Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chess/Archive 12

This is an archive of past discussions on Wikipedia:WikiProject Chess. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 5

←

Archive 10

Existing articles on weak players

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Regarding national junior champions, that is more borderline. How would you judge the notability of the reigning Norwegian Cadet Champion, who has received substantial coverage in non-chess media (e.g. [1] [2]) and the front cover in the bimonthly Norwegian chess magazine [3]? From media coverage, I would guess notability standards are met, even with a FIDE rating of 2066. She does not pass the "anyone losing to Sjakkalle is not notable" test (round 3, KM 2004), though in fairness I should point out that she was very young then, and she got her revenge less than a year later. Sjakkalle (Check!) 06:39, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

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

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

General notability guidelines for chess players

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"WGMs are more notable than IMs because WGMs represent the top level of women's chess" No, the top level of women's chess is occupied by real GMs who happen to be women, of whom there were 11 as of late 2006: see[4] The whole concept of "women's chess" offends me. Unless one subscribes to the view attributed to Fischer in 1964 -- that "women are all weakies" -- I fail to see why there should be such a thing as a "Woman Grandmaster" title. As the Polgars, Humpy Koneru, Kosteniuk, Gaprindashvili et al. have shown, women can compete successfully with men -- as anyone not a sexist would expect. Can you imagine the outcry if FIDE instituted titles like "Black Grandmaster" and "Hispanic Grandmaster" with ratings several hundred points below "regular" GMs? Krakatoa (talk) 03:37, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

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

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

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

GA-review of Alexander Alekhine

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

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

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

Many thanks also to:

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

Interregnum of World Chess Champions - proposed merge

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

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

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

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

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

Detailed playing results as tables

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Merge K

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

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

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

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

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

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

The PROD was removed on K Factor (chess). Shall we proceed with a delete/merge? Bubba73 (talk), 00:02, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

possible linkspam

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

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

GA review of First-move advantage in chess

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

The review has been successful and now the article is has been recognised as a "Good article" (it was already an A-class article). Thanks mostly to Krakatoa for having written this tremendous article, probably one of the most idiosyncratic we have in this WikiProject. Besides two "Featured articles", we now have five "Good articles", two of them being also A-class. SyG (talk) 17:44, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Centralised image gallery

I suggest we keep an image gallery at a sub-page of Wikipedia:WikiProject Chess, with a link to it on Wikipedia:WikiProject Chess. That will give us a single, easily-found repository of images for use in articles. We could start by moving World Chess Championship/Gallery to the sub-page. Or perhaps qwe should look ahead and have different gallery sub-pages for e.g. players from different periods, game poisiotns, opening variations and problems and endgame studies. Philcha (talk) 12:40, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

There is Category:Chess images (and its subcategories), unfortunately, it does only list images from the english wikipedia, and does not include the chess images from commons. It would be nice to have one page displaying all pictures. Voorlandt (talk) 16:45, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Not sure how we can introduce the Commons images, but I agree, it would be good if it can be done. As I see it, the short term goal is to get together a palette of images for use in the ongoing development of world championship history articles, including the individual WC matches and biographical articles of the combatants, without falling foul of orphaned image removal. Brittle heaven (talk) 17:58, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Brittle heaven posted this on my Talk page, and I think it's important enough to be considered by WikiProject Chess:

Hi - thinking about this some more, there are some real issues with copyright that I'm not sure can be overcome, but would welcome your opinion, as I'm not an expert. Maybe I'm being overly pessimistic here, but my understanding is that fair-use images are restricted to use in namespace articles only; in other words, an image's 'fair use rationale' template would only cover its use in the main subject's article (typical example - my Sandbox). Looking at the Wikipedia:Non-free content policy, it seems that the use of fair-use images is unlikely to be acceptable in other articles, including galleries. Unfortunately, that probably means that the only useful, legitimate gallery is the world champs section at Commons, which is very limited in choice. I do not want to enter any more edit wars over image copyrights as they take up too much time, so I'm now planning to revert to plan A - paste a few additional images into the Mikhail Botvinnik article and leave it to you or others re-arrange them as any changes occur. Of course any non-Commons images discarded in that process will be orphan-deleted after a few days, but it seems that this is the game we all have to play, regrettably. I guess if there was a burning desire to use a non-free image in an article such as World Chess Championship, then a secondary 'fair-use rationale' template could be added to the image file, arguing a case for its fair use in that specific additional article in the context of a direct discussion over that person's WC tenure or an important WC match in which they were a main player etc. From experience, if it's well argued, that could work, but you could also expect an occasional challenge, bot deletion or edit war. Incidentally, I have also located one or two images of Petrosian, Euwe and Capablanca (I think!), so in time I'll add those to the relevant biographies, if there is no other way forward. Brittle heaven (talk) 11:18, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

We might be able to get round this by using 2 formats for entries in the gallery:

Full image if public domain / free
For non-free images, brief text description and wiki-link to article in which it's used.
BTW the gallery idea should not be limited to photos and similar. I think it should also contain useful diagrams, many of which were created by Wikipedia editors. And any other non-text content that should be available for re-use. Philcha (talk) 11:50, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Sounds interesting. We should precise, however, what is the purpose of the library compared to the overall databases already available (and better maintained) at Wikimedia Commons. SyG (talk) 18:52, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Ease of finding stuff. Image names are not easy to search, so we'd be dependent on the image page's containing a description that spells the name the same way as the person searching does. Look at all the spellings of Alexander Alekhine's name for an example of the problems this can cause. Aron Nimzovich and Mikhail Chigorin are pretty variable too. There's other stuff that might be even harder to find in a text search, e.g. the plaque in honour of Wilhelm Steinitz. Philcha (talk) 21:29, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

That is correct, the search bar is a mess. On the other hand, you can search by category, e.g. there is a category for chess. SyG (talk) 11:05, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Good point. But the category needs a lot of work, for example Category:World_chess_champions is nearly empty. To make it easily accessible it be useful to have a link in Wikipedia:WikiProject Chess, perhaps as part of a "Resources" section which should be in a prominent place.

Would that remove the risk that potentially useful images may be deleted as orphans? Philcha (talk) 11:20, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Staunton and Anderssen articles

Would it be worth trying to get Howard Staunton and Adolf Anderssen to GA? Philcha (talk) 10:44, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

As a first step, you could nominate them for A-class at Wikipedia:WikiProject Chess/Review if you wish. SyG (talk) 11:02, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Chess diagrams with moves

	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h
8									8
7									7
6									6
5									5
4									4
3									3
2									2
1									1
	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h

Botvinnik-Yudovich, USSR Championship 1933

After sacrificing a piece to expose Black's King, Botvinnik played 1. Bh5+ and Yudovich resigned as mate is inevitable, e.g. 1. ... Kxh5; 2. Ng3+ followed by 3. Qe4+ Rf4; 4. Qxf4#.

I'd like chessplayer articles to show more samples of their play because that's why we have articles about them and it makes a change from endless mugshots. The difficulty is where to put the continuations: if we put them in the main text, it disrupts the flow; if we put them in the captions, the diagrams get longer and and spill into the next section; if we put them in footnotes the reader has to jump backwards and forwards, or show the footnoote in a separate window / tab and flip between these.

I've found a way to present the continuation in a "show"/"hide" box in the diagram's caption. Here's the code for the sample diagram's caption (goes in the last section of Template:Chess diagram):

{{Hidden 
| header = <p style="margin-right:8em; height=auto;">Botvinnik-Yudovich, 
USSR Championship 1933</p> 
| content = After [[sacrifice (chess) | sacrificing]] a piece to 
expose Black's King, Botvinnik played 1. Bh5+ and Yudovich 
resigned as mate is inevitable, e.g. 1. ... Kxh5; 
2. Ng3+ followed by 3. Qe4+ Rf4; 4. Qxf4#.
|headercss=height:auto; 
|fw1=normal
}}

Notes:

Template:Hidden provides better formatting capability than Template:Show hide box, from which I could not get a decent result.
Must use the "header" keyword. If the header and content are plain text, Template:Hidden assumes that the first plaint-text param is the header and the 2nd is the content. But here the header is not plain text, so "header" is required and I've also used "content" just to be safe.
<p style="margin-right:8em; height=auto"> (HTML paragraph tag) creates an inner box for the header text, enabling it to do 2 things:
- "margin-right:8em;" makes the header text stop 8 chars short of the right-hand edge, leaving space for "show"/"hide".
- "height=auto" makes the header text's box expand to allow multiple lines if needed.
</p> closes the inner box containing the header text, and is required.
"headercss=height:auto;" makes the outer header box expand to allow multiple lines if needed - otherwise there's a risk that a multiline HTML paragraph tag (inner box containing header text) will overspill the outer header box and break the layout.
fw1=normal shows the header text in normal font. The default is fw1=bold.

I have not yet found a way to reduce the gap between the top of the caption and the bottom of the diagram. If we use diagrams with hidden continuations, we should also consider creating a wrapper template that hides the messy coding so that one simply specifies: bold / normal font for the header text; left / centre alignment for the header text; the header and content text. A wrapper may also make internationalisation easier, as "show"/"hide" may be longer in other languages, so the header text's right margin would have to increase. What does the team think? Philcha (talk) 10:21, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

That looks very useful - as well as tidying the article, avoiding overlaps etc., it also allows the reader to guess the solution before revealing the answer (vis-á-vis Find The Winning Moves in CHESS magazine). Brittle heaven (talk) 10:50, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

I agree, this format looks very good, and might really help with the page layout. I think we should implement this method in articles needing it. Artichoker^[talk] 14:48, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

I like it too. Bubba73 (talk), 14:59, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

In my browser, the word "Show" is very small and I had a hard time to find what to do with the diagram. Should be more striking.--Ioannes Pragensis (talk) 15:59, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Is that better? I've also increased the hidden content's font-size and line-spacing, and slightly reduced the line-spacing of the header. The code is now:

  {{Hidden
 | header = <p style="margin-right:4em; height=auto; font-size:100%; line-height:110%;">
Botvinnik-Yudovich, USSR Championship 1933</p> 
 | content = After [[sacrifice (chess) | sacrificing]] a piece to expose Black's King, 
Botvinnik played 1. Bh5+ and Yudovich resigned as mate is inevitable, e.g. 1. ... Kxh5; 
2. Ng3+ followed by 3. Qe4+ Rf4; 4. Qxf4#.
 | headercss=height:auto; font-size:120%;
 | fw1 = normal
 | contentcss = font-size:120%; line-height:130%;
 }}

Philcha (talk) 16:46, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Is it possible for you to just increase the size of [show]? I think the smaller font for the title and hidden content would be better. Artichoker^[talk] 16:54, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h
8									8
7									7
6									6
5									5
4									4
3									3
2									2
1									1
	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h

Botvinnik-Yudovich, USSR Championship 1933

After sacrificing a piece to expose Black's King, Botvinnik played 1. Bh5+ and Yudovich resigned as mate is inevitable, e.g. 1. ... Kxh5; 2. Ng3+ followed by 3. Qe4+ Rf4; 4. Qxf4#.

In my browser they appear the same size as the main article text (first example, modified after Ioannes Pragensis's comment), which I prefer. However here's another example with smaller caption text, so everyone can compare them. Philcha (talk) 17:57, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Interesting, because in my browser it appeared as a larger-than-normal font-size. In this newest one, the font-size is displayed as normal size on my browser. Artichoker^[talk] 18:31, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Which browser? It may be an issue about different browsers' default style sheets. However I can live with the 2nd example's font sizes and, if others like it, I'd be happy to make it the standard. Philcha (talk) 10:42, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h
8									8
7									7
6									6
5									5
4									4
3									3
2									2
1									1
	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h

"Botvinnik-Yudovich,
USSR Championship 1933".

After sacrificing a piece to expose Black's King, "Botvinnik played". 1. Bh5+ and Yudovich resigned as mate is inevitable, e.g. 1. ... Kxh5; 2. Ng3+ followed by 3. Qe4+ Rf4; 4. Qxf4#.

I've produced a template Template:HiddenMultiLine which acts as an easy-to-use wrapper, hiding all the messy stuff needed to make Template:Hidden do what's needed. The coding to produce the caption for the diagram on the right is:

 {{HiddenMultiLine | Botvinnik-Yudovich,<br />USSR Championship 1933
 | After [[sacrifice (chess) | sacrificing]] a piece to expose Black's King,
 Botvinnik played 1. Bh5+ and Yudovich resigned as mate is inevitable, 
 e.g. 1. ... Kxh5; 2. Ng3+ followed by 3. Qe4+ Rf4; 4. Qxf4#.
 }}

I've changed the default alignment of the always-visible text to "left" as I think that's OK for competitive games and and probably better for e.g. opening variations, problems, etc. Philcha (talk) 12:26, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

PS I've just found that "cite web" works OK in both caption/header and content, and have updated the sample diagram. The nice thing is that "cite web" allows a <br /> tag in its "title" parameter, so you can split the caption into separate lines for players and event. I left the listed coding as-is to avoid making it harder to understand the first time you see it. Philcha (talk) 15:17, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Review of Howard Staunton and Adolf Anderssen

The articles Howard Staunton and Adolf Anderssen are now listed for review at WikiProject Chess/Review. Please come by to review the articles, suggest improvements and give your opinion of their quality! SyG (talk) 12:55, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There is no immediate solution to the problem of websites disappearing (after all, Wikipedia could disappear as well...). This is one reason for which Wikipedia policy requests that only stable and reliable websites are cited, as far as I understand. For example, it is not very advisable to cite a website younger than, say, one year of existence, because it could disappear just as easily as it was created. SyG (talk) 21:11, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

C-class is on the way

There has been recently a lot of talk about the fact that the B-class for the Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment was too broad, i.e. the distance between B-class of lower quality and B-class of higher quality was too important. The consensus has been to add a C-class between Start-class and B-class (see discussion here). That means we have to sort once again all the existing B-class articles between the new C-class and the new B-class. Now my proposal would be to list automatically all the existing B-class articles into the new C-class, and then to let the best of them "manually" upgrade into B-class as time goes by. Opinions ? SyG (talk) 21:23, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't know, that sounds like a lot of extra work. Why not start with the list that graded them B+, B-, etc, and put the B- into C? Bubba73 (talk), 01:00, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

This is a good development. Right now, B-class covers a huge expanse, from incredibly thorough, exhaustively researched articles that for some technical reason are deemed not to merit A-class <cough>Swindle (chess)<cough> down to anything a smidge better than Start-class.

Addressing the SyG-Bubba73 debate, Bubba73's approach seems a lot more practical and time-saving. For example, for B-class articles we've already deemed good enough to be in the Chess Portal (unlike most B-class articles), it would seem a waste of time to throw them into C-class with all the rest and then have someone bring them back. Krakatoa (talk) 03:23, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I still wonder who is the incredibly short-sighted and narrow-minded guy who judged Swindle (chess) could not be A-class, for some purely pointy reasons and mean technical shenanigans ;-)

For the C-class, yes Bubba's suggestion is fine, provided the articles that were judged B+ are still compliant with the new rules that will be defined for this class. SyG (talk) 06:07, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

And not forgetting to sort all the 'Start's into Start+ and Start- so that the upper group can be considered for C-class. Fortunately, for those less keen on 'death by corporate initiative' there is always the option of writing and editing articles instead. Brittle heaven (talk) 06:38, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Lol, yes if we really get bothered with the assessments we can still switch to improving the articles, but obviously that should only be done as an extreme last resort. SyG (talk) 18:44, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

First-move advantage in chess

First-move advantage in chess is now an A-class and a GA-class article. The only impediment to FA status that the GA reviewer, Noble Story, identified is that the article had text sandwiched between two images. Artichoker and I have now remedied that problem (at the cost of four diagrams, unfortunately). Should we nominate the article for FA now? Krakatoa (talk) 05:00, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

I haven't been watching the revisions, but I would guess that the four diagrams would be more important than a formatting issue. Bubba73 (talk), 05:10, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

So Krakatoa, after all the pain and suffering you have been through for the A-class review and the GA-class review, now you want more ? ;-)

More seriously, I think we could give it a try for FA. Please prepare for some possible harsh comments from the FA-reviewers, not because the article is weak, but just because most of them spend a lot on time on FA-review so they sometimes do not have the time to be kind. Also, I expect you are not leaving on holidays next week, because someone will need to answer their issues. SyG (talk) 06:35, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, you want it, you have it! I have just nominated the article for FA-review, please contribute here. SyG (talk) 06:47, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, SyG. Yes, you are doubtless right that I should be careful what I ask for. Bubba73, I would definitely like to have those four diagrams back. Personally, I thought the article looked fine with them in there and don't see the reason for the "don't sandwich text between two images" shibboleth. Is there a way to position two chess diagrams right next to each other, rather than on the left and right edges? If so, we could probably put the diagrams back without running afoul of the "no sandwiching" dictum. If you or anyone else could help me on this, I'd be much indebted. Krakatoa (talk) 07:53, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, you can easily position two chess diagrams next to each other. Simply both change them to "tleft." You cannot do it to the right however. Artichoker^[talk] 11:39, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! I put all the diagrams back using this. Krakatoa (talk) 05:09, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Congratulations! Now a Featured Article. Well done everyone (particularly Krakatoa of course).Pawnkingthree (talk) 15:32, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Chessmetrics

Can I ask how reliable is Chessmetrics, is it still original research, or has any qualified statistician reviewed and approved of it?--ZincBelief (talk) 15:06, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

It is "original research" by Jeff Sonas, but that is OK because everything is someone's original research. The problem with "OR" on Wikipedia is when the editor puts up his own research. I don't know if any qualified statistican has reviewed it and approved it, but I know something about statistics, and it seems sound to me. Bubba73 (talk), 15:30, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

It looks to me like his system is set up to acheive a result rather than to discover a result. If there are no peer reviews of his work I hold out severe doubts as to its respectability.--ZincBelief (talk) 15:40, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

I have to agree with you; it's completely unofficial and it worries me that it's used in so many articles here.Pawnkingthree (talk) 16:04, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Chessmetrics may not be peer-reviewed, but it's cited by Charles C. Moul and John V. C. Nye in Did the Soviets Collude? A Statistical Analysis of Championship Chess 1940-64 published May 2006 by The Social Science Research Network, and freely available from the cited web page. Moul and Nye used it to determine the "expected" results of games, and say,"This specification (Chessmetrics) has been optimized for predictive power for games between world-class players. ... there are three primary differences between these Sonas ratings and standard Elo-based ratings. Besides a linear framework that appears to dominate in predictive power (my emph) the more common logistic specification, Sonas ratings weight more recent games more heavily than distant games (looking back four years) and are padded to reward players who play more games. ..." That looks to me like an endorsement. Philcha (talk) 18:17, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

While looking for something in connection with ZincBelief's post at Talk:Howard_Staunton#Chessmetrics, I found Sonas' article The Sonas Rating Formula – Better than Elo? (Oct 2002). Points to note:

Sonas was invited to a 4-day conference in Moscow about rating systems in Aug 2002. Someone considers him expert enough.
He repeatedly emphasises the importance of a rating system's ability to "predict" results (during testing the results to be "predicted" are those of past games whose outcomes are known to the tester). This is exactly the method used to evaluate and improve models in all of the "historical" sciences, including geology and paleontology. There's no need to take my word on the soundness of this approach - check out for example Karl Popper#Philosophy_of_Science. Philcha (talk) 19:02, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

ZincBelief said "It looks to me like his system is set up to acheive a result rather than to discover a result." Yes, the result it was to achieve was a more accurate rating system. I don't know of any peer reviews of it or of Elo's work. Chessmetrics is like Elo but better. Having computers, he did a lot more analysis than Elo did. Bubba73 (talk), 19:19, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

I wonder how many people one can reasonably invite to a Chess Ratings conference. :) On examination this seems to be a bastardised form of performance rating, I find the inclusion of 4 draws in any result to be very odd indeed. It does remain performance rating based though, I am not convinced this gives a better long term view of a player's rating, but overall it appears to be reasonable enough. There are some obvious concerns. The effect of feeder ELO rating inflation. The appearance of less than 8 players on the rating list.--ZincBelief (talk) 19:52, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Draws are included in the Elo system too. Chessmetrics is a better predictor. Bubba73 (talk), 20:12, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

The current rating system can probably be improved upon in many ways. For instance, it is assumed that result likelihoods all follow a normal distribution. It is very likely that that is not even a good approximation. Guido den Broeder (talk) 23:56, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

I think that data in Elo's book shows that the normal distribution is a good approximation. Bubba73 (talk), 03:59, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Chessmetrics is very good, but (1) it is unofficial, (2) it is the work of one person, and (3) it could change if Sonas thinks of improvements in the future. For these reasons, I think Wikipedia should freely use Chessmetrics, but always make it clear that is a chessmetrics result, not an absolute result or ranking. So for instance, "Geza Maroczy was the the world #1 according to Chessmetrics between 1904 and 1907" is OK; "Maroczy was the world #1 between 1904 and 1907" is not. Peter Ballard (talk) 04:21, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Any such statement should be qualified. Number 1 according to what? World champion? Elo rating? Chessmetrics? Bubba73 (talk), 05:36, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

First-move advantage in chess is now FA !!!

After about one week of extremely intense and challenging work, the article succeeded its FA-review (see here). That means the number of FA articles within the WikiProject Chess has increased by 50% ! (well, from 2 to 3...)

