lot! Best Regards OTAVIO1981 (talk) 00:46, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

• Just on layout and looks the pt:Rei (xadrez) (translated) and pt:Dama (xadrez) (translated) articles looks superb. Shows how much work is required to King (chess) and Queen (chess). SunCreator (talk) 01:55, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

• Something in pt:Rei (xadrez) - maybe some sort of position to show power of king in ending? I have little knowledge of piece design so no comment on that. An active queen sacrifice has more wide appeal as to see the brillance in the Fischer sacrafice takes a more refined ability at chess. SunCreator (talk) 01:55, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for reply SunCreator! Sometimes I think I underestimated the power of opposition and stalemate in ending. When I started rewriting those articles my first idea was stay focus in "the piece" and don't go far on strategy. I'll explore "strategy section" in next pieces after all chess is a strategy game! Recently, I put Chessboard article pt:Tabuleiro (xadrez) to WP:FAC. I think it a little bit of work to be done in prose and layout. First comments mention the wide range of chessboard variants not explained and lack of tridimensional board's image. Thanks! OTAVIO1981 (talk) 10:39, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

I hope for some replies from other chess members, given your good questions and exceedingly good editing. SunCreator (talk) 16:47, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Samuel Sevian - Candidate Master?

There is a debate about whether or not Samuel Sevian is a Candidate Master. See the article's talk page and history. Opinions are welcome. Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 04:50, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Just an inquiry from a reader

Hi, I thought I'd highlight my inquiry here. Please see http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3AChess_opening&action=historysubmit&diff=344432612&oldid=333709348 . Thanks!--Jimbo Wales (talk) 16:59, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Magnus Carlsen

The article of the chess world number one has become the most popular chess article of any substance being easily more viewed then Chess. The problem is the article is written in a list format. Is there anyone that is willing and able to change it to an encyclopedic prose based article. SunCreator (talk) 16:19, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

I agree that the big parts about the details of every tournament and rating make for dull reading. It needs improvement. If the article continues to give his tournaments in this detail, the article is going to get very long and very dull. It needs to be improved. I suggest judicious pruning of the chess tournament and rating data. Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 19:02, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Chess historian Jose A. Fadul??

Can anyone verify this is a real chess historian? Has anyone got any of his books. I found one on Google books(scroll through the pages and see if you recognise any of it, like familiar pictures). I'm a little suspicious not having heard of the name before and more so having seen that intro on Google books. SunCreator (talk) 06:36, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

• This is to confirm that Prof. Jose Arabe Fadul, Ph.D., is a chess historian as well as a psychotherapist who is exploring the use of chess in and for psychotherapy. I've seen his collections of different antique chess books as well as chess sets from many countries. Limsont (talk) 10:37, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

A chess historian that uses wikipedia articles as a source of publishing? SunCreator (talk) 01:42, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

See also User:FadulJoseA, User_talk:FadulJoseA and User_talk:Fadulj. Apparent related accounts. SunCreator (talk) 02:10, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

He also claims that he is the author of this map, but it was lifted from other sources. Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 02:33, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

It could be. The issue prompted my revisting this topic. Did you check the Google books link that started this topic off. I am surprised it did not generate considerable dialogue, I can only image no one was interested enough to check it. SunCreator (talk) 02:41, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

I didn't check the Google books link until now. Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 03:41, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't know what the standard is for calling someone a "chess historian". Fadul has written a book, published by an obscure publisher, that mentions some pretty basic chess history that can be gleaned from any number of sources. Has he done any original research on chess history? Have respected chess writers taken notice of his work? I haven't seen any evidence of these. Certainly I don't think that having "collections of different antique chess books as well as chess sets from many countries" (as user Limsont asserts of Fadul) makes one a chess historian - and Limsont's observations are in any event original research. Krakatoa (talk) 03:35, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Is this map in A History of Chess? Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 03:41, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

No, it's not. Krakatoa (talk) 16:36, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Chess study

Thie link [1] is somewhat incorrect as not all Chess studies are endgames. Do we have any other articles on Chess studies? SunCreator (talk) 13:36, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

I think it's a valid and sensible redirect: I've never come across any studies that weren't set in the endgame. Do you have any examples? Don't forget a study is different from a problem, which can indeed be set in any part of the game.--Pawnkingthree (talk) 15:19, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Opening study - maybe more. SunCreator (talk) 21:37, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

I've never heard of an opening study. The task in a study, as I understand it, is to determine how White can win or draw (in an unspecified number of moves, unlike a problem), which is obviously impossible if the position is still in the opening!--Pawnkingthree (talk) 23:56, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

There is maybe some confusion and/or crossover here between study and analysis. For example, if Anand published a paper explaining how white defeats a particular line of the Exchange Grunfeld - is that just termed analysis or could it also be said he conducted a study? Moot point I think, but unless we have an article 'Chess analysis', then Chess study should probably be all-encompassing. Brittle heaven (talk) 14:30, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

tournament finishes

A lot of the biographical articles have many details of the player's tournaments. "Tied for 11-13th in Paris, 1982. Finished 17th in Bonn in 1983...". A lot of these are even with scores below 50%! I think this is getting into too much detail. What if we limit mentioning tournament places to the top 3, except in a few special cases? Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 18:26, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

I certainly agree with the general point you are making. There are perhaps a few valid exceptions as you imply - for example, I'd have no problem with top players having a complete tournament record, including the odd duff result for completeness sake. Also, when writing biographies of lesser players, whilst I have usually stuck to 'closed' tournament results in the top 3, there may also be some impressive finishes in large 'open' tournaments where, for example, a player finishes only a half point off the winners. This may only put him/her in places 7-16, but in the context of a huge field of grandmasters, finishing a half point behind Carlsen, Topalov, Kamsky, Adams, Ni Hua and Tiviakov could still be seen as a noteworthy achievement. Exceptions aside though, I think the big problem is going to be that some contributors would see the complete tournament record of every notable player as being the ultimate goal here on Wiki and I'm not sure how you could change that mindset? Brittle heaven (talk) 14:13, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

