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Requested move at Talk:Chess boxing#Requested move 20 June 2025

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There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Chess boxing#Requested move 20 June 2025 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. FaviFake (talk) 17:02, 20 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Use of rating calculations before official FIDE ratings

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We've discussed the use of historical rating calculations previously and generally discourage extensive use of unofficial ratings in chess articles. The specific question I am interested in is whether and how we should make use of Arpad Elo's rating calculations in articles such as World Chess Championship 1966 and World Chess Championship 1969.

Starting in 1962, Arpad Elo periodically published rating lists of international players in Chess Life. (The Chess Life archives are found at https://new.uschess.org/chess-life-digital-archives. Elo's first two international rating lists were published in August 1962 and April 1964.) These ratings can be cited to reliable sources and are more comparable to the official FIDE ratings since 1972. I think the ratings will be of interest to some readers, and they can convey some information about the relative strength of the players which may be helpful especially since today and in the future fewer people will be familiar with the chess players of the 1960s.

There are some problems. Elo's data was incomplete since he didn't have results for all tournament games. Calculations were performed by hand and reported results are averages over 3-year periods rounded to the tens position. (At the start the official lists would round to the nearest 5, and eventually ratings were computed to the nearest integer.) I think if we are going to use these numbers then we have to explain them and how they are different than modern FIDE ratings.