Many thanks to Krakatoa who took this article from scratch only 3 months ago and in such a short time got it through A-review, GA-review and FA-review, with more than 850 edits. Clearly an unbelievable feat!

Thanks also to all members of the WikiProject Chess who contributed to the reviews, notably Caissa's DeathAngel, Sjakkalle, Ioannes Pragensis, Bubba73 (who actually created the article), SunCreator and Voorlandt.

Finally, thanks to all editors of the article, mostly the people mentioned above but also Quale, Brittle heaven, Pawnkingthree, Guido den Broeder, Artichoker and Philcha.

Next step (yes, there is a next step after FA): get to the Main Page! SyG (talk) 18:06, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

I echo SyG's thanks, and express my profound gratitude, to everyone he named. In addition, I would like to thank SyG himself, who nominated the article and helped defend it, and Dank55, self-proclaimed "double or triple nerd", who did an outstanding job of copyediting the article. And thanks to anyone else that we neglected to mention. Thanks to everyone - you rock!

PS to SyG: what do we have to do to get it to the Main Page? That isn't automatic? Do I have to engage in gladiatorial combat with primary editors of other FA-approved articles or what? :-) Krakatoa (talk) 20:56, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

The problem is that there are more new FA's than days in the month (Wikipedia:Featured_article_statistics). Now, the relevant links for main page articles are Wikipedia:Today's_featured_article, Wikipedia:Today's_featured_article/requests and User:Raul654/Featured_article_thoughts. To be honest, I don't really understand how it works. It used to be much simple (the request page used to have about 100 articles on it), and this point system is new to me. The request page says that it is only for 'date requests'. I don't know where normal requests have to go. Voorlandt (talk) 07:34, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Weird - you and I were writing about this simultaneously, and you edit-conflicted me out. Eyeballing the statistics, it looks like FA's get approved at maybe 2.3 to 2.4 times the number of days in a month, on average. There must accordingly be a lot of FAs that have never made the Main Page, although I can't find that statistic. Apparently a date tie-in is regarded as a compelling reason for getting on the Main Page, but this article doesn't seem to have any obvious date tie-ins (Steinitz' birthday and such seem pretty underwhelming). Of course, we mention enough people in the article that probably at least two of them have the same birthday. If, say, Steinitz, Weaver Adams, and Hans Berliner all have the same birthday, we might be getting somewhere. Not likely, although at my old law firm, out of about 28 lawyers, at one point we had three born on May 1 (yes, Law Day!), two of those in the same year. FWIW, July 20 is supposedly "International Chess Day" (the anniversary of FIDE's founding in 1924), but I can't even find any authoritative source saying that. Krakatoa (talk) 07:54, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

By the way, I have a mental list of chessplayers who died at age 64: Bobby Fischer, Wilhelm Steinitz, Howard Staunton, and Edmar Mednis. I had thought Vladimir Bagirov, too, but he died about three weeks before his 64th birthday. I thought of making a category or list of these folks, but I daresay my fellow Wikipedians would delete it with even more stunning alacrity than they did my former article on the greatest birthday in history: February 12, 1809 (Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln). Krakatoa (talk) 08:02, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

As we all know that Wikipedia is an MMORPG, the interesting feature is the variety of different worlds composing it. GA-review will mostly require abilities on adding content, so we could have an analogy with the "Strength" skill all RPG have. FA-review requires more abilities on format and style, which is just the "Dexterity" skill. Then, going to the Main Page just requires the "Luck" skill: you have to continuously watch out and hope a slot gets free to propose your article, as only five slots can be filled at the same time.

Anyway, no need to hurry as the monsters there (yes, I am still in my analogy with RPG) would eat alive any article that has not been featured for enough time before being nominated for the Main Page. It is probably better to wait for several months, and to find an interesting date as Krakatoa mention. SyG (talk) 08:06, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

As I mentioned before, the request pages seems to be only date requests, and I don't think our new FA article qualifies for that. That said, not all main page featured articles are there because of the date, see for instance Sertraline on Wikipedia:Today's featured article/June 2008. So there must be another way. Voorlandt (talk) 08:57, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes!!!! Two of the central figures in the article, Richard Réti and Andrew Soltis, were both born on May 28!!!! Wait, you say they're not central figures in the article? Never mind. Krakatoa (talk) 17:59, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

FWIW, today's featured article, Oxidative phosphorylation, became an FA on August 30, 2007, about ten months ago. Krakatoa (talk) 02:31, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

There's a few criteria for the main page, but ultimately it's Raul654's decision (and SandyGeorgia, who contributed to the FA-Review for this article, is his deputy with that incidentally). He can use whatever motives he wants, but requests can be judged by other editors. Date relevance is generally weighted highest, because obviously important anniversaries don't come along that often. Decennary, centenary, millenial anniversaries etc are naturally weighted higher still. Another point to note is that they generally aren't too keen on articles which have only just been promoted, especially if there's no date connection (i.e. a specific reason why it should be so soon) although some do get through. The number of featured articles on the topic and its relative obscurity (based on the vague notion of the kind of articles your average 12 year old would look up for a school report) are also major factors. No harm in going for it, but might be best to let it "season" a little first? Just that they can be rather tyrannical on the requests page about date relevance. Caissa's DeathAngel (talk) 16:19, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
- I don't know what the protocol is; certainly wouldn't want to piss off the powers that be by pushing it prematurely. Is obscurity (what a 12-year-old would look up) considered good or bad in terms of making the main page? If Oxidative phosphorylation and Conatus are any indication, I'm guessing good. I see that today's Main Page FA, Conatus, became an FA on May 5, 2007. Krakatoa (talk) 01:18, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

The main page article a couple of days ago was The General in His Labyrinth, which just made FA on April 19, 2008! Dunno how it rocketed to the head of the line so quickly. Krakatoa (talk) 05:12, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

- - Generally, the less obscure an article is, the more likely it is to go on the Main Page. Articles that a 12 year old would likely look up for a school project are likely to be prioritised ahead of obscure articles for the most part. For time since promotion, a year is considered a marker for more attention, and another is two years plus. At the moment there's a couple of spaces on the Main Page Requests page here: [5] so feel free to stick it up and see what people say. Caissa's DeathAngel (talk) 07:55, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Congratulations on getting FA class. Especially to Krakatoa whom applied much effort and put together most of it. In my view this article is outstanding and much better then most other FA Class wikipedia articles. SunCreator (talk) 13:19, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Suggested collaboration: Caïssa

Hi everyone, I've been meaning to do this for a while now. I'd like to see the article Caïssa much improved if possible. My username suggests an interest in the subject, and it is also rated by this project as a High Class article, despite being start. I've checked the other language versions of it and they are all much the same, but I think they could be better. Anybody willing to assist? Getting the ball rolling isn't my strong suit on these matters, I'm far better at running away with it once I'm going. Thanks.Caissa's DeathAngel (talk) 16:50, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

In all honesty I doubt WikiProject Chess can add much more to it, I expanded it as much as I could find before. It's contents are considerably more then most of the sources. Maybe more assistance can be provided in other wikiprojects like Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Poetry, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mythology, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject History etc. SunCreator (talk) 13:29, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

I would be happy to assist but for the moment I have a hard time finishing some A-class reviews and also in real life (2nd quarter closing, for those who know what that means...). Also, suggesting a collaboration on an article while explaining that you will run away is very courageous but may chill out some participants ;-) SyG (talk) 13:59, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Weaver Adams

I think Weaver Adams is a lot better than Start-Class now. Anyone care to reassess it? Krakatoa (talk) 07:45, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Done. Perhaps would benifit from a nice photograph and infobox (as in the Howard Staunton article) Voorlandt (talk) 10:03, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Changes to the WP:1.0 assessment scheme

As you may have heard, we at the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial Team recently made some changes to the assessment scale, including the addition of a new level. The new description is available at WP:ASSESS.

The new C-Class represents articles that are beyond the basic Start-Class, but which need additional references or cleanup to meet the standards for B-Class.
The criteria for B-Class have been tightened up with the addition of a rubric, and are now more in line with the stricter standards already used at some projects.
A-Class article reviews will now need more than one person, as described here.

Each WikiProject should already have a new C-Class category at Category:C-Class_articles. If your project elects not to use the new level, you can simply delete your WikiProject's C-Class category and clarify any amendments on your project's assessment/discussion pages. The bot is already finding and listing C-Class articles.

Please leave a message with us if you have any queries regarding the introduction of the revised scheme. This scheme should allow the team to start producing offline selections for your project and the wider community within the next year. Thanks for using the Wikipedia 1.0 scheme! For the 1.0 Editorial Team, §hepBot (Disable) 22:09, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

For information, I have started to reassess all the existing B-class articles against the new criteria. Not surprisingly, most of them fall into the C-class for the moment. SyG (talk) 14:01, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your efforts on this. Some of the Start-class will likely will fit into the C-class also . SunCreator (talk) 17:41, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

The Staunton-Morphy controversy

At Talk:Howard_Staunton#The_Staunton-Morphy_controversy I suggested that the controversy should be made the subject of a separate article since: we now have enough sources to support a separate article; a blow-by-blow account would take up a huge chunk of Howard Staunton; I'm hoping more material will be available in a few weeks. The advantages of a separate article are that it can expand as we get new material and can be used as a "see also" in both Howard Staunton and Paul Morphy without taking up disproportionate space in the Staunton and Morphy articles. Would you please comment on this suggestion at Talk:Howard_Staunton#The_Staunton-Morphy_controversy. -- Philcha (talk) 21:48, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

I've started The Staunton-Morphy controversy and got a lot of the chronology in place, but it could use a lot more quotations etc, with WP:RS. Please respond at Talk:The Staunton-Morphy controversy, which presents a shopping list. -- Philcha (talk) 23:50, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Chess "Article of the Day"

Best greetings from the German Wikipedia chess friends. Our article on Chess problems made it, somewhat surprisingly, to the Main Portal (July 16). Even without any German knowledge, you may enjoy this rare view (see Chessbase News [6]). Did it ever happen here so far? --DaQuirin (talk) 21:32, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

That is a fantastic achievement, thanks for the hint! That is also great to have a mention on ChessBase, it may bring new editors to the Deutsch Wikipedia.

On the English Wikipedia, the articles Chess and The Turk both made it to the Main Page. Our article on Chess problems is still far from the required level (Featured Article) but in several months we may propose First-move advantage in chess for the Main Page. SyG (talk) 17:12, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Player ratings

There are hundreds of articles about players. Their ratings generally change a little each time a new rating list comes out. I don't think we need to track those little details. For one thing, it takes a lot of effort of editors. Secondly, if the reader wants the exact rating or details, they can go to the FIDE site or the national organization. Also, I think it is misleading to give the current rating of someone who is way past their prime. They may have once been over 2600 but now their rating is 2400. So I have a couple of ideas: 1. give the peak rating. Then after a certain point it won't have to be updated. 2. It is close enough to round it off to the nearest 100 or maybe 50, i.e. "once rated over 2500" or 2550. Bubba73 (talk), 20:04, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree we should delete the "current rating" field in the Infobox, as it cannot be properly maintained. The reader can always find this information in the FIDE player card if he wants to. SyG (talk) 20:41, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Would it be a good idea to link to the FIDE player card? -- Philcha (talk) 23:52, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure how big this problem really is, though I see your point. Keeping ratings updated is a bit like keeping population figures for cities and towns updated; there are a lot of articles to update, and in many cases population estimates are given several times a year. As long as we indicate which list we have the rating from, I think readers will understand, and then someone will update if they feel the rating for that bio is way too old. I cannot support removing the "current rating" field altogether, and referring to the rating card instead, because even slightly out-of-date information about playing strength is valid, a reasonable indicator, and still better than having no information. Sjakkalle (Check!) 07:39, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

I like Sjakkalle's solution. The "Peak rating" field already has a date in brackets (see e.g. Boris Spassky, the first place I clicked), so simply put a date in brackets after the "FIDE rating" field also. It's a simple fix, and doesn't break any of the ones we forget to change. Peter Ballard (talk) 07:48, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes I don't see what the problem is really. They will get done in time; last time round we had an editor who went through and did most of them in a day or so. As long as each infobox has a peak as well as a current rating, we'll be giving a good idea of that player's strength.Pawnkingthree (talk) 08:46, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

For one thing, I don't think that is a good use of editor time. There are hundreds of players, who is going to update them every time a new rating list comes out? And most of the changes are small and insignificant. If there are to be current ratings, how about making 50-point ranges, and say "over 2550" for anything between 2550 and 2600, then they won't have to be updated nearly as often. And being in a 50 point range is close enough. Bubba73 (talk), 15:07, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

With respect, it's not up to you to decide what's a good use of editor time and what isn't. Many editors (myself included) update sports statistics regularly and don't mind doing so. User:David Senek updated the last lot and it didn't take him that long. Having a vague "over such and such" list is not much use to anyone. I agree with Sjakkalle, as long as we indicate the date, whether it's January or April or whatever doesn't really matter. Pawnkingthree (talk) 15:39, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Looking at his contributions, it took him several hours over a period of several days. At best he was changing about two per minute. That is a lot of time that could be used more productively. The rating list comes out four times a year, I think, and there are probably hundreds of players with ratings. Also the difference between 2443 and 2451 is not much use to anyone. The great majority of the changes from one list tothe next are statistically insignificant. Bubba73 (talk), 03:01, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

I think the July Top 100 has already been done; but I guess some of those lower than that might get missed (not sure how many articles on active players outside the 100 we have). I agree that there is usually not much difference in the points totals (unless a player has a really good or really bad few months) but personally I find the movement in the placings of interest; for example the fact that Morosevich has now split Anand and Kramnik and is at a Career high no.2.Pawnkingthree (talk) 08:22, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Articles flagged for cleanup

Currently, 2669 articles are assigned to this project, of which 431, or 16.1%, are flagged for cleanup of some sort. (Data as of 14 July 2008.) Are you interested in finding out more? I am offering to generate cleanup to-do lists on a project or work group level. See User:B. Wolterding/Cleanup listings for details. Subscribing is easy - just add a template to your project page. If you want to respond to this canned message, please do so at my user talk page. --B. Wolterding (talk) 08:45, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Illustrative games in chess opening articles

I found some chess openings articles with so called Illustrative games. I really dont see what these games have to offer us. So i propose deleting all this. And if some game does have something interesting that is useful in the article, a Chess Diagram template can be used and link to ChessGames can be offered.

So that anyone understands what Im trying to say: Ponziani_Opening here you can see two games, without any explanation at all about why they are there. So template can be used to show the critical situation that explains about the opening's dynamics. Lab-oratory (talk) 16:34, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

I probably added most of those illustrative games. As to Ponziani Opening, I have added text explaining the significance of the games. Krakatoa (talk) 19:55, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

As long as they're used sparingly, with accompanying explanation, I don't have a problem. I'm not so keen on a long list of games in an external links section; those should be avoided. Pawnkingthree (talk) 11:34, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

If the game is referenced to somewhere which has additional commentary as to how it illustrates play in the context of the said opening, I think they are good ideas. In lieu of that, I would wish to minimize them. Baccyak4H (Yak!) 19:15, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't have any real problem with illustrative games and have added a few to articles. Certainly, there shouldn't be long lists of random games culled from some database but, if used sparingly (and I think The Oxford Companion to Chess is a good example here), they can help give a greater understanding of the subject, help establish notability and also improve linkage to other articles. My main criteria for inclusion would be;

to show a famous win over an esteemed opponent;
to show how an opening typically plays out and/or the middlegame plans that may develop;
to show an opening or variation where its creator/main protagonist is the subject of the article;
to attribute a game of striking tactical or strategic merit with some introductory explanation, or a link to annotations elsewhere;
to demonstrate a characteristic style or aspect of a person's play.

There may of course be other valid reasons too. Brittle heaven (talk) 22:05, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Update on quality: July 2008

Here is a brief update on the development of different quality reviews.

Howard Staunton unfortunately failed to reach the level "A-class" of quality, although Philcha has done a fantastic job on this article. Thanks to him and to all the reviewers, mostly Brittle heaven and Krakatoa. You can see the review at Wikipedia:WikiProject Chess/Review or directly hereunder:

Review of Howard Staunton

This review is done in the scope of the WikiProject Chess and is transcluded from Wikipedia:WikiProject Chess/Review/Howard Staunton. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nomination by Philcha
Howard Staunton - as good as I can make it right now Philcha (talk) 16:18, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Review by SyG: conclusion was "Oppose to A-class, support nomination for GA-class"

Assess as GA-class I think the article is now good enough to be presented for a GA-review. SyG (talk) 09:53, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

~~Comment~~ I am really impressed by the quality of this article, the members of the WikiProject Chess seem to improve every day their knowledge of what makes a good article! The article is organised, well referenced and encyclopedic. I think it is close to GA-class, and possibly more with some improvements. Here are my first remarks based on this version of the article. SyG (talk) 12:15, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

General remarks

"Done" items

Done There could be a case for splitting the Biography in two parts, the first one dedicated to the chess aspects and the other one (shorter, I presume) dedicated to the Shakespeare aspects. What do you think ?

I considered that and preferred chronologcal sequence because IMO that would gives a clearer impression of how energetic Staunton was. Splitting into chess and Shakespeare aspects would also make it more difficult to find a good place for his book on education. Philcha (talk) 18:07, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

OK, fine for me. SyG (talk) 21:19, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

~~One of the requirements for Featured Articles is brilliant prose. While I am definitely a complete patzer on prose, I still feel the text could generally be improved, for example:~~ OK, I strike that one because it is not important enough to give a damn.

the sentence "In 1836, Staunton came to London, and there he took out a subscription for ..." could be transformed in "In 1836, Staunton came to London, where he took out a subscription for ..."

In general I have strong a preference for the simplest possible style: I think Wikipedia's target audience should be curious 12-year olds; a simple style is best in documents that are to be read online (see for example Web Style Guide and the rather simple style used in WP:MOS. The fundamental reason is that web users don't want to read, they want to scan. (Jakob Nielsen). Philcha (talk) 18:07, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for these links, very useful reading. I will not insist on that for GA-class, but if you ever want to nominate one of your article for FA-class you may run into User:Tony1 (or others) who will work their socks off much more than I do about the style. See for example his comments on the FA-review here for the article Ant. SyG (talk) 21:19, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

the word "however" is not well placed in the sentence "However after a long and difficult negotiation, which he reported in the Chess Player’s Chronicle, Staunton went...". I suggest the following: "After a long and difficult negotiation, however, Staunton went...". The fact that it was reported in the Chess Player’s Chronicle can be put in a footnote.

Re "However", burying it deep in the sentence IMO makes it more difficult to read - humans are not good at stack processing.

Yes, probably it is easier to read at the beginning. I was mentioning this point, however ;-), because in the GA-review of Alekhine User:Nikki311 changed them all for copyedit. See her diffs here. SyG (talk) 21:19, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

The mention of the Chess Player’s Chronicle is a case of my paranoia about important web sources for chess history. Also that page of Winter's is cited several times, mostly for different C.N.'s. If these citations were more specific, it would be necessary to give a separate citation in each case; or to make the one footnote say e.g. "For topic X Winter cites original source A, for topic Y he cites original source B, etc." Is either of these desirable? Philcha (talk) 18:07, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Done The mention of the Chess Player’s Chronicle is very fine for me, I just wanted to remove it because it did not work with where I wanted to put my "however" :-) (which is a very bad reason, arguably). For references to Winter, and more generally for references used extensively in one article, I think the more specific the better because it helps the reader to find the quoted part of text more easily. So yes, I would like that each CN is cited separately, even if it means multiplying the references. SyG (talk) 21:19, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Done, see next item. Philcha (talk) 23:26, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

I've "promoted" this to its own bullet because I can see how to use the internal links to make the article scroll to somewhere near the right section. The title for each cite will be the C.N. number and its (section) title. Philcha (talk) 00:09, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Done. Philcha (talk) 23:26, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

( Done) When possible, the citation of books should contain the page number.

Some of the citations were already there and to book I don't have, so I WP:AGF - e.g. Hooper & Whyld's Oxford Companion to Chess. There's also a problem with Fine's The World's Great Chess Games - I have the 1952 UK edition, and Fine revised the book for a later edition. If anyone can help resolve these, I'd appreciate it.

If you do not have them, no problem. About the differences in edition, my understanding is that we are supposed to specify in the section "References" the precise edition that is quoted, so that the page number means something. Theoretically, we could even have several versions of the same book in the "References", if several editions are cited in the article. But I have never seen this case happen. SyG (talk) 06:56, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying that. Philcha (talk) 11:34, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

One difficulty of this article is that Staunton was not only a chess champion, but also a Shakespeare scholar. My knowledge of Shakespeare is vastly insufficient to assess whether this aspect is adequately covered or not. If you do not mint, I would link to request the help of someone from the Wikipedia:WikiProject Shakespeare to see if the article is good enough on this aspect or not.

Why didn't I think of that? Doh! Philcha (talk) 18:07, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately the WikiProject Shakespeare seem completely dead (last edit more than one month ago), so we should probably not hope too much help from their side. Hence I strike this comment. SyG (talk) 18:39, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

~~The "References" section could be split between a "Notes" section and a "References" section, for the ease of reading.~~

What types of thing do you think should go in which? I'm also not sure what you mean by "for ease of reading". Philcha (talk) 18:07, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

A possibility I generally like (but by no mean a compulsory one) is to have a "Footnotes" section with brief mentions like "Watson 1998" (i.e. name of the author and year of the book, and if possible the page), and then a "References" section with all the details on the books cites (title, publisher, ISBN, ...). You can have an example at First-move advantage in chess. One advantage is that you do not repeat all information for each footnote, and you can still give precisions (page number). SyG (talk) 22:20, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

I think it would be best to work out what sort of result is to be achieved first.