I think there should be certain exceptions. Fifth place in a Candidate's tournament is significant. A finish in a zonal or candidates that qualifies for the next level is significant. Finishing 1/2 point off the lead in a large hgh-level tournament is significant. Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 15:57, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

As an example: Samuil Vainshtein

• tied for 7-8th in the 1st Leningrad City Chess Championship in 1920
• twice finished 10th,
• and tied for 8-10th at Moscow 1927

and there are others as low as seventh place. Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 16:14, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

I disagree. For chess players of the past who often played in a small number of international tournaments in their entire careers, even low-placed finishes are worth noting. I would say that low finishes can also provide encyclopedic information about a player. This can be decided case by case rather than a blanket rule. I really don't see the problem with Samuil Vainshtein. The article is tiny as it is, and gutting it is not going to improve it. Rather few chess biographies on wikipedia are so bloated that they would be improved by removing tournament results. I agree that this could be a problem if someone filled a bio with the hundreds of tournaments that some of the active modern players compete in, but I just haven't seen that happen yet. This is a solution in search of a problem. The real problem is that not nearly enough tournament results are recorded in our chess bios. Quale (talk) 05:47, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

If we're talking about a player who had a significant number of high finishes, I would be inclined to focus on those, and probably also on participation in important events like Interzonals and Candidates Matches, whatever the result, and ignore the 10th-place finishes at Rovinj-Zagreb and such. For someone like Vainshtein who had very few high finishes, I agree with Quale that it makes sense to mention the player's results in significant tournaments, even if they weren't stellar. Krakatoa (talk) 08:07, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

OK, for a player who hasn't had many great successes, it is good to list a few of his best ones. But there is a tendency (especially with current players it seems) to list all of their tournaments. Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 15:52, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Another example Izaak Grynfeld - 9th/10th at Warsaw, 1947 - this was tied for last place, 1.5/9. His 18th place finish was 18th out of 20, 6.0/19; and the 15/16th place was out of 17 players. Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 01:42, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

IPPOLIT

Does anyone know why this didn't get listed as a chess article? SunCreator (talk) 01:00, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

I looked at it and I thought that it did have a chess project tag on the talk page. (I could be wrong, though.) I think it got PRODed pretty quickly. If you want a copy of it to look at, there are administrators that will do that. Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 02:48, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

I think it had a chess project tag also. It was in AFD for 7 days so can't make out why it wasn't picked up. SunCreator (talk) 03:50, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

I don't know why. The list seems to be updated once a day, so an AfD should show up. With a quick PROD, an article can be gone before it shows up. Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 04:18, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Computer vs Human

Hi,

I would like to add the following, as I am a student of AI researching chess this year and for some reason this does not really seem to be implied anywhere on this article:

Mathematically, a computer will always beat or draw a human at chess, assuming that the computer has the processing power to perform the required calculations and the human brain at best can match the processing ability of the computer opponent. This is due to the finite number of moves involved in a chess game and zero probability of the computer making a mistake.

I have tried to add this, but Bubba73 says it's implied in the Solved section, I do not believe that this is so, in fact it implies the contradction. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Shahee.saib (talk • contribs) 09:10, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

signed: 09:13, 7 March 2010 (UTC)Shahee.Saib —Preceding unsigned comment added by Shahee.saib (talk • contribs)

Singed: Shahee.saib (talk) 09:14, 7 March 2010 (UTC)Shahee.Saib

The most significant problem with your addition to computer chess is that you do not provide a source or a reference for the statements you want to add to the article. The requirements for the English-language wikipedia can be found on WP:V and WP:RS. Arguments that something logically must be true or that you have proven something are generally not sufficient on their own—see WP:NOR. Aside from this, I'm not sure what you're trying to say. If your point is that perfect play in chess will always win or draw, that would be equally true whether the perfect player were a computer or a human (or chimpanzee or Martian, for that matter). This says nothing about computers in particular and it is a pretty uninteresting observation. Even at that, it isn't necessarily correct since it is not currently known whether perfect play would produce a victory for White, Black, or a draw. A computer playing perfect chess might still lose as Black to a human as White if White can force a win. Finally, the statement that there is a zero probability of a computer making a mistake is simply untrue for any computer in existence today. All computers have some chance of failure even if it can be small.

Even taking your addition aside, the Computer chess#Solving chess section isn't written very well. The important point that is not clearly stated is that chess is a finite, zero-sum, two person game of perfect information. This means that there are one or more optimal strategies, a fact that is not mentioned in chess#Mathematics and computers either. It is described a bit in zero-sum, although chess isn't mentioned on that page. Quale (talk) 11:11, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Mathematically, a computer will always beat or draw a human at chess, assuming that the computer has the processing power to perform the required calculations and the human brain at best can match the processing ability of the computer opponent.

All the processing power in the world won't help the computer if the functions which evaluate the position don't do that correctly. It's true that if a computer would have an unthinkable processing power to "see" every variation to it's conclusion then it would win however I would harldy call that "calculations", it would be sort of a cheat like the tablebases are.  Dr. Loosmark  13:04, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

As chess is played with time controls, the computer might lose on time or make inferia moves due to time anyway. Another reason it could lose is that it has a bug or incomplete knowledge of rules such as underpromotion or 50 move rule; to prove that chess software does not have such errors would be impossible. Such claims as 'zero probability of the computer making a mistake' whether sourced or not would be inaccurate. SunCreator (talk) 14:31, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for the feedback, clearly my knowledge on the subject has many holes that need to be covered, I appreciate the response. I was just under the impression that if something was mathematically sound (which for chess, semms to be debatable) it could be programmed into a computer (or chimpanzee) and if we had the correct amount of resources, it would be considered 'solved'. This was simply an observation made by looking at how checkers and other similar games were solved. I aim to study this further and contribute to this more effectively in future.