My first question is, can the footnotes contain internal links to the bibiliographic details (in the same way as inline citations general internal links to the footnotes)? If they cannot, holding the bibiliographic details in a separate place makes life more difficult for the reader, who would have to look for the list of bibliographic details and then scroll through it looking for the author's name and then for the date. Hard-copy books and journals got into the habit of splitting the footnotes and bibliographic details to save paper, but this is not so desirable for information that will usually be viewed on a screen.

Now to work out what should happen in each type of case:

Book cited several times, all with different page numbers: Split?
Book cited several times, without page numbers: I'm not sure about this. (can arise if e.g.: page numbers not known; one is commenting on a book written by the subject of the article, which happens here; one is actually citing a review of the book).
Book cited several times, sometimes with and sometimes without page numbers: I'm not sure about this.
Book cited once.The problem with splitting here is that we get a messy situation if someone later inserts another citation to the same work.
Journal article cited several times, with URL. In this case I think splitting causes difficulties for the reader.
Journal article cited several times, without URL. Split? I'm not sure this would set a good precedent, especially for scientific articles, where the same set of authors (A, B, C et al) may write more than one article on similar subjects in the same year (I've seen this fairly often in paleontology). Philcha (talk) 07:10, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Basically all books would go into the "References" section, and "Footnotes" would only contain mentions of author, year and page. All other works would go direcly in "Footnotes", with as much details as possible. Regarding your list of cases that would give the following:

Book cited several times, all with different page numbers: "Footnotes" contain author, year and page numbers. "References" use the "cite book" template with everything possible, but not page numbers.
Book cited several times, without page numbers: "Footnotes" contain author and year. "References" use the "cite book" template with everything possible, but not page numbers.
Book cited several times, sometimes with and sometimes without page numbers: "Footnotes" contain author and year, and page numbers when available. "References" use the "cite book" template with everything possible, but not page numbers.
Book cited once: "Footnotes" contain author, year and page number. "References" use the "cite book" template with everything possible, but not page numbers. In that way, no problem if another inline reference to the same book is added later.
Journal article cited several times, with URL: all details in "Footnotes" using the "cite web" template, nothing in "References".
Journal article cited several times, without URL: all details in "Footnotes" using the "cite news" template, nothing in "References".

Opinion ? SyG (talk) 15:03, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Books used once or several times should go in the References section with a "citation" or "cite book" template, but use the better Author-date referencing instead of footnotes in the text. Bubba73 (talk), 15:38, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

I've found the technology to make links from specific notes to bibliographic details - see Template:Ref#Examples. I'd like to do an analysis of the existing refs to see how useful this would be to readers - for example if only a handful of works justify the 2-part treatment (mainly books for which different page numbers are cited), I'm not sure whether using 2 layouts would be helpful. Give me a few days to count the different cases. Philcha (talk) 12:00, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

I'll look at that. In general, the author-date system works very well for books that are referenced only once too. It helps readers and editors. Bubba73 (talk), 01:31, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

I checked refs to books in the current version of the article:

Page numbers irrelevant / probably unhelpful (2):
- Staunton, H. (ed.), The British Miscellany and Chess Player's Chronicle, retrieved 2008-06-19 - once
- Staunton, H. Great Schools of England. Hardinge Simpole. ISBN 1843820137. Retrieved 2008-06-19. - once
Page numbers relevant:
- Cited more than once, page numbers available (9):
  - Fine, R. (1952). The World's Great Chess Games. Andre Deutsch (now as paperback from Dover).
  - David Hooper and Kenneth Whyld (1992). The Oxford Companion to Chess, 2nd edition. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-866164-9. N.B. need more page numbers for this.
  - Kasparov, Garry (2003). My Great Predecessors, Part I. Everyman Chess. p. 17. ISBN 1-85744-330-6. - twice, both to p. 17, should these count as 1 citation?
  - Howard Staunton, The Chess-Player's Handbook, George Bell & Sons, 1893 - N.B. need more page numbers for this.
  - Saidy, Anthony and Lessing, Norman (1974). The World of Chess. Random House. p. 88. ISBN 0-394-48777-X.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) and p.86
  - David Lawson, Paul Morphy: The Pride and Sorrow of Chess, David McKay, 1976, pp. 92-93. ISBN 0-679-13044-6 - N.B. need more page numbers for this.
  - Hartston, William (1985). The Kings of Chess. Pavilion Books Limited. p. 26. ISBN 0-06-015358-X. and p.36
  - Horowitz, I.A. (1973). The World Chess Championship - A History. Macmillan. p. 3. LCCN 72080175. OCLC 604994. N.B. need more page numbers for this.
  - De Firmian, Nick (2008). Modern Chess Openings, 15th Edition. David McKay Co. p. 675. ISBN 978-0-8129-3682-7. 3 times, all p.3
- Cited more than once, page numbers not available (2):
  - Howard Staunton. The Chess Tournament. Hardinge Simpole. ISBN 1843820897.
  - Howard Staunton, The Chess-Player's Handbook, George Bell & Sons, 1893, p. 371. N.B. need more page numbers for this.
- Cited once (6):
  - Fred Reinfeld, A Treasury of British Chess Masterpieces, Bell Publishing Company, 1950, p. v.
  - John Nunn, Graham Burgess, John Emms, and Joe Gallagher, Nunn's Chess Openings, Everyman Publishers, 1999, p. 8. ISBN 1-85744-221-0.
  - H.J.R. Murray, A History of Chess, Oxford University Press, 1913, p. 885. ISBN 0-19-827403-3.
  - John L. Watson, Mastering the Chess Openings: Unlocking the Mysteries of the Modern Chess Openings, Volume 1, Gambit Publications, 2006, p. 175. ISBN 1904600603.
  - Lev Polugaevsky, Jeroen Piket and Christophe Gueneau, Sicilian Love: Lev Polugaevsky Chess Tournament, Bueno Aires 1994, New in Chess, 1995, p. 64.
  - Schonberg, H.C. (1975). "The Age of Staunton". Grandmasters of Chess. Fontana. pp. 37–46. ISBN 0006336183.

I'm still not convinced that a 2-part ref system for books would help readers, as the vast majority of the refs are to web pages and I'd expect these to have 1-part refs even when frequently used (e.g. Murray's BCM articl eon S.) I think a 2-part system also has pitfalls when books have gone through several editions and page numbers vary from one edition to another - e.g. editor A refers to edition X, editor B uses edition Y but attibutes the page number to edition X. From that point of view it may be safer for editors use 1-part refs and specify which edition in each case. I suspect the 2-part ref system originated as a way to save paper in printed content, and that does not apply to Wikipedia. Philcha (talk) 19:57, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, if we do not have an agreement on the best system, I do not want to push for that. Let's keep the current system, and I will strike this issue out for the time being. SyG (talk) 08:31, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Done Several references miss a Retrieve date. As this is a purely bureaucratic and thankless task, I have no problems to add them myself, once I have finished the review of the article.

Thanks! I thought I'd got them all. Isn't there a bot that can do this? Philcha (talk) 18:07, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

I have now scrutinised all the references and they all seem to be in order, so this is done. SyG (talk) 15:41, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Done There are several typos here and there. Just to list a few:

Done Anderssen's victory over him in the 1851 London 1851 International tournament effectively...
Done Eary in 1843 Staunton played either a match or a pair of matches... : I guess "Early" was meant.
the strongest players he saw in London, Saint-Amant and George Walker, could could easily have given him Rook odds
Done and lists it as as Staunton's best performance
Done von der Lasa later suggested this was why... : first letter should be in capital.

As it's the start of a sentence.Philcha (talk) 18:07, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Done The only players on record who were successful against Staunton at evens from 1840 to 1852 were : I guess "events" was meant

No, "evens" is the opposite of "odds". Should I refer to the note on chess odds? Philcha (talk) 14:33, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Oh, my bad. If I was mistaken I fear some other careless readers could be as well. Maybe it could be rewritten into something like "against Staunton without odds", or "against Staunton at evens (i.e. without odds)", or something else that would be fool-proof ? SyG (talk) 20:21, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

I suggest to read thoroughly the text once again to correct all.

The trouble is I see what I expect to see - fresh eyes will do better. Thanks for catching the ones above.

I have read the article through once again, and I have not seen anymore typos. So let's call it a day. SyG (talk) 21:11, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Lead

"Done" items

Done During the GA-review of Alexander Alekhine the reviewer mentioned that the Lead should contain four paragraphs. I think it can apply here as well.

As you said above, the problem with Staunton is his exceptionally wide range of activities and the fact that his chess and Shakespearean writing career extended from the middle of his chess career to the end of his life.. I think combining the paras would be confusing in this case. Philcha (talk) 18:07, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

See my proposal or a more compact Lead at 3 bullet points below. SyG (talk) 14:43, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Done Spaces are missing between date of birth and date of death. Also, I am not sure we should wikilink the year of birth: as the day is missing, the wikiformatting will not work anyway. This is backed by the following sentence in Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Autoformatting and linking: Links to date elements that do not contain both a day number and a month are not required; for example, ..., and month and year combinations. Hence, while it is currently (April 1810–June 22 1874), I would guess it should be (April 1810 – June 22 1874). Sorry to be that pedestrian :-)

In general I agree. There are few occasions when wikilinking e.g. a year (1492 springs to mind) or day (25 December) add something to the article, but these are rare examples. Philcha (talk) 18:07, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Done The Lead contains some information that, in my opinion, are anecdotic for a Lead and better let in the main body of the article. I would for example delete all of the following:

Done ...(the other contender was von der Lasa)
Despite the story that Paul Morphy described him as "the author of ... some devilish bad games",

I thought that story was so well-known (especially in USA, where there's a strong anti-Staunton prejudice) that should be mentioned up front. Philcha (talk) 18:07, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Done In fact a heart ailment made it very unlikely that Staunton would be capable of serious competitive chess after 1853, and he was extremely busy working under a contract to produce editions of Shakespeare's plays.

I understand your point, but removing it would leave a very short paragraph.

We've agreed a new lead, which is now in place. Philcha (talk) 23:26, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Done I am not able to perceive clearly the structure of the Lead. The first paragraph talks about his chess books and the chess tournament he organised, the second paragraph is on style, the third paragraph is on the unplayed match with Morphy, the fourth is on Shakespeare, then the fifth starts back at the beginning of the early life, then the last one talks about his character. This just reads like the author tried to sum up all the information from the main body (which is definitely good), but in my humble opinion this needs to be rewritten into a logical flow.

I've been looking at this while reading your other comments. The simplest change I can see would be to move the short bio (currently 5th para) to 2nd para. After that the problem is that there were so many threads in his life. Where would be a good place to present different ways of arranging this so that others can comment? Philcha (talk) 18:07, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

The main elements of the structure were meant to be:

Why Staunton is notable.
Short bio.
Chess style.
Why no match with Morphy (a well-known controversy)
Non-chess activities.
Personality

I think these are separate topics and combining paras would be confusing, On the other hand if themes are not clear there's a problem. What do you think would make them clearer?

I have tried a very different structure of Lead in my sandbox here. This one is organised as such:

Introduction: main reasons why Staunton is notable (the shortest possible)
Biography (only about his chess actions)
Style of play
Writings

Please have a look and tell me what you think. SyG (talk) 08:20, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for getting me thinking on a fresh track! You've also persuaded me to create a sandbox, which presents a 4-paragraph combination of the existing lead and your draft. The main differences: longer biography paragraph, because I think the extra material shows how energetic Staunton was; comments about Staunton's charm and management skill, to balance the spitefulness of some of his chess writings. What do you think? Philcha (talk) 18:09, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I think yours is very well. SyG (talk) 19:44, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Done.

Done It is explained that Staunton was one of the two best players, but in the next sentence it is written that Anderssen became chess champion. The difference is clear from the rest of the article, but if someone reads just the Lead it is confusing.

It currently says "who was probably one of the world's two strongest players from 1843 to 1851". Would it help if the next sentence said ".. principal organizer of the first international chess tournament in 1851"? Philcha (talk) 16:44, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

I've inserted "in 1851", what do you think? Philcha (talk) 23:26, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Great, there is no more problem with the new Lead. SyG (talk) 20:53, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Done In the sentence "Staunton was a relatively minor Shakespearean scholar but his work is still well-regarded, and he also wrote a book about English public schools which presented some very progressive ideas", there is no connection between the two parts, so I would just split it into two separate sentences.

The sentence "There are no reliable sources for his early life" sounds a bit too "wikipedian". Why not something like "Little is known on his early life", or "From his early life it is only known that..." ?

"Little is known about his early life" would raise objections from readers who read accounts based on Staunton's later words, unless we used emphasis as in "Little is known about his early life" - which strikes me as rather a lawyer's trick. "From his early life it is only known that ..." has a bigger problem - if "known" is interpreted strictly, it is only known that he was born, probably around 1810!

The material cited was provided by one of Winter's contributors, who wrote "None of this throws any real light on Howard Staunton". In this case the simple truth may be the safest policy - there are no reliable sources. Philcha (talk) 16:44, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I don't mind not using the exact words of the citation, quite the contrary. My concern is that the expression "reliable sources" may sound natural for Wikipedians but weird for outsiders. Anyway, that is not a major problem, so I will strike that out for the sake of this light review. SyG (talk) 20:53, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Done I do not think the infobox should contain that he was World Champion. I appreciate it is mentionned "unofficial", but I think it should just be deleted because it is not true.

We have an outstanding issue about the whole "official" / "unofficial" distinction (see Talk:World Chess Championship. I think "official" / "unofficial" is rubbish, but I'm not sure that's the consensus at present. He was explicitly hailed as world champion after beating St. Amant in Paris. The real problem with all this is where we put the beginning of Steinitz' reign. I'm not sure about this at present. Philcha (talk) 18:07, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

I've just noticed that Murray (part 1) wrote in 1908, "... modern writers, attempting to trace back the line of champions from the time of the first claimant to the title—William Steinitz—regard this match as a contest for the championship, and date Staunton's tenure from this year." This only emphasises how we need to sort out how we label "champions by acclamation", and especially Steinitz. Thanks for making me look! Philcha (talk) 21:26, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for drawing my attention on the mess of World Chess Championship. There are clearly some grey areas, like when did Steinitz become champion and what to do with Khalifman. There is a consensus, however, that Steinitz was the first World Champion. I don't know why he is considered the first (and not Anderssen or others before), but he is. So Staunton was possibly the "world best player", the "world greatest player" or something else, but I would avoid to name him World Champion because most sources don't do that. SyG (talk) 09:53, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

I seriously doubt that the evidence supports "There is a consensus, however, that Steinitz was the first World Champion." It may be the consensus of writers from the mid-20th century onwards, but the phrase was used before Steinitz beat Anderssen, and Murray reports a consensus in his time (1908) that the 2nd Staunton vs Saint-Amant match was a contest for the world championship, and describes Steinitz as the "first claimant to the title", i.e. Steinitz was the first to claim to for himself rather than await the acclamation of others. In this case I do not see why writers from the mid-20th century onwards should be treated as greater authorities than Murray or the 19th-century sources. An account of the World Championship which reports only the more recent views is misleading and guilty of WP:Undue Weight. Philcha (talk) 17:07, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

We need to sort out the the principles according to which we label players "World Champion", with or without some qualification such as "formal"/"informal". I think that should be done at Talk:World Chess Championship, and as soon as possible.

From a practical point of view, in this article we have only 2 sources for the idea of Staunton as World Chess Champion; one of these is not contemporary and does not cite his sources; the other (Mexborough) is not known as a chess expert or highly knowledgeable enthusiast. So in practice we can't label Staunton "World Champion" at present.

I'd be grateful if you could help restart the discussion at Talk:World Chess Championship, as it also affects Adolf Anderssen, Paul Morphy and Wilhelm Steinitz. Philcha (talk) 11:34, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

OK, I have launched a new thread on Talk:World Chess Championship, trying to focus the discussion as narrow as possible. SyG (talk) 18:13, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

The discussion on Talk:World Chess Championship has brought up a lot of interesting comment, and the new version of the Lead is fine for me. SyG (talk) 13:18, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Staunton's life (introduction)

"Done" items

Done As Murray is cited almost word by word in this paragraph, it would be better practice to acknowledge that by putting quotation marks.

After re-reading Murray, I remember why I presented it as I did - in the last sentence the phrase "played the part of Lorenzo in the Merchant of Venice to Edmund Kean's Shylock" is archaic and will be hard for readers to understand if they are not theatre fans (I've only seen such phrases in the context of theatre, not movies). Here's the whole passage: Philcha (talk) 19:15, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

"Howard Staunton was born in 1810, and was reputed to be the natural son of Frederick Howard, fifth Earl of Carlisle. He was neglected in youth, and received little or no education, and although he spent some time in Oxford, he was never a member of the University. When he came of age he received a few thousand pounds under his father's will, a fortune which he soon squandered. We know little of his manner of life at this time, but he was passionately fond of the theatre, and apparently spent some time on the stage. In later life he often used to tell how he had once played the part of Lorenzo in the Merchant of Venice to Edmund Kean's Shylock."

OK, fine for me. SyG (talk) 14:43, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Done Winter is cited as being dubious about some facts of Staunton's life, but I cannot find that in the mentionned reference. Would it be possible to be more specific and give the precise number of the "Chess Note" from which this is coming ? (for the moment only the number of the "Chess Note Archive" is given.)

C.N. 4776. "Staunton’s origins" Philcha (talk) 19:15, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

I've split the refs to that Chess Notes Archive, and the URLs include the internal links. Philcha (talk) 11:34, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, reading the CN 4776 I am afraid it is not Winter who is dubious about the "facts", but Richard Holmes of London. See the first sentence of the CN: "Richard Holmes (London) writes". Or am I missing something ? SyG (talk) 14:19, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Changed to "One of Winter's sources ..." Philcha (talk) 23:26, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes that is more sincere now, I think. SyG (talk) 20:53, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Done ref#1 is so extensively cited within the article that I would suggest to split it between two separate references, one for "Howard Staunton: part I" and the other for "Howard Staunton: part II"

I've just used my browser's "Print Preview" facility to check the total length - a little under 6 A4 pages, which shorter than many of the other sources cited. (That was me - damned server dropped nmy session) Philcha (talk) 19:01, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

?? I am afraid I may miss your point here. Mine was that Murray is cited about 30 times, so putting two references instead of one would ease the task of the reader, who would immediately know if the quotation is about "Murray part 1" or "Murray part 2".

Thinking about it your other suggestion about Winter's chess notes will give more benefit to readers per hour's work, because the "Chess Notes" pages have an internal link (...#linkname) for each group of chess notes. The biggest obstacle to readers in the Murray articles is the lack of paragraph spacing. I think I'll contact the site and ask them to put some in (it should be just 1 line of CSS).

I just realised what the problem is about Murray. It's all 1 web page - I formatted it as 2x "cite journal" so that we had the details in case the web page vanished. The web page has no internal links. Each time a user clicks either citation, he / she goes to the top of the same page and has to work his / her way through. Philcha (talk) 20:05, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I noticed it is not possible to give two separate web addresses, as it is one single page. Having two different references would still, however, give an indication to the reader about which part of Murray's article is relevant for the paragraph he is reading in the article. In that sense, both references would have exactly the same URL, but one would specify "Murray part 1" and the other "Murray part 2". The reader would still have, though, to work his way through the corresponding part. SyG (talk) 13:18, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Would you have raised this point if:

I had done what most editors do and just cited the web page?
I had cited the web page and added plain text in the footnote that mentioned the 2 articles?

I think this is another case where the effects of the precedent on editors' behaviour should be considered. I provided citations to the 2 articles in case the web page goes offline. I have not seen other editors do this, and I don't think they would do so if they thought it was going to involve so much extra drudgery. Philcha (talk) 07:21, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

I am a bit lost with your answer. If you are afraid of the amount of work splitting this reference into two would represent, I am ready to do it myself. I do not want to do that, however, until we have an agreement it is a good idea. Hence, regardless of the extra work, could you please tell me if you think my suggestion would improve the experience for the reader ? SyG (talk) 15:13, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

As you say, the key point is whether splitting the Murray refs "would improve the experience for the reader". I think the answer is "No, the user still has to scroll and look for the relevant sentences." On the other hand in Winter's Chess Notes there are internal links that take the reader immediately to the right section, and that's why splitting the refs to Winter's Chess Notes was beneficial. Philcha (talk) 18:04, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

All right then, let's keep it like that. SyG (talk) 18:35, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Staunton's life: First steps in chess

"Done" items

Done "...could easily have given him Rook odds" : the reader is not supposed to know what "Rook odds" is.