Thanks 196.2.97.165 (talk) 06:55, 8 March 2010 (UTC)Shahee.Saib

bot for new articles

Is anyone using the User:AlexNewArtBot bot to find new chess articles? Sometimes articles are added and the editor doesn't add the project tag. Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 18:19, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

I have it watchlisted but often ignore it. I think Voorlandt or SyG deals with it. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 22:35, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the link; it looks like a very useful bot.--Pawnkingthree (talk) 23:07, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

The useful chess part for anyone interested is: User:AlexNewArtBot/ChessSearchResult. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 23:10, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Autotagging of article based on categories is also possible. I imagine a bot can find many article in chess categories that we have not marked with a WikiProjectChess assessment temaplte. Shall we find out? Regards, SunCreator (talk) 13:51, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Xenobot Mk V to tag and/or auto-assess unassessed articles

A request has been made to tag & auto-assess articles in the scope of the project and/or auto-assess the project's unassessed articles.

Xenobot Mk V (talk · contribs) looks for a {{stub}} template on the article, or inherits the class from other projects (see here for further details).

If there are any questions or objections regarding this process, please make them known. The task will commence after 72 hours if there are none.

Regards, SunCreator (talk) 14:22, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Submitted information. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 14:24, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

29 articles found. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 16:52, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Now 47 articles found. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 17:23, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

GA Review

Do we have any articles requiring a Good Article review? I recently did reviews of a few none chess ones. You can submit them to WP:GAN (5.4.3 Sports and recreation section). Regards, SunCreator (talk) 22:56, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Book of chess articles published

Apparently a book of Wikipedia chess articles has been published. Only $83 for a printed copy of Opposite-colored bishops endgame, Chess, Bishop (chess), Chessboard, Chess endgame, Edmar Mednis, Glossary of chess, Fortress (chess), Checkmate, and World Chess Championship. Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 21:42, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

With quality wikipedia articles including Edmar Mednis. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 22:07, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

And it took three editors to compile the book! Nice how they retained "bishop (chess)" and "fortress (chess)" titles. A lot of work went into it. Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 23:53, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Click on the names of any of the three "editors" at Amazon and you'll find that they've "written" 16,299 books, all of which seem to be taken from Wikipedia. Edward Winter wrote a comment about "their" chess books a few months ago. Krakatoa (talk) 00:59, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

What is disappointing is that people actually buy these books. This is the 9th best selling Amazon book in the Estonia section. Perhaps 'Chess historian Jose A. Fadul' had similiar results? Regards, SunCreator (talk) 02:05, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

I submitted a review to the book I found saying that it is available for free on Wikipedia. Perhaps some people would like a nicely bound copy of the articles, but $83 for free content?? Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 02:18, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

VDM Publishing House is the company. Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 02:29, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

OK, let's go for it: who will launch the trial ? SyG (talk) 11:26, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

info boxes for old players

Philipp Stamma and Luis Ramírez de Lucena have info boxes. These info boxes have photos of their book instead of the person. No images of the people seem to be available. I am of the opinion that the photos of their books should not be used as the photo in the info box. What do others think? Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 20:03, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Quite agree. The books are not right there. No images of Lucena or Stamma on Commons, but Googling did yield a small image of each on the web. Presumably, these could be used under the public domain (>70 years) claim? Brittle heaven (talk) 22:52, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Yea, I agree. It was my edit that started this off. Possibly I felt that an infobox with an image in it looks more presentable then an empty infobox. I am happy that photos of books are removed from chess player infoboxes. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 23:18, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

I had looked on Commons and didn't find any, but any you find are certainly OK - they will not be copyrighted. Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 00:23, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Luis Ramírez de Lucena, Philipp Stamma. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 01:16, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, I will add them unless someone else wants to. Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 01:39, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

I think you are experienced in adding them. Do we have any way to determine old players missing photo's (so not with copyrighted). I quite fancy finding more while we are about it. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 02:38, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

I'll add them. While looking for Lucena and Stamma I found this page that has photos of old chess books, players of tournaments, and individual players. Most or all of the individual player photos we already have. Most of the tournament and book photos I haven't seen before. Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 03:07, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

More photos

(edit conflict)More then 70 years, is that since they died, or since photo taken? Anyhow here are some more that seem to comply.

• Ernst Falkbeer from here
• Wilhelm Hanstein from here Actually not sure that is him.
• Karl Schorn from here
• Ruy López de Segura from here
• Gioachino Greco from here
• Alexandre Deschapelles from here Scrub that.

Regards, SunCreator (talk) 03:10, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

And more...

• Frederick Yates from here
• Marmaduke Wyvill (chess player) from here - cropping required.
• Edgard Colle from here

Regards, SunCreator (talk) 03:27, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

I think it is 70 years from the death of the person who created the image. However, there is a "fair use" exception for historic deceased people or if it was published in the US before 1923 or in the USSR before 1945. Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 03:28, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

OK, I did Lucena, Stamma, and Ruy Lopez. Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 03:35, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

and Yates. Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 04:05, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

and Grecco. Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 17:04, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

And Colle. Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 20:59, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

and Falkbeer. Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 21:33, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Some deceased players requiring photo or improvement.

• Conel Hugh O´Donel Alexander from here
• Vladimir Zagorovsky from here
• Alberic O'Kelly de Galway from here

Regards, SunCreator (talk) 22:40, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

CHO'D Alexandar and O'Kelly done. Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 23:20, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

I did all of these except Schorn and Wyvill and the two you marked out. I think they are too obscure to put the effort in. Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 23:48, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

I did Wyvill since he was listed on the main page. Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 04:14, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

... improve a random article

This is a bit of fun. Improve a random Chess article; this link takes you to a different random article each time you click on it. Regards, SunCreator ^(talk) 03:40, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

A somewhat standard format for chess games

The section that lists the game moves for some of the the articles in Category:Chess games aren't all that consistent. Certainly the game moves should be in bold, but is there a common convention as to whether it should be the annotations, or the moves, that should be indented...or neither? All three can be seen, for example Deep Blue – Kasparov, 1996, Game 1, Immortal Game, Evergreen Game. Has there been any desire to standardize this? I put an attempt to make the Polish Immortal game look more consistent here in my sandbox(now merged with article main page), but I'm not sure about the indentation, (and haven't checked for typos or anything yet...just a formatting issue so far) Thanks. Winston365 (talk) 10:17, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Solving chess

It seems to me the article Solving chess has a lot of redundancy (in terms of concept) to our First-move advantage in chess, so I would tend to merge them. What do you think ? SyG (talk) 11:45, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

The two things are different. I think the reason there is redundancy at the moment is that solving chess has recently been split out from FMAIC. I'm little surprised they are spilt because I didn't see the consensus for that, however the solving chess topic really has the potential for expansion, so would be pleased if that came about. Regards, SunCreator ^(talk) 12:02, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

It wouldn't really be a merge, it would be an un-split, as Suncreator notes. I'm not thrilled with the split, although I see some logic in making it a separate article as it could be referred to in several articles (chess, computer chess, and first-move advantage in chess at the very least). Most of the text was written by the author of first-move advantage in chess and is a perfect fit for the style and tone of the rest of that article. The split itself was done in a very inartful way, lacking an article lede and leaving in a lot of irrelevant references from the parent article. Also the edit comment on the initial creation of solving chess doesn't correctly credit first-move advantage in chess as the source, so there is a licensing problem that should be corrected by leaving a better comment in a null edit. Quale (talk) 21:26, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I see now that Syg was fully aware that the new article had been split. Quale (talk) 21:37, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

I think maybe the solution is to delete it. Your right about the licensing problem and I'm not aware of consensus for it's creation, although there is discussion about it on Talk:Computer_chess#Solving_chess_-_new_article_suggestion. Regards, SunCreator ^(talk) 21:41, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Nicolas Yap

Hi there, I picked this article up on new page patrol. The subject seems to lack "significant coverage in reliable sources" so may be a candidate for deletion, but thought I might post it here before sending it to AfD as this wikiproject will obviously have a better idea of the notability of chess players than me. --Mkativerata (talk) 20:29, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Not a notable chess player. Regards, SunCreator ^(talk) 20:44, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Thank you, on that basis I've kicked of this AfD. --Mkativerata (talk) 20:48, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Unreferenced living people articles bot

Your project uses User:WolterBot, which occasionally gives your project maintenance-related listings.

User:DASHBot/Wikiprojects provides a list, updated daily, of unreferenced living people articles (BLPs) related to your project.

Here is one example of a project which uses User:DASHBot/Wikiprojects: Wikipedia:WikiProject_Cricket_articles/Unreferenced_BLPs

There has been a lot of discussion recently about deleting these unreferenced articles, so it is important that these articles are referenced.

The unreferenced living people articles related to your project will be found here: Wikipedia:WikiProject Chess/Unreferenced BLPs.

If you do not want this wikiproject to participate, please add your project name to this list.

Thank you. Okip 08:00, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

I corrected the link to the page now. currently the page shows no hits. I fixed what categories this bot searches so your project will get an accurate list later today. User:SunCreator thanks for bringing this to my attention, and thanks for your dedication to the project. Okip 13:44, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

After a number of false starts the list is now working >>>Unreferenced Chess BLPs<<<. Regards, SunCreator ^(talk) 14:55, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Rook as an elephant?

Hi!

The book "The History of Chess from the time of the early invention of the game in India" written by Duncan Forbes (1860) states clearly at page 18 and 19 that our Rook was an elephant and our Bishop (chess) was a ship in chaturanga (or Chaturaji?). Is this book a reliable source? thanks OTAVIO1981 (talk) 12:14, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that it is the other way around (source A Short History of Chess by Davidson). In pre-Staunton chess sets, the bishop has two parts on the top said to represent the elephant's tusks. They looked like a bishop's mitre, so the piece got the name of bishop in English. Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 13:33, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Forbes is not a reliable source. Most of his work on the history of chess was simply incorrect; see Cox-Forbes theory. Henry Bird repeated some of Forbes mistakes in his own writing, which is understandable because Forbes' 1860 theories on the origin of chess weren't debunked until sometime later. A better source is A History of Chess (1913) by HJR Murray, but unfortunately I don't know of any freely available electronic copy. It would be great if Project Gutenberg were to have it. As Bubba73 mentions, Davidson is another good source. Our article bishop (chess) points out that the Russian name for the bishop is slon (elephant). Quale (talk) 17:32, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Updating Template:Chess names

I have got the list of chess pieces names in Urdu, so can somebody add them. Here they are, if rendered properly

• King = بادشاہ
• Queen = وزیر
• Rook = رخ
• Bishop = فیل
• Knight = گھوڑا
• Pawn = پیادہ

Some people also uses:

• King = شاہ
• Queen = ملکہ
• Rook = توپ
• Bishop = ہاتھی
• Knight = گھوڑا
• Pawn = پیدل / سپاہی

They are also used in Persian Chess/Mughal Chess. .--yousaf465' 02:52, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Do we have a reference for these translations? The problem comes that the translates could be fiction and we have no method of verify otherwise. Regards, SunCreator ^(talk) 23:26, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Calling the rook a "castle" - again