And a Wikipedia search for "odds chess" gave no hits! Considering that Staunton gave odds to most players later in his career (eventually even to Cochrane, whom Chessmetric ranks the world's srongest not long before their match), it's quite an important topic. Do you think it would be a good idea to write a stub article about chess odds? I know articles are supposed to be as self-contained as possible. The alternative would be to write a note on odds into this article, but I don't fancy trying to find sources (other than my own vast knowledge, ha!ha! hee!hee!) Philcha (talk) 19:15, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Footnote added, and also used elsewhere. Philcha (talk) 00:09, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Done "In 1838 he played many games with Captain Evans, inventor of the Evans Gambit. He also lost a match against the German chess writer Aaron Alexandre in 1838" : the repetition of "in 1838" is unfortunate and heavy style. Why not something like "The same year he also lost..." ?

Done What is the reference for the 1838 matches ?

Same as for Popert match - I thought it would look odd to quote the same ref twice for consecutive phrases. Philcha (talk) 19:15, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Right, fine for me. SyG (talk) 14:43, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Done "which he won by a single game" : looking at ref#3 it seems Century British Chess says the match was won by a single game but other sources say differently ? It would be good to add ref#1, which says two interesting things:

the match was indeed won by a single game
the match was won by the "odd game", probably meaning Staunton had received one game for odds and won the match thanks to that. If confirmed, this seems to be relevant information to be added to the article.

No, "by the odd game" normally means "by one game out of many" - e.g. IIRC Fine uses this of Alekhine-Euwe 1935.

It would make a long, confusing footnote - confusion was common in sources of the time. How about simply "which he won"? Philcha (talk) 19:15, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, that would be easiest. SyG (talk) 14:43, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Done In one sentence Murray says "Staunton was both owner and editor of this magazine from 1841-52", but latter he says "in 1854 he sold the Chess-Player's Chronicle". Is the correct year 1852 or 1854 ? Do we have another source to cross-check that ?

Not that I know. He may have continued as proprietor after standing down as editor in 1852, then sold up in 1854. So for me to offer an explanation would be particularly fanciful WP:OR. Philcha (talk) 19:15, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Then that is a problem. The article is currently saying Staunton was editor until 1854, while the only source we have is saying he was editor until 1852. But if we change it to 1852 it is not really better. I would much like to have other sources on that, or otherwise we would have to be less precise in the article, with something like "around mid-1850s". SyG (talk) 14:43, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Done "He then became chess editor of the magazine..." : what is a "chess editor" ?

Writes some lead articles, commissions articles from other writers - like e.g. a "sports editor" now. Philcha (talk) 19:15, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

OK, at first I thought it could be confusing for the reader and I wanted to reword into something like "he was editor on chess aspects for the magazine", but I realise the cure could be worst than the plague. So it's probably best to let the sentence like it is now. SyG (talk) 14:57, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Staunton's life: Matches against Saint-Amant

"Done" items

Done The first paragraph is not about matches against Saint-Amant, this is not consistent with the title of the section.

Could re-title, e.g. "1843 - Staunton's competitive peak". What do you think? Philcha (talk) 21:26, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, that is a possibility. Another one would be to merely move the paragraphe on Cochrane's match into the former section. SyG (talk) 14:57, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

I think that would be misleading, as discussed below. Philcha (talk) 21:20, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

I see you have changed the name of the section accordingly. Fine for me. SyG (talk) 18:15, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Done "a strong player and theoretician" : what is a theoretician ? Maybe write "chess theoretician" and put a link to Chess theory.

Done Replace "Chessmetrics treats these games as 1 match..." by "The website Chessmetrics treats these games as one unique match..."

Done The statement that the English opening is named after Staunton's second match against Saint Amant is not supported by a reference.

That man Murray again. Philcha (talk) 21:26, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

OK, I have added the reference. SyG (talk) 15:31, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Done "almost letting Saint-Amant catch up" : this is not supported by the score, which gives the impression that Staunton always had at least an advantage of 5 points. Is it possible to give the state of the score at the time when the difference was the lowest ?

I'll check the sources (match tables) on that. Von der Lasa wrote, "An attack, for instance, of this illness was, I presume, the real cause why, in the middle of the famous match with St. Amant, when in the beginning he had won nearly every game, his strength of a sudden gave way and the opponent got a temporary chance to retrieve his losses."

I grandi matches fino al 1849 shows Staunton gaining a 7-game lead, "drawing" the middle portion, and losing the final third by 2 games. That's consistent with von der Lasa. [Mark Weeks gives a similar set of results.

I've replaced the phrase "nearly lost (the lead)" with "struggled to keep it" and, in the part about von der Lasa's opinion, written "but faded badly". Philcha (talk) 21:26, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Right, fine for me. SyG (talk) 18:21, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Done The last paragraph of this chapter is a bit confusing on several aspects:

Done What is this French chess supremacy ? I would suggest to place it at the beginning of the chapter, as background and introductory information to the importance of the matches against Saint-Amant.

That would be good if the paragraph was entirely about the Saint-Amant matches. But as I said about, it's more about the peak of Stauntion's playing career, as it includes the Cochrane match(es). If we treat the section as about the Saint-Amant matches, the Cochrane match(es) would have to go in the preceding section "First steps in chess", and I think would be bad: beating Cochrane was not the achievement of a beginner; and it would blur the impression that 1843 was the year in which Staunton hit the top.

The article is about Staunton, not about the French chess "dynasty", so I'm reluctant expand this point. I'd wiki-link "French chess supremacy" to World Chess Championship, except that we have some unresolved issues there. Philcha (talk) 21:26, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Found and added a ref for "French chess supremacy" [7]. Philcha (talk) 21:26, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Great, that is more robust. SyG (talk) 19:52, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Done Who said "London became the chess capital of the world" ? What is a "chess capital" ?

Removed it. Philcha (talk) 21:26, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Done I do not understand the last sentence, even with the reference. Who is "he" in the sentence "as he might truly call him" ? Probably it makes sense to give a bit of context. I understand it was only one person (Earl of Mexborough) who used the terms World Chess Champion for Staunton, do I ?

Winter was looking for uses of "world chess champion" or similar, and Mexborough's speech gave a Google-like match. Murray (part 1)] also wrote, "As a matter of fact, he was at the time regarded very much in this light" - I could add this ref too. Philcha (talk) 21:26, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Simplified the wording, added the Murray ref. Philcha (talk) 21:26, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Great, it's much clearer now. SyG (talk) 19:52, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Done Would it make sense to reword "French chess supremacy" into "French supremacy on chess" ? SyG (talk) 19:47, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Done Philcha (talk) 08:05, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Done I have seen you added the explanation that Staunton was hailed as the world champion, which gives me the following thoughts: SyG (talk) 19:47, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

I am not sure the Earl of Mexborough can be considered an authoritative source on that one, especially during a laudable speech.
As the two references are English, does it mean Staunton was received as World Champion only in England ? What were the general reaction in France (besides Saint-Amant) and in Germany ?

Murray is too vague to help answer your question: "As a matter of fact, he was at the time regarded very much in this light ; while modern writers, attempting to trace back the line of champions from the time of the first claimant to the title—William Steinitz—regard this match as a contest for the championship, and date Staunton's tenure from this year."

Winter's Early Uses of ‘World Chess Champion’ quotes a few other items besides Mexborough's speech (at which Staunton was present!), but all from Chess Player’s Chronicle, which Staunton controlled at the time.

The only other document-quoting chess historian I've found who covers this period is Spinrad. His Early World Rankings quotes Bledow (1846):"Next year we will hopefully see each other in Trier, and until then the winner of the battle in Paris should not be overly proud of his special position, since it is in Trier that the crown will first be awarded." (Bledow proposed that he and von der Lasa shoudl organise an intermational tournament in Trier in 1847, and that the winner should be regarded as world champion) Bledow's words are a little ambiguous, although I would interpret "it is in Trier that the crown will first be awarded" as dismissing claims that Staunton was world champion. Because that's an interpretation, I'm reluctant to use it.

Spinrad then writes, "From 1843 to 1851, there are a number of remarks by British players which refer to Staunton as champion. However, even in England, we can find dissenting views ..." then mentions Buckle's supporters and the comment by Staunton's enemy George Walker that von der Lasa was the best in Europe - and then another quote (unsourced) supporting Staunton.

Considering the paucity of sources and the political divisions in chess at the time, I suggest we should mention that Staunton was hailed as the world champion but be discreet and brief about it. In fact I'd like to tone the sentence down, to "Staunton was hailed by some as the world champion." If anyone complains about WP:WEASEL, I'll copy and paste this response into the discussion! Philcha (talk) 00:01, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

You have found great sources! Unfortunately they have just convinced me Staunton was not hailed as World Champion! Here is a draft suggestion of a full paragraph to describe the ambiguity:

After this victory Staunton was often hailed in England as the World Champion.(citations) There is no indication, however, this recognition was also the case in other countries. Even in England, some prominent chess champions disagreed with this view.(citations)

What do you think ? SyG (talk) 14:07, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Nice suggestion, in fact I think it's possible to squeeze a little more out of the sources. Have a look and tell me what you think. Philcha (talk) 17:55, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

The new paragraph is great! SyG (talk) 18:32, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Done The article says there is a doubt whether one or two matches were played, but the ref#3 given only talks about one match ?

These are Spinrad's research notes, rather terse, I had to read it again twice!

Staunton-Cochrane: what happened? have various accounts eg

14-4 WCC, +12 =7 -12 P+1 TS, +3 -3 P+1 and -3 =2 +1 even

Looks like Winter's World Chess Champions treats it as 1 and Bachmann's Teplitz-Schonau tournament book (!) treats it as 3!

Might be best to write "Early in 1843 Staunton played one or more matches (sources differ on this[3]) against John Cochrane ..." We can't ignore these games (I wish!) as Murray gives them as his top reason for regarding Staunton as the bet UK player, and Chessmetric rates it Staunton's best performance. What do you think? Philcha (talk) 21:26, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

If we say in the article that sources differ, we have to provide examples of differences. So yes, I think a footnote giving Spinrad's, Winter's and especially Bachmann's treatment would do it. SyG (talk) 15:09, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

I would love to do as you suggest, but: Spinrad's notes are very cryptic; I don't have either of the books he apparently cites, and nor does Spinrad(!); I wonder why Bachmann's Teplitz-Schonau tournament book (1922!) should say anything about the Staunton-Cochrane games in 1843. I've searched the web for other sources and got nothing useful. Murray gives the date as 1841-1842! I'm now inclined to avoid this messy issue by re-writing the sentence as "Early in 1843 Staunton played a long series of games against John Cochrane ... Chessmetrics treats these games as 1 match and ..." What do you think?

BTW while searching I found [8]: Cochrane sent The City of London Chess Magazine a game in which an Indian player beat him. Looks like the chess in Madras was as hot as the curries. No wonder Cochrane crushed everyone except Staunton when he came back in 1841 after 15 years in India. Philcha (talk) 00:01, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

I like your proposal of rewording to avoid the messy issue. SyG (talk) 13:52, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Done Philcha (talk) 18:13, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Done The reference in the first sentence should be placed after the parenthesis.

I don't think so. The contents of the parenthesis are a nested sentence, and the ref belongs at the end of that. I don't know what the the Chicago style guide says about this particular case, but WP:MOS says the Chicago style guide's recommendations are not mandatory.

I may be wrong on that one. Let's call it a day. SyG (talk) 16:26, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Done "this is the first known case where seconds were used in a match" : as any "first thing" statement, it should be supported by a reference.

Same ref ([9]), at end of para as it aplies to last few sentences of para.

I am afraid I fail to see in this reference a sentence supporting the statement that this is the first known case where seconds were used in a match. Could you please explain a bit further ? SyG (talk) 16:44, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Yet another senior moment! I've added the ref. Thanks! Philcha (talk) 18:11, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

The new reference is great! SyG (talk) 11:08, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

"He also took Worrall and Harry Wilson to Paris as his assistants" : I think it would be worth to give a bit of background, like "Worrall and Harry Wilson, two strong chess players at the time, ...". Also, please give Worrall's surname.

You mean Worrall's first name? The source ([10]) doesn't give it. Philcha (talk) 21:26, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

In all probability it should be Thomas Herbert Worrall. The fact they were both strong chess players is relevant because it may have given an advantage to Staunton, as Saint-Amant had no second. SyG (talk) 16:38, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

I could find nothing for either of them. Do you have usable sources? Philcha (talk) 18:11, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

I am afraid I do not have that many sources. Here are the few I could find on the net for Worrall:

some games against Morphy and Blackburne: [11]
he was easily beaten by Morphy in a match in Paris in 1858: [12]
he was rumored to be a strong Mexican amateur player in [13]

I now have a big doubt as the article talks about "Worrall", but the actual source (Bill Wall) says "Worrell". Would it be possible to clarify ? SyG (talk) 15:58, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

batgirl says "Worrall", Wall says "Worrell". I googled for "Worrell chess" and got only Wall's pages, clones of Wall, and the Worrell Attack (6 Qe2 in stead of 6 Re1) in the Closed Morphy. I can't see how to resolve this. -- Philcha (talk) 12:53, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Staunton's life: Chess writer and promoter

"Done" items

Done I am not sure we need to specify "according to The Oxford Companion to Chess", as it is clear from the reference.

Done The expression "over-the-board play" may not be clear for the casual reader, it should be developed, footnoted or wikilinked.

Searching Wikipedia for "over the board chess" got no hits, so wikilinking won't help. An explanation would double the length of and dominate the para. I've inserted a footnote. Philcha (talk) 22:22, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Done The ref#14 should be placed at the end of the sentence.

It is now :-)

Done "Although most of his articles focused on over-the-board play, a significant number featured correspondence chess and others followed with enthusiasm the progress of promising young players, including Paul Morphy" : the word "although" implies a contradiction, but there is none between the proposal "most of his articles focused on over-the-board play" and the proposal "others followed with enthusiasm the progress of promising young players". Maybe the sentence should be split in two, like "Although most of his articles focused on over-the-board play, a significant number featured correspondence chess. Some articles followed with enthusiasm the progress of promising young players, including Paul Morphy"

Split. Philcha (talk) 22:22, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Done I am not able to find in ref#2 a sentence where Winter says Staunton "followed with enthusiasm the progress of promising young players" in his column for the Illustrated London News.

C.N. 4765. "Unnamed prodigy" Philcha (talk) 22:22, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Now links directly to that section of Winter's page. Philcha (talk) 21:32, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Strange I did not find it the first time. Thanks for the reference! SyG (talk) 20:29, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Done "(published 1843)" should be replaced by "(published in 1843)"

Done In the sentence "Another book, The Chess-Player's Companion followed in 1849", I feel there is a comma missing somewhere.

Hell, your English is sometimes better than my English. :-)

Done About the match against Harrwitz, it should be explained (at least in a footnote) what "odds of Pawn and 2 moves" means.

I've added a general footnote about odds (unsourced!!), and referred to that for "rook odds" Philcha (talk) 22:22, 18 June 2008 (UTC)as well.

Done the sentence "which did not go out of print until 1993" is confusing. Does that mean the book was a complete failure, so that it took until 1993 to sell all copies ? Or does it mean it was a huge success, so that it was only in 1993 that they stopped reprinting it ?

The latter. It's an English idiom that you apparently have not seen before. Don't worry, your English is 1M times better than my French. :-)

I am happy with the new wording. SyG (talk) 19:41, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

~~"who had had 8 children" : replace "8" by "eight"~~

Numerals are easier to read, see above. Philcha (talk) 22:22, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

I strike this out because the same issue is discussed in another bullet point. SyG (talk) 18:01, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

~~The date "July 23 1849" should be wikilinked.~~

There was a vigorous debate about this (? Village Pump) a month or 2 ago. The problem is that Wikipedia / Wikimedia lacks a separate date formatting facility. I don't know anything that would make that date interesting for reasons other than Staunton's marriage. Philcha (talk) 22:22, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes I agree this formatting issue is just useless bureaucracy. Let's strike it out for the moment. SyG (talk) 16:58, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Done I do not understand the purpose of ref#15.

Proves he did write such a book. I'm sure google used to give the most recent print date (I didn't just make it up), looks like they've changed that page. :-(

There seem to be more recent editions than 1993, for example this one. Why not changing the sentence to something like "which is still in print nowadays" ? SyG (talk) 12:01, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

If you do not mind, I have replaced the sentence "which was still in print in 1993" by "which is still in print nowadays", as it did not stop in 1994. SyG (talk) 20:17, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Done It is better to put numbers below 100 in full letters, so I would propose the new writing : "seven games in which Staunton gave Harrwitz odds of one pawn and two moves (4 wins, no draws, 3 losses), seven games in which he gave odds of one pawn and one move (1 win, no draws, 6 losses), and seven games without any special odd (7 wins, no draws, no losses)"

I honestly disagree about this, as "web users want to scan, not read". Numerals make their meaning plainer faster - especially if the user's first language is not English. And specially when the win / lose / draw summaries are numeric. Philcha (talk) 22:22, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

While your explanation is a good one, Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Numbers as figures or words sounds rather clear about this issue, and I do not see a compelling reason to do an exception here. However, I realise I was wrong above about "numbers below 100" as it seems only numbers below 10 are concerned. SyG (talk) 18:01, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

I read the whole article once again and there does not seem to be any of these left, so this is done for me. SyG (talk) 16:28, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Some style guides say to spell out numbers less than 100 and all that can be written in one or two words. Others say less than 10. There was quite a bit of discussion about this on WP a few months ago, and I don't know what was decided. I used to be a stickler for 100, but I've given up on that. But all style guides say at least less than 10, so I go by that. Remember, WP is an encyclopedia, not a blog, not a text message, not email, and not a telegram. Bubba73 (talk), 23:26, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

And it matters what kind of number it is. It must be an exact whole/counting number to be spelled out, and not a measurement, so "3 miles" is OK. And dates are not done that way, even "5 weeks" or "9 years old". But ordinals are spelled out, thus "first" instead of "1st", etc. 23:30, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Done The precision "and is available online" is not that encyclopedic, so better let it in the footnotes.

The point is that someone still finds it commercially viable to make it available - rather like his other book not going out of print until 1993. Philcha (talk) 21:32, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

As far as I know Google wants to put all books online as a free service, not for a commercial reason. The mention would make sense if Google chose to put online the most famous books, or something like that. Otherwise for the moment I fail to see the value of this mention on the article (even if it definitely deserves a footnote). SyG (talk) 17:31, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

You're right, I've removed it. -- Philcha (talk) 13:41, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

with the games at "Pawn + 1 move" odds, the article states "Staunton lost 6 and won 1", but ref#3 states "Staunton-Harrwitz: 7-0 even, 0-6-1 P+1, 4-3 P+2 (many sources)" which in my understanding means Staunton won none, drew one and lost 6. On the other hand, ref#1 states that Staunton "won 1 to 6 of those at Pawn and move", in line with the article. Which reference is correct ? Or am I misunderstanding somewhere ?

Almost certainly confusion in the sources again. Keeping accurate records did not matter until round-robin tournaments started (AFAIK London 1862). Philcha (talk) 22:22, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, probably a problem in the sources. So which one is correct ? If we do not know maybe we should delete the claim from the article ? SyG (talk) 17:27, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Aaaargh! The problem is that: IIRC both commentators and Chessmetrics regard this as one of S's strongest performances (note the whitewash at evens); if the article says "Staunton lost almost as heavily at Pawn and move" reviewers and readers will be dissatisfied; I see no reason for preferring either source, as Murray's figures add up but Spinrad names sources and is open when when they conflict (e.g. "what happened here?" about Staunton vs Cochrane); explaining the problem would double the length of the paragraph, IMO without helping the reader. I can see no no good solutions. I suggest the least bad solution is to leave it as-is, since most readers will not check Spinrad's cryptic notes but some will read Murray's articles. OTOH I'd keep the ref to Spinrad's notes so we know there's a problem - hopefully someday some kind author will resolve it. -- Philcha (talk) 12:53, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Staunton's life: London International Tournament

"Done" items

Done ref#21 should be placed after the parenthesis.

Help! I've added the footnotes you suggested above, so the numbers have changed. Can you remember which one you meant? Philcha (talk) 23:00, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Found it - by using the old version that you cleverly linked to at the top.

The ref applies to "about £359,000 in 2006 money", which I think is a sentence within a sentence so the ref should go at the end of the contained sentence.

I have raised the issue of footnotes before/after the parenthesis at Wikipedia talk:Footnotes#Footnotes and parenthesis but my question did not get a lot of answers. One remark was, however, that if the parenthesis is a full sentence then there should be a point in the parenthesis. In our case, instead of "fund of £500 (about £359,000 in 2006 money[21]). The" that would give "fund of £500 (about £359,000 in 2006 money.[21]) The". Is that better ? SyG (talk) 15:27, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

If there was a full-stop in the parentheses, then the phrase should start with a capital letter - but that would completely break the flow). The whole silly issue is based on the Chicago MOS, which WP:MOS says is not compulsory. IMO the Chicago MOS is just plain irrational about the placement of refs, since it's more logical for a ref to go with the phrase / clause it supports rather than being separated from it by a punctuation mark. Many scientific articles also prefer to place the refs before the punctuation, see for example Origins and Early Evolution of Predation (this was the first I looked at that I knew to be freely available, without a login or subscription; I know of many other examples, but a lot will not be easy for you to access). Philcha (talk) 19:19, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

OK, no big deal. SyG (talk) 21:46, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Done despite my proposal to shorten this section, it would be good to explain briefly the format of the tournament, otherwise we may lose the reader when we talk about "2nd round" and "play-offs".