The old issue of whether or not it is correct to call a rook a "castle" has flared up again. See that article. Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 16:15, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Seems to have been dealt with now. Regards, SunCreator ^(talk) 23:24, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

I hope so. Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 23:26, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Resolved

Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 17:19, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Comment on algebraic notation in articles

Currently some of the most fundamental articles such as chess, rules of chess, Chess piece, king (chess), queen (chess), rook (chess), bishop (chess), knight (chess), and pawn (chess) do not use any algebraic notation. I think that is a good thing - keep those general articles as accessible to the general reader as possible. Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 17:18, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

history of the 50-move rule (extensions)

I've been trying to straignten out the history of the fifty-move rule, mainly when it was extended to more than 50 moves, see Fifty-move rule#History. Decades ago the fIDE laws said that it could be extended for certain positions if it was agreed upon in advance. The laws did not specify what positions, but there seems to have been an understanding about what those positions were. In 1984 the rule was changed to be more specific - 100 moves on three types of positions. The rule was changed again in 1988 - adding some more positions but changing the 100-move extension to 75 moves. Some sources say that the 75-move version lasted only a short time "a year or so" or a "few years", and then went to 50 moves for all positions. The FIDE laws in the 1992 USCF rulebook go back to the (vague) pre-1984 wording (about extended for some positions). I suspect this was an error and the change back to a universal 50 moves was in 1992, but I'm not sure. It did occur by 2001.

So the sticking point is when was the rule changed from 75 moves for some positions to 50 moves for all? Does anyone know? Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 00:21, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

KID - black's 8th move

What is the correct 8th move for black in the main line of the classical King's Indian Defence (see recent edits)? Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 23:26, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 Bg7 4.e4 d6 5.Nf3 0-0 6.Be2 e5 7.0-0 Nc6 8.d5 Ne7 (8...Nfd7? 9.dxc6 +-) Regards, SunCreator ^(talk) 00:21, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

The vandal has stopped now. Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 01:49, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Someone who believes they are trying to improve the encyclopedia, however misguided they are, is not a vandal. Just saying:)--Pawnkingthree (talk) 19:14, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

I consider purposely changing the correct move to an incorrect move vandalism. Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 19:45, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Athlete notability

Athlete notability upon which many of the chess players are based is being discussed Athlete_Professional_Clause_Needs_Improvement because Athlete-Entertainer notability is wildly at odds. You may like to check out and comment. Regards, SunCreator ^(talk) 20:03, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Are chess players really athletes?  Dr. Loosmark  19:47, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

The wording Athlete is for something that covers sports, so in that sense yes. It looks like the future possibility which is gaining consensus is to have a new version WP:NSPORT, we might like to consider what makes a notable chess player, because otherwise what you are left with is having to meet general notability. Regards, SunCreator ^(talk) 21:07, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Animated .gif games

I recently noticed that The Immortal Game had a nice .gif animation of the game, and for fun I threw together a python script that can automatically produce such animations from a .pgn file. I put one on the Evergreen Game page and I think it's nice, although for the most part I think animated gifs should be kept to a minimum on wikipedia. Does anyone think any more of these might be useful for other chess game articles? Also the animation I put on was created with a second between each frame as the description of the animation on the immortal game says, but I realize now the immortal game animation has been slowed to two seconds between frames. Should the Evergreen Game animation be slowed as well, or even just reverted? Cheers Winston365 (talk) 04:03, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Personally I don't like them, but I wouldn't remove one. They go by too fast for someone to study the position. If they had a long delay people would lose interest. Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 04:06, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Bubba73. The speed of an animated gif can never be right for a chess game. It's always too fast or too slow, and in fact no even speed is ever satisfactory because no one spends the same the same time examining every move in the game. The critical positions need more time, the opening and forced moves generally require less. I think Bubba73 and I might be in the minority because there seem to be a significant number of wikipedians who like the animated gifs. Part of my problem is that I hate animated gifs in nearly every context. I find it damned annoying to have the screen flashing or blinking at me unless I ask for it. The best solution would be to link to a game player like those found at chessgames.com or many other chess websites since the moves can be replayed at a pace chosen by the viewer. Unfortunately those are external links. It would be nice to be able to provide that on wikipedia itself. Quale (talk) 04:18, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Actually I agree as well. Striking a balance between fast enough not to be boring and slow enough to be able to study them is impossible. If a .gif animation could be paused and shuttled back and forth it would be far more useful for this purpose, but that's not gonna happen. My only real gripe with chessgames.com is that it requires Java, which not everybody wants to have installed. I think for the evergreen game and the immortal game the animations are still nice just to show off the fireworks though. Winston365 (talk) 04:28, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

I think the frame rate on The Immortal Game is just about right for a quick re-run of a famous game. And yes, I'd agree with a 'sparing use only' policy; it can be kind of annoying seeing these running in your peripheral vision while reading text, so only the recognised 'famous games' would warrant consideration - you wouldn't want it rolled out for each player's notable games in their bio, or the opening moves of each of the chess openings, for example. List of chess games is therefore the target group, I think. Also agree with User:Quale about a proper game viewer; developing or adapting one of these for wiki use would be a major coup. The animations are just a quick reminder of the themes involved, but serious analysis of the moves requires pause for thought. Brittle heaven (talk) 22:32, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Hello, I just started below a new thread (sorry I should have read this before posting the other) suggesting the mediawiki chess extension I developed Casaschi (talk) 08:51, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Robert Sobel

Could someone who is familiar with Robert Sobel please take a look at these recent changes by an ip editor? He claims that Robert Sobel the history professor is not the Robert Sobel who played a young Bobby Fischer in 1956 and 1957. If we can compare birth dates that should settle it, or someone may have some other evidence. His NY Times obit is listed in the references but is not linked. I haven't put the link in the article yet as I don't want to disturb the page if the anon edits must be reversed. The obit is here: http://www.nytimes.com/1999/06/04/business/robert-sobel-68-a-historian-of-business-dies.html. It doesn't help us directly as it doesn't mention chess, although Sobel returned to New York in 1955 after service in the Korean War putting him in the right place at the right time to have played Fischer. The Robert Sobel player profile and games at Chessgames.com claims that he is the Sobel who played Fischer, but I'd be happier with a stronger source. Quale (talk) 03:51, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Maybe different. Robert Sobel the chess player was from Philadelphia. "In the Cleveland Chess Congress Open, Robert Sobel of Philadelphia was successful with a 6-1 tally" 1964, Chess review, Volume 32, Issue 10‎ - Page 294 Regards, SunCreator ^(talk) 05:14, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. That's a good find and does suggest that they are different. Quale (talk) 01:46, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Vladimir Belov (chess player)

Apparent Grandmaster but cannot find him on http://ratings.fide.com/? Any ideas? Regards, SunCreator ^(talk) 00:34, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

He is grandmaster for sure, I have no idea why Fide doesn't list him. He does have a page on chessgames: http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessplayer?pid=10963  Dr. Loosmark  01:41, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Search at ratings.fide.com is broken right now. He should be Vladimir Belov (FIDE id 4132394) rating card at FIDE, but this is also busted right now. We shouldn't have any trouble finding him once FIDE fixes its website. He first shows up on the July 1997 FIDE rating list as an untitled Russian player born 6 August 1984 with a rating of 2260. He makes IM on the October 2000 list and GM on the October 2003 list. He's still active, and the March 2010 list shows he's pretty good, with a 2600+ rating:

4132394 Belov, Vladimir g RUS 2619 18 1984

Quale (talk) 01:45, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks all. Regards, SunCreator ^(talk) 01:51, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

showing games on a dynamic chessboard using an extension

I recently developed a mediawiki extension to show chessgames by just adding the PGN file content to the article with a pgn tag: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:EmbedChessboard

See example here: http://pgn4web-test-mediawiki.casaschi.net

It would work on wikipedia as well, but the extension would need to be added to the wikipedia server.

Any interest?

It might not be easy to get an extension installed on the wikipedia server, but I was told to suggest the extension here first.

Casaschi (talk) 07:05, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes, beautiful! I love it. Especially the multiple game. A few things maybe could be nicer, like the colouring as we use a danish colour system for the normal chess boards, but in essence its great. What do you need to do to get the extension here? Regards, SunCreator ^(talk) 01:57, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

European Chess Club Cup

Hello. I have created this new page, European Chess Club Cup, and I think it would be good if you guys helped improve it. (LAz17 (talk) 03:39, 7 May 2010 (UTC)).

I think the Austrian flag next to the CE Monte Carlo club is wrong. Unless I am missing something the club is from Monaco.  Dr. Loosmark  18:51, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

«  Violating the touch-move rule is not cheating »

This is the rather original opinion of Resource Based Economy (talk · contribs), according to which he deleted a whole paragraph in the article Cheating in chess. Since this very new contributor seems to find it difficult to acknowledge that opinions other than his own exist, please comment. Oyp (talk) 11:53, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Use of chessmetrics in our bios

I've been concerned about how we use chessmetrics ratings in our chess bios for some time. I think it's especially confusing when applied to players with official FIDE ratings. Here's an example from Yuri Razuvaev:

According to Chessmetrics, at his peak in December 1984 Razuvaev's play was equivalent to a rating of 2690, and he was ranked number 28 in the world. His best single performance was at Reykjavik (Open), 1990, where he scored 6.5 of 9 possible points (72%) against 2616-rated opposition, for a performance rating of 2706.Event Details: Reykjavik (Open), 1990

I'm not sure what a reader is supposed to take from this. What meaning should one derive from "equivalent to a rating of 2690, and he was ranked number 28 in the world"? As you know, FIDE has published official ratings since 1971. Games played in December 1984 would have been reflected on the January 1985 list or perhaps the July 1985 list. His rating was unchanged from the Jan to July 1985 lists at 2520, ranking 69th in January and 63rd in July. I find it disturbing when an "equivalent to" rating differs from the official FIDE rating by 170 points, and the ranking is different by 40 from the position on the FIDE lists.

Apparently Razuvaev's peak FIDE rating was 2625, found on the July 1983 list. This also gave him his peak rank, 5th in the world following Karpov (2710), Kasparov (2690), Ljubojevic (2645), and Ulf Andersson (2640). This rating seems anomalous compared to the lists immediately before and after. His rating in Jan 1983 was 2520, over 100 points lower, and in Jan 1984 it was 2500. This is outside the top 50 players on both lists. Olimpbase has scanned images of the pages from Chess Informant 35 which confirm that 2625 was published, but an error is still possible. Despite my complaints about chessmetrics, I think it is more likely that FIDE made a mistake in its calculations in 1983 than chessmetrics has made an error in its retrospective computations for that period. The problem is that chessmetrics numbers can only be compared to other chessmetrics numbers. Quale (talk) 07:28, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure what your getting at with that as you seem to argue against yourself. I'd say generally FIDE is preferred to chessmetrics and the latter is more or less redundant on modern players. Chessmetrics is useful for players prior to FIDE ratings. Regards, SunCreator ^(talk) 11:16, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

I see your concerns. Numbers from one rating system cannot be compared to another. The editor probably used Chessmetrics as an easy alternative to finding the 1985 FIDE list. (I don't know where old lists are either.) It seems to me that there should be a closer agreement in the rank - #5 vs. #28 is a big difference. Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 13:07, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