" knocked out is wikilinked. I'm concerned that saying much more could lead to yet another footnote on chess tournament formats - and I really don't want to try to explain Swiss tournaments. Philcha (talk) 23:00, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Right, I have wikilinked "playoff" as well. That is fine for me now. SyG (talk) 17:49, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Done the sentence "To make up the numbers the committee "promoted" the strongest of the Provincial Tournament's entrants to play in the International Tournament" may not be clear for a casual reader. What does "make up the numbers" mean ? Was it to have an even number of players ?

A knock-out contest requires a power of 2, otherwise it needs a complicated and often controversial system of seeding and byes. I could add another explanatory footnote, but it might be quite long. What do you think? Philcha (talk) 23:00, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Why not something like "To have an even number of participants the committee "promoted" the..." ? SyG (talk) 15:30, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

I can see you're not a tennis fan, otherwise you would be more familiar with the workings of knock-out tournaments. "even number of participants" is inaccurate - to avoid having to give some players byes (free passes into the next round) you need a power of 2 - e.g. 4, 8. 16, 32, etc. How about:

To obtain the right number of players for a knock-out tournament the committee "promoted" ...

If we go for this and for the short version of the tournament in my sandbox we need to make sure to paste in "To obtain the right number of players ..." Philcha (talk) 19:29, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, that sounds good. This way the unaware reader like me can go into knock-out tournament if he wants more explanation. SyG (talk) 17:39, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Did you check out the shortened version at [14]? Or did you think that was too short? I notice you've cut the section slightly in the actual article. Philcha (talk) 18:25, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

For the moment I did not take the time to check your version, I will as soon as I can. Also, I did not cut the section slightly, probably another editor. I have just taken your suggestion to replace by "to obtain the right number...", so for me this issue is DONE. SyG (talk) 17:40, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

~~As this event has its own article, maybe there would be a case to reduce the length of this section ?~~

Hmmm. The easiest reduction would be in the list of missing players. I'd still want to mention the absence of Cochrane, Saint-Amant and von der Lasa because of their playing strength, but "and at least X other well-known masters" might cover the rest. Staunton's offer to pay Anderssen's expenses has to stay, both for the irony and to show Staunton's determination. I'm tempted to move the part about "world championship" to the end of the 1st para, where it fits well with Bledow's proposal. Apart from the absentee list I can't see right now any cuts that would not omit or weaken important points such as:

Staunton's motivation and ambitions for the event (he may also have assumed that he would win, but I'd want very WP:RS before including that).
His alertness to opportunities (the Exhibition eased the travel problems).
Its contribution to the developing concept of a world championship.
Inter-continental support - which was a huge achievement when travel, communications and financial services were so primitive (how did the cash get from India to Britain?)
Management skills (although I remember reading somewhere that Cochrane said he found it easier to work with Staunton from the other side of the world).
His taking on too much as both organizer and player (apparently a habit, see the part about the non-match with Morphy).
The bit about the London Club tournament reinforces the point that Staunton was a divisive character (I imagine he'd love the modern saying "Lead, follow or get out of the way"), as well as presenting an opportunity for irony ("Anderssen won"). Philcha (talk) 23:00, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

I've replaced the list of missing players with "von der Lasa ... Saint-Amant ... Cochrane ...;at least 4 other well-known masters were unable to play". Philcha (talk) 21:32, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

I've produced a shorter version at User:Philcha/Sandbox#.22London_International_Tournament.2C_1851.22_for_Howard_Staunton. I think any further cuts would weaken or destroy points that I think should be made (listed above). What do you think? If we use the shorter version, we should first paste the longer one into London 1851 chess tournament but enclosed in HTML comments so that it is invisible in normal view; then we can integrate the extra material later. Philcha (talk) 08:57, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

I finally found time to have a look at your version, and it is a good effort of reduction indeed, but my thought was towards something more drastic. I have built another try at User:SyG/Sandbox, on the concept that everything that was not linked to Staunton could be deleted. In that sense I removed:

the participants from the lower tournament upgraded in the upper one
the mention that this tournament was cited by some as designing the World Champion
the donations from all over the globe (could fit into the section on Staunton's management skills)

I also did a bit of copyedit to reduce the length of some sentences. See what you think! SyG (talk) 10:55, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Hi, SyG, I glad to see you're still interested! Thanks for all the work you're putting into this.

The problem is that I think the items your proposal removes are important:

promoting the participants from the lower tournament could be evidence of clever planning. It would be WP:OR to say so, but I think readers should have the chance to make up their own minds.
the second tournament organised by the London Chess Club afterwards illustrates the political divsions in chess at the time, and I think readers will like the irony that Anderssen won again.
that this tournament was cited by some (1 in USA) as designating a World Champion shows how important an event it was.
the donations from all over the globe were a huge achievement considering how primitive communications and financial services were, and is the strongest sign of the enthusiasm for the project.

I've tried to keep these points but squeeze down the number of words a bit more - see my 2nd version at User:Philcha/Sandbox#.22London_International_Tournament.2C_1851.22_for_Howard_Staunton_-_version_2. I kept the names of Kennedy & the Liberty Weekly Tribune because reviewers like names and don't like "some commentators".

I see you've made other comments recently as well, and I;ll check them out. -- Philcha (talk) 12:14, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

All right, I do not want to be pushy on that one as deleting content is always a bit risky. So I will strike this out for the moment. Please choose whether you prefer the current version, your first new version for change or your second new version, and let's go with that one. Obviously, if in a latter review someone complains about the size of this section, I will stand with him ;-) SyG (talk) 17:30, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Staunton's life: Later life

"Done" items

Done "In the new book he devoted 168 pages..." : I do not find this precise number of 168 pages in the reference given (Murray), that only says "many games".

I know I read it. Probably I found a ref then preferred the Murray ref. Google gave lots of hits - reproductions of [15], which is already used, so I'll use that. Philcha (talk) 15:04, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Playing strength and style

"Done" items

Done On general grounds, I think the flow of the second paragraph could be improved. For the moment this sounds like a list of sentences, but there does not seem to be a link.

Another effect of the infrequency of top-class competition - only isolated scraps of evidence are available. Philcha (talk) 14:33, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Do you think it would help to remove "Before 1840 Staunton was still a relative beginner, and after 1851 his health was not good enough for serious competition"? Then: the 1st sentence is about Chessmetrics' assessment; the next 2 sentences are about the fact that Stainton gave odds to almost everyone and few players could compete with him at evens; the last is about the other possible "number one" in the late 1840s. Philcha (talk) 08:05, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

I like the changes you did. Now the second paragraph is about his position in the hierarchy, and the third one is about the players he could beat. Fine for me. SyG (talk) 14:29, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Done "a 3 game start" : this sentence seems grammatically weird, it seems a hyphen or a "s" is missing somewhere, but I may be wrong.

It's normal English in the UK. It might be interesting to see what North Americans think.

Perhaps "a 3-game start" would be clearer. Philcha (talk) 14:33, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Now says "3-game start"

Fine for me. SyG (talk) 13:38, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Done What are the "closed" and "heroic" schools the article is talking about ? There is no mention of a school in the reference given (ref#22 on Ludwig Erdmann Bledow). What is the source for this categorisation ?

ref#22 on Ludwig Erdmann Bledow. If you use the PDF search facility you'll find that it's the only instance of "closed" in the doc. Philcha (talk) 14:33, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the hint! This reference is a bit weak but good enough for me. SyG (talk) 13:52, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Done "he was noted for the accuracy and incisiveness of his combinations" : is there a source for that ? (besides Morphy saying he was a great player but not a genius)

Cited work and URL: "In a given position, where there is something to be done, no matter how recondite or difficult the idea, Mr. Staunton will detect it, and carry out the combination in as finished a style as any great player that ever lived, but he will have no agency in bringing about the position." Philcha (talk) 14:33, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes indeed, fine for me. SyG (talk) 13:57, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Done The section lacks a paragraph on Staunton's assessment from other great players. The first paragraph on Morphy is good, but there should be another paragraph on other players. For example, it seems Horowitz’s The World Chess Championship A History considers Staunton as a mere patzer. What do Kasparov, Fine, Réti and others think of Staunton's strength ?

I would not consider 20th-century American writers reliable on this. See Mark Weeks' http://mark_weeks.tripod.com/chw01d15/2000-23.txt Fine and the extract from Horowitz I've seen on the Web show a grudge against Staunton for not playing Morphy. For example Fine: chose for his "Staunton" section a game that IMO is worse than the ones I included in "Notable games"; has a whole section about the 1851 tournament but does not mention Staunton's role in making it happen.

I don't have Kasparov's My Great Predecessors, and don't even know if Kasparov wrote about Staunton. Can anyone help?

Did Réti write about Staunton?

BTW I didn't include Fischer's statement about Staunton being "one of the 10 best masters" because Fischer never grew out of being a provocative teenager, so it's hard to tell when he was serious and when he was playing games with journalists and readers. Philcha (talk) 14:33, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

I see Krakatoa has added a lot of material on the assessment, including comments from Kasparov and Fischer. Without judging if the structure is adequate now, at least the material is there, so this point is DONE. SyG (talk)

Done About Chessmetrics, if you look at this page it seems that Staunton gradually came back from #11 in June 1851 to #2 in April 1855. Not only is this interesting per se, but it also questions the fact that Staunton's health was then too weak to let him have a serious contest in 1853 (von der Lasa's opinion).

Statistical rating systems struggle before 1862, when tournaments started to become common. The infrequency of top-class contests before then makes ratings erratic. I'm happy to use them for general comments (e.g. "from X to Y his record was among the 5 best .."). I'd only start using them for more precise indications dform 1870 onwards.

On the other hand, von der Lasa could see what condition Staunton was in after 12 games against a relatively out-of-practice top-class player. Philcha (talk) 14:33, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, the reliability could be a problem, especially as we already had a hard time proving the reliability of ChessMetrics in the FA-review of First-move advantage in chess. So probably your circumspect usage is a good choice. SyG (talk) 20:54, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Chessmetrics is very WP:RS - see Moul and Nye's "Did the Soviets collude?". -- Philcha (talk) 13:41, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Done "The only players on record who were successful against Staunton at evens from 1840 to 1852 were" : here we list Anderssen, Saint-Amant and Williams, but what about Buckle ? Also, what source says these were the only ones ? If there is no source it sounds like original research.

The one referenced at the end of "... but lost the match because he had given Williams a 3 game start." I didn't want to ref the same source twice in 2 consecutive sentences.Philcha (talk) 14:33, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

So I understand it is in Spinrad's notes ? I have a hard time to find it, could you please indicate to me the exact sentence from Spinrad, so that I can look directly for it ? SyG (talk) 13:45, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Spinrad's notes search for "Staunton" to see the odds (or none) and results. Philcha (talk) 17:14, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Please correct me if I misunderstand, but it seems Spinrad does not say directly that "the only players on record who were successful..." but you deduced it from his records of the match. This could be seen as original research, as Wikipedia:No original research#Synthesis of published material which advances a position. Another concern is that Spinrad could have forgotten a match, in which case the conclusion is wrong. I would suggest an introduction like "Based on Spinrad's match records, the only players on record who were successful..." SyG (talk) 18:17, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

You're right again! It now says, "According to match records collected by Jermey P. Spinrad, the only players who were successful against Staunton at evens ..." -- Philcha (talk) 13:41, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Personality

"Done" items

Done Was Staunton's enmity with Walker caused by the behaviour of the London Chess Club for the 1851 tournament, or did it exist earlier ? Do we have some clues about what caused this enmity ?

No source that I've seen explains the enmity or gives a start date. I've found 1 sample of venomous writing by Staunton in 1841, but for all I know the enmity could have started in 1840, while Staunton was writing for the New Court Gazette - or perhaps earlier. Philcha (talk) 17:04, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

I've just found The Late Grand Chess Match, which: says the Staunton-Walker relationship fluctuated wildly; reproduces an article written by Walker and published 1844 in Staunton's Chess Player's Chronicle. The intro to this page says, "Although he was one of Staunton's earliest promoters, their relationship see-sawed between friendship and animosity, primarily due to Staunton's acerbic pen." The very objective tone of Walker's writing is notable.

But in 1844 Staunton threatened to sue Walker over the use of some of Staunton's games in Walker’s 1844 book Chess Studies! (Copyright on Chess Games) Philcha (talk) 09:40, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Chess Disputes by Spinrad gives more samples of extravagant invective from Staunton against a wide range of targets on a wide range of subjects.

I should revise Howard Staunton to say a little more about his dark side, although I'd want more direct evidence about Walker's being one of Staunton's earliest promoters - I have now done this, and look forward to your commments. Philcha (talk) 12:23, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

I think Howard Staunton should say no more than I have just proposed, as we seem now to have enough material for stand-alone articles on: Staunton's acerbic pen; chess disputes, including those between Staunton and Walker; chess copyright. Philcha (talk) 09:40, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

See note below on the belligerent tendencies of mid-19th chess writers. Philcha (talk) 14:31, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

That is a great expanding! Fine for me, the new version gives much more information to the wanabee chess specialist. SyG (talk) 14:39, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Influence on chess

"Done" items

Done "which proved that such events were possible, and produced a clear consensus" : I would delete the comma as it is the tournament that produced the clear consensus, not Staunton.

Without the comma, I think "which proved that such events were possible and produced a clear consensus on who was the world's strongest chess player" might be interpreted as "... and such events produced a clear consensus ..." It might be best to ask a few other people about this point, as English is not your first language while I naturally interpret the words according to their intended meaning, which is not necessarily their most obvious meaning. Philcha (talk) 17:04, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

OK, I trust you. SyG (talk) 13:32, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Talking about the Sicilian defense:

Done not only the Sicilian defense is the most successful reply to 1.e4, but it could also be the most frequent. If we had a source on that, it would add to Staunton's influence.

I'm not sure that logically it would add to Staunton's influence. Sicilian Defence says, "The opening fell out of favor in the latter part of the nineteenth century. This was due in part to the death of its two greatest exponents, Staunton and Anderssen, in 1874 and 1879 respectively ..." So to make a connection we'd need sources saying that the revival of the Sicilian in the early 20th century was largely due to later study of Staunton's games or writings. Philcha (talk) 17:04, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

So I understand the Sicilian was popular in Staunton's time thanks to his use of it, and then fell out of flavour once he died, until a revival much later. That in itself is interesting. SyG (talk) 13:13, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

I have just realised the section was rewritten, with that influence acknowledged. Fine for me. SyG (talk) 13:19, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

I've rewritten it again to emphasise how complex the question of S's influehnce is and to include some very relevant quotes. -- Philcha (talk) 13:41, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

did Staunton give reasons why he recommended the Sicilian defense, and if yes are they still valid ?

Staunton wrote, "... this is the best possible reply to 1. P-K4, 'as it renders the formation of a centre impracticable for White and prevents every attack." (The Chess-Player's Handbook. George Bell & Sons, p.371.) Is that still valid? I don't know as I'm hopelessly out of date on theory. Philcha (talk) 17:04, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Mmm, the reality is just the opposite: there is an incredibly various lot of attacks against the Sicilian (much more than against, say, the Caro-Kann). Maybe that means the Sicilian helped to avoid the type of attacks that was popular in those times (attack with pieces), while latter other types of attack were discovered. But here I am going into original research. SyG (talk) 13:13, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

I found and included a killer quote from Nunn. Thanks for "encouraging" me to look for it! -- Philcha (talk) 13:41, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

I would suggest to place the third paragraph before the second, as the third is more general and a good conclusion for the section.

On the other hand the 1st 2 paras are about his writings (1st on theory, 2nd on English chess) and the 3rd about the effects of the 1851 tournament. Philcha (talk) 17:04, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

I understand better now. Looking at the new version of this section, I would like to suggest to place the paragraphs about openings (Sicilian, English, Staunton's gambit) in the first place, so that the article goes from the specific to the general. The current first paragraph (about his writings) would then become the last one, in order to end with his obituary. SyG (talk) 13:23, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

I never wanted to include so much detail about S's openings as my impression was that they had little direction influence on 20th century play. The additional material IMO confirms that impression, e.g. de Firmian in MCO says the English "is really a twentieth century invention". Ponziani's is a museum piece; I don't know if anyone uses the Staunton Gambit against the Dutch. S's comments about the Sicilian do not apply to modern play.

My own inclination would be to move the last paragraph (1851 tournament) to 2nd place, so paras 1 and 2 cover his genuine historical impact. Then the rest deals with his less enduring contributions to theory and to chess playing style. Philcha (talk) 17:28, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Now that there's so much about the influence (or not) of his openings and style, I prefer to leave the 1851 tournament as the last para. -- Philcha (talk) 13:41, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Notable games

"Done" items

Done This section should use the "cite web" template.

I also don't remember seeing this done before, e.g. Alexander Alekhine is now a GA but uses the basic web link format. In fact using the "cite web" template might turn out badly, because there's a risk that the template or some bot will complaining about the lack of accessdates, and I'm not sure that we want "Retrieved on ..." messages in game titles. Philcha (talk) 17:04, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, you have convinced me using the "cite web" template in this section would not necessarily improve the article. SyG (talk) 12:50, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Done No game against Anderssen ?

Fair point. I can't remember why I didn't include any - maybe it was late at night! Chessgames.com gives 2 wins and 4 losses against Anderssen. Both of Staunton's wins look to me like Staunton judging that Anderssen's attack was nothing to worry about, and therefore quietly going about his own business - rather similar to the Cochrane games. Adolf Anderssen vs Howard Staunton London 1857 is interesting because Staunton uses the Hedgehog Defence. Of the 2 wins, personally I think the 2nd is more interesting, because of the Hedgehog and because, although it's 54 moves, there's more action than in his 1851 win. What do you think? Philcha (talk) 17:04, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

I've added Adolf Anderssen vs Howard Staunton London 1857. I don't understand why Anderssen committed suicide in the 1851 game. Philcha (talk) 11:34, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

This could sound pointy, but I would give a quote for each game to explain this game has been considered as notable in a given book. That way the notability of these games is proved.

I don't remember seeing this done before, e.g. Alexander Alekhine is now a GA but does not have such citations. And to be honest, I am not in a position to provide them. I simply went through chessgames.com looking for games that were fairly interesting, against strong players, and played at evens (that last criterion is quite narrow, as Staunotn gave odds to several masters). Philcha (talk) 17:04, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Your method of selection, or even the fact that you have selected the games yourself, sounds extremely close to WP:OR to me, even if I fully agree most chess articles do that. SyG (talk) 12:39, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't know of any "Staunton's Best Games" collection. Staunton used his own games in his articles, but quite possibly so many that we would still have a problem about which to select. [16] lists some "Notable games" (selected by whom?), which includes some but not all of the games I selected - but I find some of chessgames.com's selections less impressive. Chessgames is the only relevant hit I got by googling for "staunton best notable games". Philcha (talk) 17:56, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

The section only gives brilliancies (and only victories) from Staunton, that does not seem neutral.

AFAIK that's normal practice. I know of no other Wikipedia chessplayer articles that give any of the subjects' losses, or even their most heroic draws. I'm not sure I'd describe the Staunton games as "brilliancies". In fact based on the games I've seen at chessgames.com I'd describe Staunton as an "efficient" player rather than a "brilliant" one - I've seen nothing to compare with the most spectacular games of Anderssen, Morphy, Steinitz, Lasker, Alekhine, Euwe, Botvinnik (I'm thinking of Botvinnik vs Portisch 1968) or dozens of others. Philcha (talk) 17:04, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

As you point out, my word "brilliancies" is not the right one. I still think giving only victories from Staunton does not reflect the definition of "Notable games". Some games can be notable even if they resulted in a draw or a loss. I agree with you this is the same in all other chessplayer articles, and that may explain why there is zero such articles that have gone to FA-class. SyG (talk) 13:06, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

The trouble is that adding historically notable losses or draws would make some "Notable games" sections very bulky. For example we would have to include: under Alekhine a lot of Euwe's wins from the 2nd half of the 1935 match, when Euwe came from behind to win the title; under Euwe a lot of Alekhine's wins from the 2nd half of the 1937 match, when the balance of the match swung completely in Alekhine favour; under Capablanca at least half his 6 losses to Alekhine in 1927; and god help us when we get to Botvinnik, who lost world championship matches against Smyslov, Tal and Petrosian!

I think if a GA / FA reviewer complains about about the inclusion only of wins, we can say it's normal practice and point to books organised as a series of articles about players, e.g. Fine's World's Great Chess Games. Philcha (talk) 17:56, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Thinking of it again, I think the whole section is just original research, both in the choice of the games and in the commentaries provided. The only way I see to avoid original research in a section like this is to list only games that have been selected as notable by authoritative sources (e.g. in books), and give only descriptions coming from those authoritative sources. Probably the current state of the article would go through a GA-review without too much trouble, but that is not suitable for a FA-class. SyG (talk) 12:47, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

See my comments above. If there are no suitable books, we ask the hypothetical FA reviewer whether he / she would prefer the "Notable games" section to be deleted. N.B. in this context Fine's World's Great Chess Games is IMO not a suitable source, as he selects only 1 of Staunton's games then mocks the play of both sides - Fine shares the American prejudice against S because of the Morphy affair. Philcha (talk) 17:56, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Tournament results

"Done" items

Done There is an inconsistency for the 1851 tournament: it is written "best-of-3" and then "best-of 8". I suppose a hyphen is missing in the second one ?!

Done for the 1858 tournament, I guess the place cannot be given because it is a knockout. Then what would you think of giving Staunton's place with something like "5-12" ?

I'm a tennis fan, so I'm familiar with knock-out competitions, but I wouldn't understand something like "5-12" without having this discussion (in a tennis context I'd expect e.g. "lost in the semi-final"). Philcha (talk) 00:09, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

My concern was that "eliminated in the second round" does not say if it is a good or a bad performance (there could be only two rounds). But I have not find a better way of writing this, so let's consider it as done. SyG (talk) 12:36, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Match results

"Done" items

Done In the 2nd column of scores, + shows games Staunton won, - shows his loss, = shows draws. : I would replace by In the second column of scores, "+" shows games Staunton won, "-" shows his losses, "=" shows draws.

"loss" is a typo, which I've fixed.

Re "+", etc., I think Wikiproject Chess needs to decide on 1 standard format for this. For example Alexander Alekhine, which was the first article to use result tables, has simply + etc. Philcha (talk) 00:09, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

I am a bit wary of giving all references at the beginning, because then the reader does not know which statement is backed by exactly which reference. (it also creates the life hard for the reviewer, but that is secondary). I would personnally prefer that each line is backed by a reference, even if it is very heavy practice, and heavy style.

It wasn't a problem in the Alexander Alekhine GA review. I think the problem with making your suggestion a general policy is that editors would avoid creating result tables, and would just list the results that the first convenient source considered notable. For example the only tournaments Fine ("World's Great Chess Games") mentions for Alekhine are Hamburg 1910, St Petersburg 1914, New York 1927, San Remo 1930 and Bled 1931 - Fine omits AVRO 1938. Philcha (talk) 00:09, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Probably it is not critical for GA-class, and we are still far away from the FA review, so I will strike that out for the moment. SyG (talk) 12:29, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Wow, you're working your socks off! What's the French for that? Thanks for giving it so much care and attention. Philcha (talk) 23:00, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, I usually have much less to say. But also my reviews tend to be longer when the article is already grown up. SyG (talk) 12:47, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Review by Brittle heaven: conclusion was "Oppose to A-class, support nomination for GA-class"

Comment I agree with SyG; without pre-judging the outcome of any review, the article is already impressive and his extensive comments will certainly help. And while there may be more material that could be included in the article, the present version seems to cover all of the important points very competently. Consequently, I will restrict my comments to just a few suggestions:-

The Staunton Memorial Tournament, held every year in London since 2003 appears to have some permanency these days and I think deserves a mention here. For instance, the forthcoming 2008 (6th) edition is being described as probably the strongest tournament held in the UK since London 1986. Additionally, the event organisers are claiming a chess record this year, with IM Bob Wade set to become the oldest player to take part in a grandmaster tournament. Of course the tournament (also doubling as an England vs Netherlands match) has Ray Keene as its main organiser and evolved from the work of the Staunton Society, created in 1993 (also worth more prominence in the article?). Not quite sure where this material would best fit - a new Legacy section/sub-section?

I think your're right, a new Legacy section/sub-section is the right place. What's the best WP:RS for the tournament as a regular event (date 1st held, etc.) and for "strongest tournament held in the UK since London 1986"?

That apart, how much is there to say about the Staunton Society? Would an item in "External links" be sufficient? Philcha (talk) 23:26, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

The Society, Memorial (each separate edition) and Simpson's Divan all have fairly comprehensive links from [17], so I don't think other sources are generally necessary. I agree, there's not much more can be said about the Society, other than dates, founder members etc. The previously neglected grave is already in the article and I recall this was the driving force behind the Society's formation, so that point could also be made.

The claims for the 6th edition are given at [18] - which seems a good enough source. Nice article here also on the first edition - [19].

Many thanks! Done, hope you like the result. NB the book sales web sites date the Fontana edition 1975, so I've used 1975.

BTW it's a separate top-level section as I didn't think it fitted naturally under the title "Assessment". The older common section title "Legacy" would have accomodated it more naturally, bu not some of the comments on e.g. playing style and personality. If anyone can think of a major section heading that fits all these types of content, go for it. Philcha (talk) 22:43, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

One point made in the Keene Spectator article (and in other texts - e.g. The Kings of Chess - Hartston, Grandmasters of Chess - Schonberg) is Staunton's frequent attendance of The Divan in The Strand (often referred to as Simpson's Divan, after the head waiter who later became the proprietor), nowadays Simpson's in the Strand. Indeed, Schonberg goes as far as to say that during the fifteen years that Staunton was the best player in Europe, he could mostly be found at the Divan. Although he was also known to frequent the St. George Chess Club in Cavendish Square, I think the point about Simpson's would be well made, particularly as it emphasises the long association between Staunton and the Divan (i.e. it is the venue for the annual Memorial Tournament and I believe has a display case containing Staunton memorabilia).

Re the ref, is that Grandmasters of Chess by Harold Schonberg, (Lippincott, 1973. ISBN 0-397-01004-4)? Can you provide a page number (see comments above)?

Mine is the Fontana (1974) edition of Schonberg's Grandmasters of Chess. (Apologies, can't find an ISBN no. but pp.37-46 'The Age of Staunton' are the relevant pages).

"fifteen years that Staunton was the best player in Europe"? The evidence I've seen supports no more than 8. If Schonberg says 15, he's wrong: from 1851 Anderssen reigned, apart from the short reign of Morphy; and 1851 minus 15 = 1836, when Staunton moved to London and said the good players could give him rook odds.

Schonberg's 'fifteen years' confused me too. It seems to be based on the popular view of the time. As Hartston writes (p.35 The King Of Chess, Pavilion 1986). … "By the end of 1853, Staunton had in effect retired completely from match and tournament play, but it was only his evasion of a match with the young American, Paul Morphy, in 1858, which finally brought home to the majority of the chess-playing public that Staunton was no longer King." In fairness, Schonberg says about fifteen years, so he is also allowing for some small unspecified period during which Anderssen could have been considered the better player.

Re the Divan, at present (without seeing how it would look on the page), I'm inclined to build that into the bit about the Staunton Memorial Tournament. What do you think?

Re his freqenting mainly the Divan, during which period? The sources make it clear that the management of the 1851 tournament was dominated by the St. George Chess Club, and that this was why the London Chess Club played no part and organised a rival tournament. Philcha (talk) 23:48, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Neither Schonberg nor Hartston amplifies on periods that he favoured one club over the other. Schonberg says mostly the Divan (p.37). Hartston says he was strongly linked with both clubs (p.33). Yes, I agree, including mention of The Divan in association with the Memorial seems a reasonable point to insert it.

I've included the Divan "which Staunton regularly visited in the 19th century to play and discuss chess", staying neutral about which was his favourite haunt.

I think Schonberg's "fifteen years" part is a mess and best avoided. But thanks for all the info. Philcha (talk) 22:43, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Regarding the worth (or academic opinion) of Staunton's Shakespearean works, I would agree that a modern perspective/critique may be useful. However, I think it may be equally valuable to give a quote from the 1909 Dictionary of National Biography … for example "Staunton's text was based on a collation of the folio editions with the early quartos and with the texts of modern editors from Rowe [1709] to Dyce [1857]. The conjectural emendations, which were usually sensible, were kept within narrow limits, and showed much familiarity with Elizabethan literature and modes of speech. The general notes combined common-sense with exhaustive research" (DNB, 1004)". Reference - [20]

The ref used ([21]) quotes the DNB, though it does not say which edition. Philcha (talk) 22:43, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Whether it is encyclopedic or not is perhaps debatable, but other authors give the 'poignant' observation that Staunton died on Morphy's birthday. Worth including?

I'd think not. If there's a 50% chance that at least 2 in a randomly selected group of 25 people share a birthday, I imagine the same works for deaths. Philcha (talk) 23:26, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Not sure I completely follow that one. Isn't the probability of dying on someone's birthday 1 in 365 or thereabouts? Statistics were never my strong point though!

Never did the maths myself, but the point about "50% chance that at least 2 ..." is: it's a group of 25; you don't specify the date, it's enough that 2 or more were born on the same day. Relating that to the real subject, I'm a suggesting that if you picked 25 random Wikipedia bios of dead people, there's a 50% chance that 2 died on the same day, i.e. "died on the same day (of different years)" is not that big a deal. Philcha (talk) 22:20, 25 June 2008 (UTC) Philcha (talk) 22:43, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

See birthday paradox; if you have 23 or more randomly seleted people, the odds are that two will have the same birthday exceeds 50%. At 30 and above, the likelihood goes up quickly. Krakatoa (talk) 09:59, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

DoneFinally, there is a typo in reference 9. - £7,7000?

Just checked it, seems OK. Advances in technology and business practices have raised productivity enormously in the last 150 years, so real incomes have outstripped real prices by a factor of almost 10. Philcha (talk) 23:26, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Regarding the typo in ref. 9, I was simply querying whether there was one zero too many or the comma was in the wrong place! - £7,7000 ;-)

you're right, I need to have my eyes tested. Should be 7,700 - fixed. Thanks for sparing mny blushes! Philcha (talk) 22:20, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Incidentally, one further point in passing - a useful supplementary quote for the 'Playing Strength and Style' section is Bobby Fischer's description of Staunton as "The most profound opening analyst of all time" (TKOC p.33 - also given by Schonberg). Brittle heaven (talk) 14:26, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

As I said above, I've omitted Fischer's comments about Staunton because Fischer never grew out of being a provocative teenager, so it's hard to tell when he was serious and when he was playing games with journalists and readers. In this case Fischer could not have foreseen Kasparov at the time but would have known about Botvinnik, Bronstein and other top Soviet analysts. Philcha (talk) 22:43, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Regards, Brittle heaven (talk) 15:11, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! Philcha (talk) 23:26, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Oppose 'A' Class I believe that the article in it's present form achieves 'GA' Class, but not 'A' Class. In it's scope, content and presentation it very much resembles the Alexander Alekhine article, which is also of 'GA' status. There are probably two distinct areas that I think currently hold it back from a more lofty classification;

Staunton's strength. This may be controversial, but I'm really not happy with the way the article handles his chess playing stature; re-checking every competent source in my own library (Golombek, Sunnucks, Hooper & Whyld, Schonberg, Brace and Hartston) each and every one contends that Staunton was (or is generally regarded) the strongest player of his time. I have not read Keene and Coles' lengthy biography Howard Staunton:The English World Chess Champion, but from the title, I'm guessing it arrives at much the same conclusion. So why does this article undersell him as " … probably one of the world's two or three strongest players …" and " … the strongest British player with the possible exception of Buckle …"? Later, there is some (begrudging?) concession that some people hail Staunton as the strongest player, but are we really saying that the Spinrad article takes preference over all the other collected opinions? As much as I think that Spinrad's opinions are well researched and worthy of reproduction, they are still just opinions and I would personally reverse the emphasis in the lead (and elsewhere), giving what I believe to be the overwhelmingly popular view, much greater prominence.

This arose from two main factors: some of S's contemporaries thought Buckle and von der Lasa were about as strong; I changed it from one of the best two ..." (von der Lasa the opther) to accommodate the views of another reviewer. Since Buckle and von der Lasa did not participate in prolonged contests it's impossible ot resolve objectively. Philcha (talk) 08:50, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

I am aware that some of his contemporaries rate Buckle and von der Lasa as being of comparable strength and I'm very comfortable with it in the article, but as you state yourself, it's an impossible conflict to resolve objectively and so we'll never know the truth. Consequently, I am contending that the collective view of expert writers has to be the prominent lead, or the article could be seen as promoting a minority POV.

There is no single collective view, because Staunton was so controversial. I don't particularly want to see the article become a shouting match between: in the blue corner, Morphy, Fischer, Kasparov and Hartston (who is pro-Staunton on play but anti- on personality); in the red corner, Fine, Horowitz and Reinfeld.

The sad truth is that many writers who are normally WP:RS cease to be reliable because of the strong feelings aroused by the Staunton-Morphy affair - Fine, Horowitz and Reinfeld are the most striking cases. OTOH I'd take Morphy's word because he was complimentary despite the 1858 dispute, and Kasparov's because he does not belong to one of the nationalities involved, learned objectivity from Botvinnik and did a lot of his own research to find old ideas he could re-use (like the Scotch Game).

The biggest problem of all is that most modern assessments do not explain themselves, cite sources, etc. That leaves open a worry that we might wind up quoting as a collective view opinions that can be traced back to just one source — as has happened with the history of the Staunton-Morphy controversy. -- Philcha (talk) 14:13, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

This is too frustrating and I've no idea where it's going. I don't think for one minute that the collective view might all be traced back to one source; I think the various authors I mention above have more credibility than that. But rather than repeat my suggested approach 'ad nauseam', I'll now take a back seat on this one and wish you good luck ... and stop expanding the intro ... it's already too big! Brittle heaven (talk) 15:24, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Style. While some style issues can be tolerated within an 'A' Class article I feel that this one is too far away from a good style to be deemed satisfactory.

First take a look at the article Petrarch (a MOS good example) and see how the lead section very briefly outlines the person's basic details, what they did and why they are significant - it is brief and succinct. Now contrast the Staunton lead - in comparison it rambles on and on, gives too much detail by trying to encompass every facet of his life with all of the relevant dates and then delves into his personality traits just for good measure. It is almost as long as some of the articles we would rate as 'B' Class and rather than pulling me into the article proper, it actually made me feel that I'd got enough of an overview that I didn't need to read on.

AFAIK leads are supposed to summarise the article. Staunton had a lot of irons in the fire and was controversial in his own time and now. Evolution is a FA and has a considerably longer lead. If you can spare the time time I'd be happy to discuss with you how the lead might be slimmed down without omitting important points.

I'm not sure you can compare an article like 'Evolution' with a bio, but you make a fair point. It is meant to be an overview, a stand-alone summary and this may well mean it has to be longer than the MOS example that I picked out. To take more relevant examples, I scoured the bios of other colourful, high achieving British characters and would say that some of the best written leads range from Oscar Wilde at the shorter end of the scale, to Winston Churchill at the longer, with say, George Best and Geoffrey Boycott somewhere in between. Does this help? It's not such a big deal, just taking out some of the detail "without omitting important points", as you rightly say. I'll be glad to help, if needed.

I like the fact that Winston Churchill's lead is so true blue! Oscar Wilde is not such a good example, as the article has problems at the moment.

I'll keep looking for ways to slim down the lead without sacrificing important points, and help with that would be welcome. -- Philcha (talk) 14:13, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

In the "Influence on chess" section, almost every paragraph starts with the word Staunton - this really doesn't read well, giving the section all the grammatical character of a 'list' format … Staunton did this, Staunton did that, Staunton did the other … moreover, I found the constant repeating of the subject's name a bit tiresome throughout the article.

I'll have look at that once the content is stable. Philcha (talk) 08:50, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

The problem is that in most of the paragraphs Staunton is the subject of the 1st sentence but some aspect of modern play is the subject of the last, so "He" is not usually a good beginning for the next para. -- Philcha (talk) 14:13, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

For most of the later sections, there seems to be an increasing reliance on piling up facts and quotes from various experts and commentators (a symptom of edit war skirmishes?). Whatever the reason, this can leave the reader a bit punch-drunk and stops the article from flowing—some prose to summarise and fill out the less contentious statements would make it a less chore-like read. Conversely, the more selective use of quotes and references for only the most controversial issues would, I think, make for a more pleasurable reading experience. With Staunton's high level of achievement in so many fields, not to mention his complex and colourful personality, I feel that the aim should be to give even the non-chess playing reader an interesting and engaging article. In my opinion, it's not quite there yet.

Your comment about "edit war" seems appropriate. You might like to compare the version of 11:55, 27 June 2008 (18:44, 28 June 2008) with the version of 08:48, 29 June 2008 and check the diffs - and then a discussion further down this page. Philcha (talk) 08:50, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree that some earlier versions were better to read and I think we need to get the prose and flow back there somehow.

What do you think of the idea of creating a separate article "The Staunton-Morphy controversy", as I have suggested elsewhere? I think Howard Staunton references just about enough material to justify a separate article, which might then, if we're lucky with sources, develop into a solid blow-by-blow account. That would allow Howard Staunton to summarise the more detailed article. I'd still want the summary to be the first sub-section of "Assessment", in order to clear the air. -- Philcha (talk) 14:13, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Finally, I hope that this doesn't seem too harsh. I still consider that the article is very good and well researched—a credit to the hard work that has gone into it. Brittle heaven (talk) 23:02, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your helpful comments. Philcha (talk) 08:50, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Review by Krakatoa: conclusion was "Oppose to A-class"

Comment A few remarks: the article claims that The Chess-Player's Handbook did not go out of print until 1993. That seems improbable. I have three copies of the book, which were printed in 1888, 1890, and 1893; one does not see versions for sale on eBay that were printed later than the 1890s, or maybe the 1900s. There might be a Hardinge Simpole version of the book or something many decades after that, but I would be surprised if the book were continuously in print until 1993.

I've changed the text to "which was still in print in 1993", which avoids any implication that it was continuously in print. Thanks!

The new wording also avoids the issue of when it was most recently in print. I've seen book sales sites that give e.g. 2003, but I'm not sure how reliable they are. If you see a later date than 1993 that you consider reliable, please edit it in. Philcha (talk) 10:53, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Is the Internet user "batgirl" really an authoritative source?!

For which points? In some cases she quotes chunks of articles, and a few cases whole articles (Murray in BCM; Walker in Chess Player's Chronicle 1844). If there were a conflict between batgirl and Winter's Chess Notes I'd go with Winter, but otherwise batgirl is the same kind of source. Philcha (talk) 10:53, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

I earlier added Fischer's assessment of Staunton as being in the top 10 players of all time, and his explanation thereof, from the January-February 1964 issue of Chessworld magazine. I see from the above comments that Philcha deleted that, apparently considering batgirl a more authoritative source than Fischer, generally agreed to be one of the two strongest players in the history of the world. The mind boggles. Krakatoa (talk) 09:49, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

I've read lots of Fischer interviews, mainly in Chess, and know his love of being provocative. American writers of the time show a strong prejudice against Staunton (Mark Weeks said this; Fine and Horowitz are good examples), and it would be quite in character for Fischer to tweak their tails. AFAIK "one of the ten greatest players in history" put Fischer in a minority of one when he said it, and more recent research (cited) suggests von der Lasa was roughly on a par with Staunton. "Playing over his games, I discover that they are completely modern" needs a lot of explaining. "most profound opening analyst of all time" begs comparisons with Alekhine (tons of Alekhine variations) and Botvinnik (who created whole systems, not just variations), to name only 2. If Fischer had said e.g. "most innovative" or "most original", I think that would have been be consistent with the facts as presented by other sources. One of the difficulties with Fischer is that his command of English was below par because of his attitude to schools ("I don't take lessons from weakies" in an interview in Chess while he was still a teenager). Did the interviewer ask Fischer to explain these comments any further? If so, that might help to clarify the issue.

You are free to think Fischer's assessment is superficial, provocative, or whatever you want. He is nonetheless a chess player and writer of enormous stature. The article is titled "The Ten Greatest Masters in History" by Bobby Fischer, as told to Neil Hickey." The section on each of the 10 players has 4-6 paragraphs explaining Fischer's reasons for the inclusion of each. It is not an interview. Krakatoa (talk) 13:03, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

For the sake of completeness, here is the whole Fischer piece on Staunton. It appears to be written in literate English:

Staunton was the most profound opening analyst of all time. He was more theorist than player, but nonetheless he was the strongest player of his day. Playing over his games, I discover that they were completely modern; where Morphy and Steinitz rejected the fianchetto, he embraced it. In addition, he understood all of the positional concepts which modern players hold so dear, and thus--with Steinitz--must be considered the first modern player.

Besides his standardization of the chess set, Staunton's fame rests with the four important textbooks he wrote: the "Handbook," "The Chess Companion," "The Chess Tournament," and "Chess Praxis."

Staunton appears to have been afraid to meet Paul Morphy, and I think his fears were well-founded. Morphy would have beaten him, but it wouldn't have been the one-sided encounter that many writers now think it would. It would have been a great struggle.

Staunton often didn't beat weaker players as easily as his contemporaries did, and very few of his games show brilliancies. But when Staunton fianchettoed his King Bishop on the Black side of a closed Sicilian Defense his opponents had no conception of what he was doing and consequently, were generally wiped off the board. These were not just "fish" but the best players of his day. Staunton's right to be on a list of the ten greatest players of all time is firmly founded in the profundity of his insights, especially in the opening, and the great wealth of book knowledge that was his. Krakatoa (talk) 13:15, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

It would help if you identified the batgirl ref that bothers you. If it's the English Opening, I've added Murray. If it's Morphy's assessment, the ref is to the book, and I added the url as a help to readers, most of whom won't have the book. Philcha (talk) 10:53, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

The paragraph that I wrote about Fischer's assessment read as follows:

Future World Champion Bobby Fischer, today generally regarded as one of the greatest players in history, wrote in a 1964 article that Staunton was one of the ten greatest players in history. Fischer explained, "Staunton was the most profound opening analyst of all time. He was more theorist than player, but nonetheless he was the strongest player of his day. Playing over his games, I discover that they are completely modern; where Morphy and Steinitz rejected the fianchetto, Staunton embraced it. In addition, he understood all of the positional concepts which modern players hold dear, and thus-with Steinitz-must be considered the first modern player."^[1]

It seems to me that the manner in which Philcha deleted this paragraph was rather irregular, to say the least. The paragraph was last included in this version. Philcha deleted it (May 23, 2008 20:02), "explaining" in the revision history "(intro (almost done))". That is not enlightening, nor did Philcha put anything on the article's talk page about this omission.