I am against using Chessmetrics anywhere in our articles.  Dr. Loosmark  20:26, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

I favor using chessmetrics in articles about pre-Elo rating players, but agree that as to contemporary players it is confusing and should not be used. I don't think any rating system is sacrosanct, but at this point Chessmetrics appears to me to be more reliable than the Elo rating system. At least it seems to have some consistency over time. There has been massive rating inflation in the Elo system, and all kinds of players have ratings close to or higher than Fischer ever achieved, which is ridiculous. If Chessmetrics were commonly used for contemporary players, it would even make sense to use it as to them, but it's not. FIDE ratings are invariably cited for contemporary players, so it would be weird (and doubtless contrary to assorted Wikipedia principles) for us to use Chessmetrics ratings for them. Krakatoa (talk) 21:01, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

I wish someone would take that database and calculate ELO ratings. It should contain many more games than the ones FIDE rates. Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 21:12, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

What exactly do you mean by "massive rating inflation in the Elo system"?  Dr. Loosmark  21:22, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

I think Krakatoa refers here to ratings inflation Elo_rating_system#Ratings_inflation_and_deflation. Regards, SunCreator ^(talk) 23:21, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

The use of Chessmetrics is often essential to gauge the quality of an historic player. I don't think we should shy away from Chessmetrics just because it's occasionally different from FIDE's Elo rating. FIDE have there own issues. I would advise linking to Chessmetrics because that way someone interested can get to understand advantages/disadvantages if they are so interested. Regards, SunCreator ^(talk) 23:21, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Chessmetrics ratings aren't occasionally different than FIDE ratings, they're almost always different. The numbers simply aren't comparable. That is a problem, even when used for historical figures before FIDE ratings. We have articles that say something like "a historical chessmetrics rating of 2500+, which today corresponds to grandmaster strength". I don't know of any evidence that a 2500 chessmetrics rating corresponds to grandmaster strength—can anyone cite that claim? Quale (talk) 00:08, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

To say they are always different is splitting hairs, normally they are similar enough to be in the same fluctuation range as a FIDE Elo rating would from year to year. I don't know of articles that claim "chessmetrics rating of 2500+ = grandmaster strength" etc. Any such statements should be cited or removed. What are the article(s) that say this? Regards, SunCreator ^(talk) 00:41, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

What is your basis for claiming that chessmetrics ratings are normally similar enough to FIDE ratings? I know of no reason to believe that's true. I don't think Sonas has ever made that claim. Consideration of the algorithm used by chessmetrics suggests that the numbers won't be the same as the Elo ratings computed by FIDE. Examination of the numbers confirms this. To take one date pretty much at random, consider Jan 1989:

Top 10 Rated Players in January 1989

#	FIDE		Chessmetrics
1	Kasparov, Garry	2775	Garry Kasparov	2879
2	Karpov, Anatoly	2750	Anatoly Karpov	2845
3	Short, Nigel D.	2650	Alexander Beliavsky	2749
4	Speelman, Jonathan S.	2640	Valery Salov	2744
5	Beliavsky, Alexander G.	2640	Nigel Short	2742
6	Ivanchuk, Vassily	2635	Vassily Ivanchuk	2738
7	Salov, Valery	2630	Jan Timman	2738
8	Ribli, Zoltan	2625	Jonathan Speelman	2734
9	Nunn, John D. M.	2620	Lajos Portisch	2723
10	Andersson, Ulf	2620	Artur Jussupow	2721

The chessmetrics ratings in this sample are about 100 points higher than the official FIDE ratings. This is not "in the same fluctuation range as a FIDE Elo rating would from year to year". I'm really scratching my head over that claim—I just don't understand it.

Some articles that use chessmetrics ratings to compare players to GM strength include George H. D. Gossip, Henry Ernest Atkins, James Grundy (chess player), Francis Joseph Lee, George Henry Mackenzie, William Wayte, James Hanham, Mir Sultan Khan, Charles Ranken, John Washington Baird, and Leonard Barden. (To be fair, Sultan Khan was not only GM strength but undoubtedly super-GM strength. The other players may have been strong enough to be a GM today, but my guess is that they weren't in the same class as the initial 1950 GMs.) Quale (talk) 05:07, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

The assumption being made is that Chessmetrics is around 100 points out, but it's the FIDE rating of 1989 that should be questioned. Where is the proof? Read this, where Nigel Short says "my rating in the late 1980s would be approximately equivalent to 2750 in today's much debauched currency". Shorts FIDE rating in the late eights was 2650 as given in the above table, 100 points lower then the equivalent FIDE ELO 2750 of 2009. Regards, SunCreator ^(talk) 19:11, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

All the article examples appear to be wording originating from Krakatoa. I've challenged the part about chessmetrics being close to Grandmaster strength in George H. D. Gossip, as that is an featured article and likely to result in appropriate discussion. Regards, SunCreator ^(talk) 19:44, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm not making the assumption that chessmetrics ratings are about 100 points out from FIDE ratings. That's what it looks like from my cursory examination of the top ten in 1989, but you'd have to examine more players in 1989 and over the whole period of 1971 to 2005 or so (I don't think Sonas has a newer number on his site) to get an accurate idea how they might compare. I'm familiar with Short's statement about ratings inflation, and although I think he's right, I think it qualifies as his opinion rather than proof. (John Nunn is a mathematician, and his opinion would be valuable here. I don't know if he's made a definitive statement about this.) Some have suggested that ratings may be inflated about 150 points today compared to 1971, but ratings inflation remains at least somewhat controversial.