I am going to re-add this paragraph to the article. The Fischer article was published in 1964, by which time Fischer was already one of the strongest players of all time and a serious candidate for the world championship. Although Philcha does not think much of the article, it is significant enough to have been cited by Kasparov, for example. My Great Predecessors, Part IV, p. 87 (quoting Fischer's "splendid tribute" to Reshevsky in that article). Krakatoa (talk) 10:51, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Which parts of the Fischer interview did Kasparov cite in MGP? Did any of them mention Staunton and, if so, what did Kasparov say about this? Philcha (talk) 11:33, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

I have not gone through all five volumes (about 2200 pages) of MGP to find every mention of Fischer's article. As I said above, the part I previously cited was about Reshevsky. In MGP, Part I, p. 21, Kasparov after discussing Staunton's match victories over Horwitz and Harrwitz, wrote "Despite this, Staunton was not properly recognised by either his contemporaries, or chess historians. But in 1964 Fischer included him in his ten best masters of all time, declaring: [K now quotes verbatim the exact language I quoted about Staunton from Fischer's article]". Krakatoa (talk) 13:01, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification. I still think Fischer's choice of words was over-the-top, but if Kasparov cites it with approval, ... Philcha (talk) 14:16, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

I still find "one of the ten greatest players in history" hard to swallow, despite having edited into Howard Staunton a lot more positive content than it previously had. How about:

Future World Champion Bobby Fischer, today generally regarded as one of the greatest players in history, wrote in a 1964 article ~~that Staunton was one of the ten greatest players in history. Fischer explained~~, "Staunton was the most profound opening analyst of all time ...." Philcha (talk) 14:31, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Fischer's statement struck me as surprising when I first read it, and it still strikes me as a bit surprising. However, my opinion, and yours, don't matter. See WP:NPOV, WP:RS. Fischer is commonly regarded today as one of the very greatest players in history. See, e.g., Hans Böhm and Kees Jongkind, Bobby Fischer: The Wandering King, p. 134 (IM Böhm, concluding his discussion of "Who is the Best Chess Player of all Time"?: "I am asking you to consider placing, in any case, Fischer and Kasparov in the top three".). Fischer is also commonly regarded as one of the greatest chess writers in history; recall the widespread praise for My 60 Memorable Games. This great chess player and writer wrote in 1964 that Staunton was (as of 1964) one of the 10 greatest players of all time. Kasparov, also commonly regarded as one of the very greatest chess players and writers in history, noted that Fischer had pronounced Staunton one of the 10 best and quoted the same explanatory paragraph I quoted. He didn't say "Fischer was nuts", "Fischer was just saying this to be provocative", "My judgment is to the contrary", or anything else derogatory about Fischer's opinion. Rather, Kasparov wrote, immediately before citing Fischer's opinion, that "Staunton was not properly recognised by either his contemporaries, or chess historians". In light of all that, I think the paragraph should stay as I wrote it. Whether you or I think it's over the top is irrelevant: unlike Fischer and Kasparov, we have no stature as chess authorities. Krakatoa (talk) 20:40, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Staunton's combative writing

Winter (CN 4276: Rude and CN 4337: A chess Watergate) provides examples of acerbic comments by other writers of the time. Should I add a note about this to the comments about Staunton's chess writing style, e.g. "However his contemporaries could also be quite belligerent" (with these citations)? Philcha (talk) 11:20, 27 June 2008 (UTC) Another of Winter's articles provides many examples of Attacks on Howard Staunton. Philcha (talk) 23:58, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Influence on chess

Krakatoa edited in the history of the Sicilian from Staunton's time to about 1900, which is fine. But after pointing out that the Sicilian almost vanished after the deaths of Staunton and Anderssen, the current version of the paragraph abruptly ends with "The Sicilian is today the most popular chess opening and the most successful response to 1.e4". Right now I can see 3 ways to deal with this:

Explain how the Sicilian rose from the grave. It would be particularly nice if anyone could show that study of Staunton's games or writings had anything to do with this.
Delete the final sentence.
Convert the final sentence to a subordinate clause of the 1st, which would then read, "Staunton was one of the earliest champions of the Sicilian Defense, which is now the most popular chess opening and the most successful response to 1.e4.^[2]

Any suggestions? Philcha (talk) 11:47, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Done I think your idea "Convert the final sentence to a subordinate clause of the 1st" is the best, and will rewrite it that way. I think the Sicilian Defence article suggests, correctly, that the Sicilian's renascence in the 20th century was more the result of the influence of its many 20th-century exponents than people rediscovering Staunton's ideas or anything like that. Krakatoa (talk) 13:01, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Fine, that would be my preference too - I included option "Delete the final sentence" only for completeness. Thanks. Philcha (talk) 14:16, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Krakatoa has done a lot more than clarify the bit about the Sicilian. He has edited into the "Influence" section every attack on Staunton he could find. The placement of this content in the "Influence section evades the counter-balancing points made in the "Assessment" section, and is irrelevant to the question of Staunton's influence. No doubt Krakatoa will argue that sources are sources. OK, try Site review - Online book catalogs (III; Howard Staunton) by Mark Weeks. Philcha (talk) 20:03, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

I can find a lot more attacks on Staunton if I want to, believe me. The received wisdom during my chess childhood (the 70s) was that he was the scum of the earth, and there's no shortage of published sources saying that. What I put in the article only scratches the surface. I really have no ax to grind on Staunton. As you'll recall, I put in - and you deleted without mentioning that you were doing so - Fischer's laudatory discussion of Steinitz (top ten in history, games are thoroughly modern, he and Steinitz founded modern chess, yada yada yada). I've now reinserted both that discussion and Kasparov's praise of Staunton. Moreover, even some of the sources critical of Staunton I've mentioned are not outright condemnations, e.g. Hartston and Saidy/Lessing. I don't think one can have a balanced article about Staunton without acknowledging that there are lots of significant chess writers who despise the man. Krakatoa (talk) 20:56, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

On looking at the whole "Influence on Chess" section, it seems to me that the last two paragraphs, which I wrote, kind of overwhelm the rest of the section, since they're longer than the other paragraphs and they conclude the section. If you want to move some of that stuff to the "Personality" section, or put more of the detail in references rather than text, or put it in a separate section or subsection, that's OK with me. Krakatoa (talk) 22:08, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

I suggest you should clear it up in a way that does not mess up the structure of the article.

In any kind of serious controversy your policy that a source is a source is a source breaks down. I have some idea of where the most hostile accounts originate from. See also Taylor Kingston's comment "Probably the biggest surprise was learning how carelessly the game’s history was handled by the writers I took as gospel in my youth, particularly Reinfeld, Horowitz, Fine and Evans; also Chernev to a lesser extent. The work of serious, more scholarly historians: Edward Winter, Jeremy Gaige, Ken Whyld, Bernard Cafferty and a few others, came as a revelation, inspiring me to be more careful and discerning in my own work." That's consistent with Mark Weeks' comments that I referred to above. Philcha (talk) 23:36, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

I have moved the two paragraphs about Staunton (condemnatory and laudatory, respectively) to a separate section entitled "Modern Reputation."

I never said "a source is a source is a source"; that is your invention. I have said that I respect Fischer's opinion of Staunton's stature, and that Fischer is a chess player and writer of great stature. I also said that the same is true of Kasparov (who quoted the same paragraph Fischer wrote about Staunton that I had quoted in the article, and that you deleted without comment or discussion). You apparently do not dispute my view of Kasparov's stature, at least. Please don't make up things that I never said. Krakatoa (talk) 08:09, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Lead

I don't understand the first sentence in the article: "Howard Staunton (April 1810 – June 22, 1874) was an English chess master who was probably one of the world's two strongest players from 1843 to 1851." Why "probably one of the world's two strongest?" Maybe I am missing something, but as far as I can see this doesn't tie into anything in the rest of the article. The article says, for example, that some people (mostly Englishmen) hailed S as world champion; other Europeans were less enthusiastic about that idea; even some Englishmen thought S wasn't the best, preferring someone else, notably Buckle or von der Lasa (note that if both Buckle and von der Lasa were better than S, than would make him No. 3); Chessmetrics ranks S No. 1 in the world 1843-49 (I'm leaving off the months) and in the top 10 from 1851 on (Chessmetrics apparently doesn't address 1849-51? This also wouldn't support saying "top 2 from 1843-51", seemingly.); and Elo said that except for Morphy (whose playing career began well after 1851) S scored best against other top players in 1846-62 (this would support "No. 1 in 1843-51", not "top 2"). Someone should either explain why this sentence is consistent with the rest of the article, or revise it. Krakatoa (talk) 03:07, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

First, we're talking about the lead, which is supposed to be a summary, so it can't cover all the details.

Done Re "how many world number ones", it's genuinely difficult because both Buckle and von der Lasa played only a few games at a time, and neither played a full-scale match - Buckle because of his frail health (IIRC Bird's Reminiscences mentions that somewhere in its vast ramblings), von der Lasa because of his commitments as a civil servant / diplomat. I would not mind if the lead said "one of the world's two or three strongest players from 1843 to 1851". That would entail mentioning Buckle in the main text, but it should include the fact the Buckle avoided serious matches because of his health.

Until the 1860s formal chess competitions were very rare, and it was hard to distinguish between odds/even games and between informal games played close together and serious matches (Staunton-Cochrane is a good example). These factors make statistical systems only rough guides for this period - for example Chessmetric's ranking charts show a lot of volatility. I think it's important to avoid spurious precision. That's why the lead says "probably one of ...".

I don't have the Elo rankings, but am surprised it says S scored best against other top players in 1846-62, as every other indication is that from 1851 onwards Anderssen was stronger than Staunton, and Morphy was in a class of his own. Can you explain a little about how Elo did his calculations for this period? I'd like to avoid the risk of relying on what might be a statistical artifact - for example, if Elo found so few serious games in the mid-19th century that he was concerned about the small sample size, he might have put all games 1846-1862 in one "bucket", and that would disguise Morphy's absolute dominance in 1858 and weaken Anderssens's score, as sources say he improved a lot shortly before London 1851. Philcha (talk) 09:48, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

I will give full details later (no time at the moment), but Elo listed all the leading players in that time period, and constructed a "crosstable" of all results between them. Morphy of course had by far the highest proportion, but Staunton was second (.591, as I recall), as I recall a good deal ahead of Harrwitz (.543 or something), who was third. Not sure why Anderssen wasn't higher; that is a little surprising. Krakatoa (talk) 10:44, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

OK, I really must learn to read. What I said above is correct as far as it goes, but I didn't read far enough. In section 3.43 in Elo's book (Arpad E. Elo, The Rating of Chessplayers, Past and Present, Arco Publishing, 1978, p. 55, ISBN 0-668-04721-6), which is what I alluded to above, Elo does indeed construct a quasi-crosstable of results among the top nine players, using as his data "342 games, all the match, tournament, and exhibition encounters of record for these players between 1846 and 1862." Morphy scored .726, Staunton .591, Harrwitz .542, Anderssen .513, Kolisch .500, Lowenthal .474, Paulsen .447, Williams .399, Horwitz .378. That's what I cited in the article. Unfortunately, until today I had never turned the page! D'oh! In sections 3.44 to 3.46 (p. 56), I now learn that Elo assigned all the players an arbitrary starting "rating" of 500 just for purposes of calculation. He then used the proportions I have just given to approximate the players' relative ratings (i.e. Morphy's "rating" becomes much higher than 500, Horwitz' considerably lower, etc.) Elo then used successive approximations (i.e. he substituted the new differentiated ratings for the original 500 for everyone, then recalculated), and did this multiple times until he got pretty stable "ratings" for the whole group. He says 2000 should be added to those numbers to get approximations of modern Elo ratings. Doing so, we get Morphy 2695, Anderssen 2552, Harrwitz 2518, Kolisch 2516, Staunton 2508, Lowenthal 2505, Paulsen 2502, Williams 2425, Horwitz 2406. So as you had expected Morphy is first by a mile, Anderssen is second, and everyone else is well behind him. This "method of successive approximations" is the same one that Elo used to establish the first international rating list (p. 56).

Of course, the reason Staunton's proportion was second to Morphy's, and Anderssen's so lackluster, is that Anderssen played 17 games against Morphy, scoring 4-13, while Staunton achieved a 0-0 score against Morphy. The proportions that I quote in the article are thus completely misleading. In the last table in his book (section 9.5, pp. 191-96), Elo gives the "best 5-year averages" that he has calculated for "Untitled Chessmasters" (i.e. the average Elo rating a player achieved in his best 5 years). For the same group of players, these are Morphy 2690 (covers period of active play, of less than five years), Anderssen 2600, Kolisch 2570, Paulsen 2550, Staunton 2520, Harrwitz 2520, Lowenthal 2510, Williams 2450 (for less than five-year period of active play) Horwitz 2420. Incidentally, he also gives Buckle 2480 (again covering sub-5-year period of active play), and has no entry for von der Lasa (not enough data, I'm guessing). Unfortunately, Elo doesn't tell us what the peak 5 years were for each player. Kolisch lived 1837-89 and Paulsen 1833-91, so no doubt their peaks came long after Staunton's.

Unfortunately, since none of Elo's statistics are broken down by years with the particularity we would like (i.e. what was the rank of the top players in 1843-51, etc.), I'm not sure if any of this is useful for the article. I'm going to remove the Elo statistics I gave in the article. If anyone can figure out how to use in the article the statistics I've given here, be my guest. I apologize for my lack of reading comprehension.

Returning to the initial subject - what to say in the first sentence - there are various choices:

1. Howard Staunton (April 1810 – June 22, 1874) was an English chess master who was probably one of the world's two or three strongest players from 1843 to 1851.

2. Howard Staunton (April 1810 – June 22, 1874) was an English chess master whom many considered the strongest player in the world from 1843 to 1851.

3. Howard Staunton (April 1810 – June 22, 1874) was an English chess master who was arguably the strongest player in the world from 1843 to 1851.

My inclination would be to go with 2 or 3, or something along those lines. Based on what Elo wrote (I haven't looked at Chessmetrics), Buckle's and von der Lasa's claims seem shaky at best. If one is "the strongest player in the world" but doesn't play, at some point it becomes unreasonable to keep calling one "the best player in the world" (see Bobby Fischer, Paul Morphy). Calling them that is almost as silly as saying "Harry Nelson Pillsbury and Rudolf Charousek were the best players in the world in 1910, except for the fact that they were both dead." Krakatoa (talk) 19:17, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

"two or three strongest players from 1843 to 1851" Philcha (talk) 00:07, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Paul Morphy

The article covers the Staunton-Morphy controversy in the most bland and Staunton-favorable manner imaginable. The text (including that accompanying the picture of Paul Morphy) is flagrantly POV. It also cites H.J.R. Murray as though he were the only person who had ever written on the subject, and treats what Murray says as the final (and only) word. Here is a timeline I have constructed from the Internet source "batgirl," who is cited (except on this subject!) throughout the article. (Everything on batgirl's website regarding Staunton and Morphy appears to be copied, without attribution, from print sources.) All dates are in 1858:

June 23: Morphy, following his arrival in England, meets Staunton and inquires about match. Staunton agrees but asks for a month to brush up on his openings. Morphy agrees. Thereafter, Morphy and Barnes play two consultation games against Staunton and Owen at Staunton's country home, winning 2-0. [22]

Early July – Staunton asks for more time, specifically until after the Birmingham tournament, which begins August 24. Morphy reluctantly agrees. Id.

August 14 – Morphy sends Staunton a note asking to firm up match arrangements. Staunton says he needs still more time. [23]

August 21 – Morphy again asks Staunton to set definite terms for the match, any terms he wants. Staunton leaves for Birmingham without replying. Id.

Late August – Morphy goes to Birmingham, finds Staunton; Staunton immediately takes "the initiative, asking for more time, citing his urgent business and his publisher's pressure, etc. Morphy, exasperated, ask[s], 'Mr. Staunton, will you play in October, in November, or December? Chose your own time but let the decision be final.' Staunton replie[s], 'Well, Mr. Morphy, if you will consent to the postponement, I will play you the beginning of November. I will see my publishers and let you know the exact date in a few days.'" Id.

August 28 – Staunton, using a tactic for which he has become infamous, publishes a letter in his own chess column, signed by "Anti-book" but undoubtedly written by Staunton himself, in which he falsely claims that (1) Morphy had failed to bring representatives to resolve the terms of the match; (2) Morphy did not have the necessary stakes for the match, and (3) Morphy had asked that the stakes be reduced from £1000 a side to £500 a side. Morphy does not respond to this calumny. [24]

October 6 – Morphy, after winning his match with Harrwitz, writes to Staunton "expressing his dismay at the Anti-book letter, blankly declaring the availability of the stakes to any amount, and solving the question of seconds. He asked yet again for a fixed date, mentioning that a copy of the letter would go to several editors to clear any public misconceptions." Id.

October 9 – Staunton replies, "reiterating all his same reasons for previous postponements, but now using them to bow out of the match altogether." Id.

October 23 – "Staunton published his entire reply along with a partial rendition of Morphy's original letter (leaving out any reference to Anti-book). This [leads] to a series of exchanges of anonymous and acrimonious letters in different columns." Id.

Morphy does not engage in any of this, but writes a letter to British Chess Association president Lord Lyttelton, "explaining his own efforts to bring about the match, Staunton's efforts to avoid the match with everything short of admitting he didn't wish to play, and of Staunton's twisting of the facts in the Illustrated London News, demanding 'that you shall declare to the world it is through no fault of mine that this match has not taken place.'" "Lord Lyttelton replied with a mild rebuke of Staunton's tactics and the assurance that no one blamed Morphy for the situation. The letters continued, Staunton's vituperations against Morphy continued, but the situation was basically settled in the public's mind since all but one British chess club, the Cambridge University Chess Club, denounced Staunton's actions in this matter." Id.

To sum up: repeated agreement by Staunton that he would play the match, but four requests by Staunton for additional time to prepare (made June 23, early July, August 14, late August); the August 28 "Anti-book" letter published in Staunton's column making false and slanderous charges against Morphy; Staunton bowing out of the match on October 9; Staunton publishing an incomplete account of the facts on October 23; Staunton continuing his vituperations against Morphy; no such slanders by Morphy, whose actions are at all times completely gentlemanly, at any time; Staunton's actions are denounced by all British chess clubs, with only one exception.

The article presents none of this, nor does it explain what, if anything, about the above account is wrong. Rather, it suggests that Morphy failed to comprehend that Staunton was declining his offer, that Staunton acted honorably but was unable to play the match because of his health and work (the batgirl account says nothing in this regard about Staunton's purported health problems), and that the worst thing Staunton did was not declining Morphy's offer more clearly. This appears to be a blatant whitewash, and a flagrant violation of WP:NPOV. Krakatoa (talk) 08:13, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Sorry for the brevity of the following - I'd finished writing and checking a longer response when my browser died(*£$%^!).

You've just made an excellent case for a separate article on the Staunton-Morphy controversy.

Discussion of this topic starts from a difficult situation - the popular writers Horowitz, Fine and Reinfeld damn Staunton comprehensively, but serious historical researchers consider them inaccurate. The misconceptions arising from Horowitz, Fine and Reinfeld have to be swept away in order to prepare readers for a more accurate account. For example the "prolific" writers say S avoided strong opponents, but S put considerable effort into seeking a 3rd match with St.-Amant and a match with Anderssen.

Murray presented the initial correspondence between Morphy's supporters and Staunton because he thought the interpretation of Staunton's reply was crucial. M thought S's reply was a polite refusal, which Morphy or his supporters misinterpreted. If Murray was right, it's hard to see how there could have been a good outcome. Are there any good sources that interpret S's initial response as deliberately misleading?

Re S' reaching for the vitriol when the 2 sides got sucked into a blame game, that was normal chess journalistic practice at the time, in both England and USA (see citations in my attempt above to generate discussion on "Staunton's combative writing"; and they were comparatively mild, see Winter's "Attacks on Staunton" page).

In the sort term (before a separate article on the Staunton-Morphy controversy is complete) we need to agree what should go into Howard Staunton. I suggest you do as I did in response to some of SyG's comments above - draft a new version on a sub-page and publish it for comment / contributions. I'm not terribly concerned that it should exonerate Staunton, provided that it points out: the unreliability of popular accounts; that the there are good sources for more than 1 interpretation of Stauntons' actions; that immediately before and shortly after (Chess Priaxis, 1860) S was enthusiastic about Morphy's play; that chess journalism was bare-knuckle in those days. Philcha (talk) 11:09, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Who was/were batgirl's source(s) for the stuff I've quoted? My impression was that she was citing verbatim, without attribution, material that someone else wrote. (If so, there are names for that sort of thing ...) I've taken a quick look at Lawson's book about Morphy, Edge's book, Sergeant's two books, Max Lange's book, the Reinfeld/Soltis book, and Lawson's 1964 Chessworld article, and don't find this material in those sources. (Lawson and Sergeant have material similar to, but not identical to, batgirl). Are you saying that Fine or Horowitz or Reinfeld is the source? From what book? I'm not aware that any of them wrote about the Morphy-Staunton imbroglio at such length.

I don't know. The only batgirl content cited for the Staunton-Morphy controversy in Howard Staunton is Murray's 2 articles in BCM 1908, which are attributed. Philcha (talk) 00:56, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

As to Staunton's original letter, I agree that it could be read as a polite declination (i.e. "In Europe, you'll meet many champions eager to do battle with you, but I'm not one of them."). But as batgirl, or whatever the original source is, said, Staunton knew that Morphy interpreted it differently, and did nothing to disabuse him of that interpretation. To the contrary, Staunton's statements repeatedly confirmed to Morphy that he was willing to play a match. As Frederick Edge wrote in a letter to the editor of Bell's Life dated October 20, 1858, "we are relieved from the difficulty of discovering Mr. Staunton's real meaning by his reiterated declarations that he would play Paul Morphy. Within a few days of the latter's arrival in London, the English player stated his intention of accepting the match, but postponed the commencement of it for a month, on the plea of requiring preparation. In the month of July the acceptance of the challenge was announced in the Illustrated London News. Before the expiration of the time demanded in the first instance, Mr. Staunton requested that the contest should not take place until after the Birmingham meeting. At Birmingham he again declared his intention of playing the match, and fixed the date for the first week in November, in the presence of numerous witnesses." Edge quotes from Lord Lyttleon's published address to the Birmingham meeting, in which he wishes Morphy success against all the players of Europe, except Staunton, whom Lyttleton as an Englishman hopes will triumph against Morphy. Frederick Milne Edge, The Exploits & Triumphs in Europe of Paul Morphy the Chess Champion, pp. 108-12. Sergeant wrote, "Edge, although English by birth, was very biased against Staunton; but we can hardly think that his prejudice went so far as to allow him to falsify the evidence." Phillip W. Sergeant, Morphy's Games of Chess, p. 13 n.*.

As I commented earlier in our discussion, if Murray was right in suggesting that Staunton meant "Thank you for the honour, but I regret I cannot oblige Mr. Morphy" and that Morphy or his supporters misunderstood Staunton's florid prose, it's hard to see how there could have been a good outcome. Murray says Staunton took on too much by organising the 1851 tournament and playing it (Murray does not say whether S was also working on Shakespeare at the time). Warning - what follows is WP:OR: taking on too much may have been a habit for S; once Morphy was in Europe S's pride might have pushed him into trying to meet the challenge; S had put a lot of effort into trying to play a 3rd match against St.-Amant and a match against Anderssen, so temperamentally he was inclined to look for rathe rthna avoid challenges; the acceptance of Morphy's challenge in the Illustrated London News looks as likely to be over-optimism as Macchiavellian dissimulation.(end WP:OR) If there are historically reliable sources that oppose Murray's interpretation of Staunton's initial response, they should be quoted. Otherwise I think we have to present Murray's interpretation and leave it at that. That does not imply that those who were aggrieved on Morphy's behalf were guilty of dishonesty - as I said, if there was a misunderstanding, it's hard to see a good outcome. Philcha (talk) 00:56, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

As for bare-knuckled chess journalism being the style of the day, it certainly was Staunton's style, and probably Harrwitz's, but I don't think it was universal. Morphy, Anderssen, Lowenthal and surely many others did not practice it.

See also Winter's "Attacks on Howard Staunton". Steinitz was also a noted polemicist (not just on the subject of Staunton), and some of Steinitz' enemies were pretty liberal with their insults (see for example NY Times, 1887). Perhaps bare-knuckled chess journalism was not universal, but it was pretty common. Philcha (talk) 00:56, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

I've dumped my unabridged notes about batgirl's (or whoever's) account of the Staunton-Morphy dispute into [25]. Have at it (you or anyone else who's interested). But I really don't have an infinite amount of time to spend on this. I also think that we have to find out who batgirl's source(s) is/are, or use other sources. As I've suggested before, I don't think batgirl, on her own, can be considered a reliable source. Krakatoa (talk) 20:46, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

In such a controversial matter as this I would also prefer to see attributions. If I had time I might try Googling for phrases from the stuff batgirl quotes - Google Books has been kind to me in the past. But even then I would only consider it if we were producing a separate, more detailed article about the controversy. Philcha (talk) 00:56, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Do we even know which Batgirl batgirl is? Or is she just the female equivalent of a batboy? :-) Krakatoa (talk) 00:39, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Answering my own question, she's one Sarah Beth Cohen, apparently. Krakatoa (talk) 00:45, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, she is.

batgirl quotes "Anti-book" as writing that the stakes were originally set at £1,000 a side, then reduced to £500 a side. Such high stakes would have been astonishing in 1858 - Anderssen's prize for London 1851 was two-thirds of the total prize fund of £500, i.e about £335; that is equivalent to about £240,000 in 2006's money ([26]). The stakes were £100 a side in both the second Staunton vs Saint-Amant match (Paris, 1843) and the Anderssen vs Steinitz match (London, 1866); Steinitz and Zukertort played their 1886 match for £400 a side; Morphy reluctantly played for 100 pounds a side in 1858, but his matches with Anderssen, Harrwitz and others were for merely nominal stakes.(Bird's Chess History and Reminiscences, section on stakes). Philcha (talk) 01:21, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Conclusion

I am on vacation right now, and thus would not normally be posting a comment at this time. However, SyG on my Talk page asked my current assessment of the article (A-class, GA-class, or something else) because he wanted to close the A-class review. The article is very well done in most respects, and in most respects I would have no problem supporting A class. However, regretfully I do not feel it warrants A class at this time because of its treatment of the Staunton-Morphy controversy. The section on that controversy is written in a strange way, starting out with a lengthy attack on Frederick Edge rather than discussing what Edge says. Edge (and later Lawson, who relies in part on Edge) set out a lengthy chronology of events (various letters, multiple requested postponements by Staunton to which Morphy assents, the infamous "anti-book" letter published in Staunton's column, and Staunton's final declination of the match), which is decidedly unflattering to Staunton. (I set out a brief chronology of those events above under "Paul Morphy".) The current section on the Staunton-Morphy controversy does not set out those events, but instead focuses on attacking Edge and closes out with Murray, a pro-Staunton commentator who glosses over a lot of relevant events, and treats him as the final word on the subject. I do not think this is a NPOV treatment, nor do I think it is written in an appealing style (the text of the article should focus on the facts as best they can be ascertained rather than on attacking Edge). Thus, at this time I regretfully oppose promoting this article to A class.

I intend after I get back home and finish some outstanding personal matters to work on the Staunton-Morphy section. I hope to get that section in a state that I would consider NPOV and A-class-worthy (obviously, others may or may not agree). But if forced to vote today, I must vote against A class. My understanding is that GA class is not formally on the table at the moment, since that review has not started, but at this time I would also oppose GA class for the same reason. I say all of this regretfully, and with utmost respect for all of the work that people have put into the article. Krakatoa (talk) 13:49, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Incidentally, I have made quite a few edits to the article (146), so I probably should be disqualified from voting on it. Krakatoa (talk) 03:04, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Conclusion by SyG: A-class was not reached

All the conditions required to close this review are met:

three different editors have reviewed the article and expressed an opinion.
more than three weeks have occurred since the beginning of the review.
more than one week has passed since the last comment was made in the review.

All reviewers agree this is an outstanding article that Philcha has developed here. Also kudos to him to have stand the continuous flow of "constructive remarks" coming from the reviewers, myself in first place. Unfortunately the article still has issues to deal with:

I consider the section on Notable games to contain WP:OR. This may be a general problem in most chess biographies, so probably this point will need to be addressed globally in the WikiProject Chess.
Brittle heaven considers the strength of Staunton is not appropriately dealt with, and there are also style issues.
Krakatoa considers the treatment of the missed match between Staunton and Morphy is too favourable to Staunton, thus missing WP:NPOV.

Therefore, I shall close the review and declare the article is not judged up to the A-class for the moment. I wish to this article a good luck for its try into the GA-review. SyG (talk) 21:29, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Meanwhile, I have nominated the article for a GA-review at Wikipedia:Good article nominations, the reviewer has finally been found so the review should begin very soon now.

Adolf Anderssen is still under a A-class review, waiting for reviewers at Wikipedia:WikiProject Chess/Review#Current candidates. I have to admit I did not really have the time to look at it because I was busy on the reviews of First-move advantage in chess and Howard Staunton, so crowds of reviewers are expected to join!

Chess boxing became a GA after a very fast GA-review, welcome to this newcomer!

SyG (talk) 20:41, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

What does "absolute seventh rank" mean?

I was reading about rooks on the seventh rank in a game. The rook is on the seventh rank between two pawns. The defender moves one of the pawns off that rank, and the author uses the term "absolute seventh rank" twice. What does it mean? That the rook has a freer reign? That then it is able to get behind pawns? Other??? Bubba73 (talk), 02:38, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Don't know, but might guess it means that the opposing king cannot leave the eighth rank by sneaking behind one of its pwans still on its home square. Baccyak4H (Yak!) 19:12, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

That is correct (Kracatoa told me). Bubba73 (talk), 22:45, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Liverating.org

The site http://www.liverating.org is being put in a few times, especially people with high "live" ratings such as Vassily Ivanchuk and Magnus Carlsen. I've been deleting them because liverating.org is not official, and because the edits are usually anonymous so I suspect spam; and because edits have been phrased in such a way to suggest liverating.org is official (e.g. this edit [27]). Am I being too harsh? Peter Ballard (talk) 11:22, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

I like it when you are harsh, please be it again. Wikipedia should only use reliable sources, and I am not aware that the calculations of this site have been peer reviewed seriously. I have seen ChessBase mention it occasionaly, but what guarantees that the ratings published are correct ? SyG (talk) 19:06, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree that we don't need them, because they are constantly changing. Bubba73 (talk), 22:47, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

rating categories

One thing that has frustrated me about many articles is that they refer to tournament categories (Category 20 etc) without defining them. To fix this I've created the ~~Category (chess)~~ Category (chess tournament) page. So please consider creating a link like Category 20 next time you come across an article mentioning a tournament category. Thanks! Peter Ballard (talk) 05:48, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

On reflection, I decided Category (chess) was too vague, so I've renamed it to Category (chess tournament); and edited the above paragraph to match that. Peter Ballard (talk) 11:46, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Good idea, Peter Ballard! It might be even better if you could give some examples of tournaments e.g. in the top 5 categories, saying who was in them. That way readers who are less familiar with the category system, including me(!), can look at the names and think "Wow!" or "OK". -- Philcha (talk) 12:21, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

I know that Corus was Category 20 this year. You could use that as an example. GBizzle (talk) 01:06, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Rating of Ponziani Opening

Anyone want to re-rate Ponziani Opening? I've added a lead, and think it may merit B-class now. Krakatoa (talk) 19:34, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

I think it is clearly "B", and I made the change. Bubba73 (talk), 20:26, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

It may be "low" importance instead of "mid", since it is rarely played now. But, OTOH, it is historically significant. Bubba73 (talk), 20:29, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I suggested in the Talk section to the article that I thought "low" was more appropriate. The opening is indeed historically significant, being one of the first openings ever discussed in the literature, but its significance has gone downhill ever since. I'm not sure it was ever very popular in actual play. Certainly it hasn't been popular for 140+ years, at least. Staunton in 1847 was complaining that it wasn't more popular, and I don't think his advocacy did much for it. Before and after he wrote that, King's Gambits and Evans Gambits were far more popular. Krakatoa (talk) 15:48, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

I've decided to re-rate the article "Low" importance. As I state on the Talk page of the article, I don't think it's more important than the Staunton Gambit, Hungarian Defense, and Dunst Opening, for example, each of which is rated "Low". Krakatoa (talk) 16:19, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

bug in chess position template

There is a bug in the chess position template.

Kamsky-Bacrot, 2006

	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h
8									8
7									7
6									6
5									5
4									4
3									3
2									2
1									1
	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h

Position before 74... e1:N+, promotion to a knight gets to a drawn endgame

The above works, but in the caption, using "=" instead of ":" in the move gives:

Kamsky-Bacrot, 2006

	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h
8									8
7									7
6									6
5									5
4									4
3									3
2									2
1									1
	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h

When I was using it in the article, the caption was "68" or something like that. I don't know anything about how to fix it. Can someone? Bubba73 (talk), 23:30, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

The "=" in the comment causes it to mess up the comment. Bubba73 (talk), 15:17, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

It is because = is used in templates. Lab-oratory (talk) 17:29, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Solutions:

use the "nowiki" feature (see my first diagram below)
use the special character &#x003D (see my second diagram below)

I would favour the first method, as it is much simpler and can be used for any character. SyG (talk) 18:28, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Kamsky-Bacrot, 2006

	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h
8									8
7									7
6									6
5									5
4									4
3									3
2									2
1									1
	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h

First solution: 74... e1=N+

Kamsky-Bacrot, 2006

	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h
8									8
7									7
6									6
5									5
4									4
3									3
2									2
1									1
	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h

Second solution: 74... e1=N+

Thanks, that works. But then I realized that standard AN doesn't use "=" before the promoted piece. Back in my day, we used descriptive notation, and my use of "=" is a hangover from that. Nevertheless, there are some times when we need = in the caption. Bubba73 (talk), 22:24, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

"fortress" versus "positional draw"

Is there a difference between fortress (chess) and a "positional draw"? At least two of my books talk about positional draws, but it is not clear how they are different, except one says that the term "positional draw" is borrowed from endgame study terminology. The article fortress (chess) has a section on positional draws. The first example there seems to be a simple fortress. The second one is more complex, with many more pieces. Bubba73 (talk), 15:12, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h
8									8
7									7
6									6
5									5
4									4
3									3
2									2
1									1
	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h

Black on move: draw by stalemate or the 50-move rule.

	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h
8									8
7									7
6									6
5									5
4									4
3									3
2									2
1									1
	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h

Black on move: draw by repetition of position, stalemate, or material insufficiency.

Yes, there is. "Positional draw" is a broader term that includes more than just fortresses. Hooper and Whyld (first edition; the second also has a definition, but the first is a little more thorough) define "positional draw" as "a study term for a drawn position in which Black has (or is about to gain by promotion) a material advantage but cannot free his pieces because of White's positional advantage. White might give perpetual check ... , attack a black piece continually ... , make recurrent mating threats ... , or hem in the enemy pieces .... These and other kinds of positional draw often end with a repetition of moves. Kasparyan classifies the fortress as a positional draw." David Hooper and Kenneth Whyld, The Oxford Companion to Chess (1st ed. 1984), Oxford University Press, p. 261.

If I understand Hooper and Whyld correctly, the positions at left and right are two non-fortress examples of positional draws. The diagram at left, from my immmortal 2005 problem, is a draw by stalemate if Black's bishop moves. If Black allows the king to take the bishop and refuses to agree to a draw, the game will eventually end in a draw under the 50-move rule, since the knights cannot force checkmate. The diagram at right is a well-known position where the rook holds the draw: 1...Kh3 2.Rh2+! Kg4 (2...Kxh2 stalemate; 2...Kg3 3.Rh3+!) 3.Rg2+ Kf4 (3...Kf3 4.Rg3+!) 4.Rf2+ Ke4 (what else?) 5.Re2=. Krakatoa (talk) 03:58, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, I should have thought to consult the Companion. Bubba73 (talk), 03:42, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Rating of Chess handicap

Anyone want to re-rate Chess handicap? I've added a lot of stuff to the text, and a genuine lead. I think it may merit B-class now. Krakatoa (talk) 04:21, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

I have reviewed this article (see its Talk page) and raised it to B-class. Well done! SyG (talk) 08:04, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! Krakatoa (talk) 17:30, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Camara Defense

The sources (see in the article) stating that the Câmara Defense should be named as such appear weak to me for the moment. More reliable sources do not use this name:

"ChessGames"., Tartakower's Bréviaire des Echecs and van Seters' Guide Marabout des Echecs do not use a particular name
"Chess Theory". and "Bangor Chess Club". calls it the Gunderam defense

So I am considering renaming the article to Gunderam defense. What do your reliable sources say ? SyG (talk) 08:03, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

I considered it when I made the article on fi-wiki and named it Gunderamin puolustus (Gunderam Defense). Geocities calls it Gunderam, Brazilian, Queens Defense and Levenstein. Lab-oratory (talk) 08:32, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Page moved. -GTBacchus^(talk) 18:30, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! SyG (talk) 16:43, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

problem with captions in small diagrams

Resolved

underpromotion

	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h
8									8
7									7
6									6
5									5
4									4
3									3
2									2
1									1
	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h

Promotion to a knight wins

underpromotion

	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h
8									8
7									7
6									6
5									5
4									4
3									3
2									2
1									1
	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h

Promotion to a knight wins

Captions are not showing up in the small chess diagrams. I don't know how to fix it, does someone know? Bubba73 (talk), 14:47, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

I have just tried changed the template, a bit randomly I must say. It seems to work now in your example, please tell me if you spot unwanted side-effects. SyG (talk) 15:03, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it is working now, thanks. Bubba73 (talk), 15:52, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

"xw" no longer makes a white dot!! Is that a possible side effect of your change? Bubba73 (talk), 20:07, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Mmm, I do not see how, and I did not know it was possible to do a white dot with "xw". Could you please provide an example so that I can compare what happens in the large diagram and in the small one ? SyG (talk) 20:18, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

After cheking, I see that User:It Is Me Here has been doing a lot of changes to the templates today, and it seems to have broken some mechanics. I will ask him to stop for now, and revert the templates to their former versions. Please tell me if problems continue. SyG (talk) 20:23, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

I do not think this white dot problem is limited to small diagrams. I noticed that someone changed white dots to "x" in cross-check, and then I discovered that the white dot doesn't work. The files seem to be missing. See my sandboxUser:Bubba73/MySandbox. Bubba73 (talk), 20:27, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, now it works again! Bubba73 (talk), 20:28, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

But in the big diagram the caption is centered while in the small one it isn't. I slightly prefer the left-aligned style, but whichever it is, it should be applied to both. GregorB (talk) 20:59, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

That is an easy change to do. Bubba73, what's your opinion on this, left or center ? SyG (talk) 07:02, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

I prefer left. Lab-oratory (talk) 12:54, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't have an opinion about left or centered. I'll go along with the others. Bubba73 (talk), 13:21, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

I have changed it to left. SyG (talk) 13:39, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

(unindent) Left is better because if you do want to center it, you can use <center> ... </center> on the caption. Bubba73 (talk), 03:35, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

we need to improve rules of chess

We need to improve rules of chess to bring it up to at least GA class. Presently we have few articles that are GA or better, and some of them I feel don't represent chess particularly well. In my opinion, The Turk (FA class), Bughouse Chess (A class), and Chess boxing (GA class) are not that important to chess. The chess article itself is FA, but I think that the second most important article is rules of chess, currently rated B class (although it may be better than that). I don't want to jump through all of the hoops to get it to GA or better myself, but I will help. What do you think? Bubba73 (talk), 05:55, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

By the way, I mean no disrespect to those articles or the editors who worked on them. Bubba73 (talk), 01:49, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

I agree. The 8 articles currently rated GA-class or better are not that representative of the most important aspects of chess. I would be willing to contribute to the improvement of Rules of chess as far as I can, but unfortunately I am just taking a Wikibreak for one week (holidays). Please feel free to nominate this article to Wikipedia:WikiProject Chess/Review and I will be happy to review/improve it as soon as I come back. SyG (talk) 09:23, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

Agree totally - we shouldn't lose sight of the data that told us which articles were being viewed and with what frequency. From memory, it was mostly about the rules, tactics, strategy, openings, middlegame, endgame etc. These are the core topic areas and they need to be as good as we can get them. If we see the GA process as "jumping through all the hoops" then this is probably acting as a disincentive and we should ignore it for now. We all know what makes a good article and those reviews (or getting your homework marked by teacher, as I prefer to think of it) can absorb way too much editorial time and energy. Anyway, we'll just get everything to GA and they'll invent FGA (no prizes for guessing what the F stands for). The important thing is to get writing. I intend to help out with some of these topics in the near future. Brittle heaven (talk) 00:04, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

I think rules of chess is viewed over 500 times per day. The program that listed that doesn't work past June 2008. Bubba73 (talk), 00:09, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

^ Bobby Fischer, "The Ten Greatest Masters in History," Chessworld, Vol. 1, No. 1 (January-February 1964), at 56, 58.
^ New in Chess stated in its 2000 Yearbook that of the games in its database, White scored 56.1% with 1.d4, but two percent less (54.1%) with 1.e4, primarily because of the Sicilian, against which White scored only 52.3%. New in Chess Yearbook 55 (2000), p. 227. A graph similar to that in the 2000 Yearbook can be found at "How to Read NIC Statistics (Valid till volume 62)". NewInChess.com. Retrieved 2008-05-07.

[1] Bobby Fischer, "The Ten Greatest Masters in History," Chessworld, Vol. 1, No. 1 (January-February 1964), at 56, 58.

[2] New in Chess stated in its 2000 Yearbook that of the games in its database, White scored 56.1% with 1.d4, but two percent less (54.1%) with 1.e4, primarily because of the Sicilian, against which White scored only 52.3%. New in Chess Yearbook 55 (2000), p. 227. A graph similar to that in the 2000 Yearbook can be found at "How to Read NIC Statistics (Valid till volume 62)". NewInChess.com. Retrieved 2008-05-07.

[1]

[2]