Chessmetrics ratings have some attractive qualities: we have them for years before FIDE ratings exist and they might not be subject to the same inflation that FIDE numbers are. There are some problems too. The biggest issue might be that we don't have any chessmetrics ratings from 2005 on which undercuts their use going forward. Also they are produced by a single person, and I don't think anyone validates his work. I think it's unlikely, but if Sonas were to make some systematic error it would probably never be caught. Because they are produced by a single person, he's free to change the algorithm and hence the ratings at any time he likes. I think this has happened once already. Chessmetrics applies a ratings penalty to inactive players, and while this makes sense in a sporting context (Nunn suggested selecting World Championship participants by rating including such a penalty), it isn't clear to some people that this is an accurate measure of chess strength. (On the other hand, an inactive player retaining his rating for many decades is also not realistic.)

For what it's worth, my personal view of use of chess ratings in wikipedia:

1. The idea that everything important about a player or even everything about their strength can be determined by a single number causes of a lot of trouble. The feeling that a rating of 2600 or 2700 or 2800 means something as an absolute, and we "know" what it means isn't justified.
2. FIDE ratings are official and widely used despite their deficiencies (no ratings before 1971 and ratings inflation), so we use them when we can. I'm not very sanguine about putting current FIDE ratings in chess player infoboxes, however. I've long thought this is a bad idea and now that FIDE publishes ratings six times a year it will lead to more unnecessary churn in our chess bios. Just link active players' FIDE rating cards and let the reader make one more click if they need the player's current rating. The "rating" and "ranking" parameters should be removed from Template:infobox chess player. (Leave the "peakrating" and "peakranking" parameters.)
3. Arpad Elo published ratings for some players for years before 1971. These don't have the FIDE stamp of approval, but are reliably sourced and should be used where appropriate. These ratings are not really comparable to FIDE ratings from 1971 on as Elo published only 5 year averages.
4. Because of rating inflation and lack of ratings before 1971, FIDE ratings are helpful to compare a player to his contemporaries but they aren't very useful comparing players in different eras. It's unfortunate but I don't think there's any way around it. We should avoid using FIDE ratings to compare players from different eras.
5. Chessmetrics ratings are reliably sourced and can be used. They are appropriate for players whose career peaks occurred before 1971.
6. Chessmetrics ratings might not have the same problems as rating inflation that FIDE ratings have, possibly making them more useful to compare players in different eras. They are used that way in Methods for comparing top chess players throughout history, but that's appropriate because that article allows discussion of the potential pitfalls of such comparisons. Individual player bios just don't allow the chance to provide enough context for the reader to understand exactly what is being compared, so we should be very cautious there.
7. Chessmetrics ratings should never be compared either directly or implicitly to FIDE ratings until we find a reliable source that demonstrates a basis for this comparison. I realize that if chessmetrics produced exactly the same numbers that FIDE did that there would be little point in creating a different rating computation algorithm, but we seem to lack any objective basis for such comparisons. I think Sonas calibrated his ratings to match Kasparov's FIDE rating on a single date, making the ratings the same for just one player at one moment. That doesn't help for any other player or any other time.

For those interested in old FIDE rating lists, the easiest place to check that I know of is http://www.olimpbase.org/index.html?http%3A%2F%2Fwww.olimpbase.org%2FElo%2Fsummary.html. Be aware that the early list data from 1970 to 2001 have been entered by hand from scanned paper copies and there are some mistakes. Olimpbase provides scanned images of the lists from the original source (generally Chess Informant) so you can check, but FIDE made mistakes in the lists too. Electronic copies of the FIDE rating lists from January 2001 on are available directly from FIDE at ratings.fide.com/download/MMMYYfrl.zip. FIDE only links recent years from its web pages, but older years can be retrieved directly from the url, e.g., http://ratings.fide.com/download/jan01frl.zip. Quale (talk) 01:36, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Based on that table of 10 players (really need more data), ChessMetrics ratings averaged 103 points higher. However, the correlation coefficient is 0.9977, meaning that the systems are basically close to measuring the same thing (but 103 points higher across the board). Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 05:57, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

I honestly don't understand why chessmetric ratings are included in wikipedia, since their statistical validity, or real notability, hasn't been established anywhere that I can see. Anyone can hack up a rating system, that shouldn't allow it automatic entry into wikipedia, nomatter how rich and noisy its author should be.--ZincBelief (talk) 15:20, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

ok I have read the article the Ratings inflation and deflation senction on the Elo rating system and I must say that the first sentence is a bit weird to say the least: An increase or decrease in the average rating over all players in the rating system is often referred to as rating inflation or rating deflation respectively. For example, if there is inflation, a modern rating of 2500 means less than a historical rating of 2500, while the reverse is true if there is deflation. Using ratings to compare players between different eras is made more difficult when inflation and deflation is present.

The definition of the rating inflation is bizarre to say the least. Lets say that 100,000 new players enter the rating system tomorrow and all of them are rated 1000 ELO points. The average rating over all players in the rating system would go down however I doubt that anybody would talk about the rating deflation because the ratings of the top players would remain exactly the same. Usually what most people perceive as rating "inflation" is for example when some of the current top players have "too high" ratings in comparison with "Fischer(or Karpov, or Kasparov or whoever) at his peak. Of course that's a complete nonsense because the Elo system can't measure the "absolute strength" of a player. The only thing that a rating system measures is results against players in a specific pools of players. In other words Carlsen's or Topalov's rating of today cannot in any way be compared with Fischer's for example. No rating system cannot do that, not ELO not Chessmetrics nor any other. The above sentence: For example, if there is inflation, a modern rating of 2500 means less than a historical rating of 2500 is therefore a complete nonsense.  Dr. Loosmark  15:47, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Chessmetric articles

The following articles contain the case insensitive word 'Chessmetrics', found with AWB searching Category:WikiProject Chess articles.