Elo's ratings were recently added to a crosstable in World Chess Championship 1966, as was TPR. TPR is very ahistorical here, but again some readers might find it of interest. In World Chess Championship 1969 the ratings are found only in the {{Infobox chess match}} where I think they are actually less prominent and less worrisome. What do chess editors think? Quale (talk) 23:28, 22 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Generally speaking, the use of ratings in any context in an encyclopedia for the general public is problematic. Non-chess-playing readers are not familiar with the rating system, and in many cases do not even know what it is or know that it exists. Our sources outside the chess literature, sources such as the New York Times and the Hindustan Times, very seldom mention ratings.
To make a reference to ratings comprehensible to a non-chess-playing reader, we usually have to supply a great deal of context and explanation; links to articles about ratings, such as Elo rating, are no substitute for actual English-language explanation. Of course, we never follow this practice, and so many of our articles about chess, particularly biographies and tournament reports, have these incomprehensible bits. List of chess players by peak FIDE rating is incomprehensible from alpha to omega.
Incomprehensibility is a problem for "official" ratings just as much as for "unofficial" ratings. I'll talk about "official" versus "unofficial" separately.
What tempts editors to mention ratings in Wikipedia articles? I think it's because many of our most active chess editors are themselves chess players. Indeed, if you have experience in rated chess, it gives you a perspective that is useful for editing Wikipedia articles about chess. But you have to remember that our readers do not, on the whole, share this perspective. Another thing that leads us to sometimes mention ratings where we should not, is that we often make use of sources that are not outside the chess literature: magazines such as Chess Life, books such biographies of chess players or whatever one might find in the book sales room at a large tournament. Of course these sources are not shy about mentioning ratings.
The chess player's perspective sometimes causes editors to mistake a high rating for something notable. The fact that Kasparov was the world's "number one" player for many years, or the fact that Carlsen has struggled to hit 2900, or that Fischer greatly outrated Spassky even before their match -- these are well-known to many of our chess editors, and so they seem terribly notable, but in the non-chess literature, they barely register. Bruce leverett (talk) 01:09, 23 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hello there, i think that 1964 rating should be added because of this
- The calculation for the first Fide rating was made from his unofficial list from 1967,1968 and 1969. These list were made in the uscf, his data was even smaller than the 1964 list for the initialisation of the rating of 1970. He added more player in 1969. the list of 1970 was made in July , he used his method for rating unrated player precised in his book at section 3.3, that's how he could add an astronomical number of rating comapred to the meer 101 for 1964 et 95 for 1967.
- The TPR was calculated through his method explained in his book "The rating of past and present chessplayers" in his section 3.3. an TPR can't be considered historical or ahistorical, it's an statistic information. We could use them everywhere, but i should talk with you all before doing that. It's seems strange that they're low, because today's rating are far higher than before, it's seems than it has gone up since 1986, so if we need to explain that they're are different, we need to do for all of them. The Tpr of Karpov in the world championship in 1978 was 2684, which is a bit higher than spassky in the 1964 interzonal at amsterdam.
The choice from this perspective seems logical, the unofficial from elo's rating were used for the first official one thus making it in some shape or form more official than any other unofficial rating. So i think we should use them Deniz of givet (talk) 22:34, 23 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think that the 1962 rating list shouldnt be used because it's kinda strange, the forumla use wasn't the same and the method i think of the idea of iterative wasn't the same. The coefficient isnt the same either i guess. Botvinnik in 1962 being 2736 seems not being on the same scale as the petrossian (2690) of 1964. Also the fischer rating of 2713 in 1962 and 2690 in 1964 is conflicting. The 1964 rating is right according to Elo's book while fischer rating in 1962 should be arround 2660 or 2670
Deniz of givet (talk) 22:46, 23 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Ratings are actually a fairly recent thing in the context of 500+ years of chess history. The Soviets did perfectly well without them, categorizing players as Grandmasters, Masters, Candidate Masters, 1st category players etc by comparing their performance with other players with the same titles (and occasionally revoking titles when players couldn't maintain that level of performance). Ratings have become something of an obsession for modern players. I'm not keen on any pre-1970 tournament table including an "unofficial rating", let alone a "TPR". We could maybe cite Elo's pre-tournament calculations to Chess Life as a RS and say who the pre-tournament favourites were based on that, but even then I'm not sure how relevant that is to the article. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 01:53, 24 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Your argument can be countered by this
Chess rating were invented by national federation, there was the BCF rating, the Ingo rating etc
The first international tournament is London 1851, so rating were made less than a 100 year after that chess had an international scene.
And if soviet did perfectly without them, it doesnt mean you cant do perfectly with them ?
It's not an obssesion of todays chess players, you can check the work of richard clarke and you can clearly see that's not modern obsession. As i said, TPR is an statistical information, how you can be for or against this, it's pure information. Also concerning unofficial , as i said in my message above, this unofficial list by arpad elo were used for fide rating because Arpad Elo was doing the first fide rating list. If official is based on unofficial, then we could use unofficial since it was used by official list. Deniz of givet (talk) 12:39, 24 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Here is a better citation of the 1964 rating list Elo published in Chess Life.[1]. It links to the USCF Digital Archive, which can be found at US Chess.org. You don't have to register or sign in to access it.
I had forgotten about these rating lists although I subscribed to Chess Life starting in 1965. They are of historical interest in the development of rating systems, and we ought to be mentioning them in Elo rating system#History.
However, I do not think we should cite these rating lists in our articles about the 1966 or 1969 world championships. They had no official standing at the time. Neither in announcements of the interzonal tournaments, nor in reporting of their results, do any ratings appear. Also, they have no official standing today. The appearance of Elo's lists in Chess Life gives them no more official status than is given to ChessMetrics ratings by their appearance in whatever published sources have mentioned them. In De Felice's book of chess results 1964-1967, no ratings are given. The collection of old FIDE rating lists at olimpbase.org does not include Elo's lists from Chess Life.
In later years, after FIDE had begun official use of ratings, ratings were used in the calculation of title norms, and Di Felice's crosstables usually include ratings. Our own crosstables of interzonals from later years often include ratings, for example in World Chess Championship 1978. I do not think that rating information from 1976 interzonal crosstables is of any historical value or other use to readers in 2025, but since our sources include it, the path of least resistance may be for us to include it as well.
Regarding TPR, as I mentioned in my earlier comment, it is doubtful indeed to give TPR numbers without explaining what a TPR is. Even I, who am an active tournament player, do not know exactly what TPR stands for ("<something> performance rating", I suppose) and how it is calculated. Moreover, Elo's ratings in the 1964 list are "historical" -- what is presented for each player is a "best 5-year average" and (where applicable) a "best 25-year average". Thus these are nothing like the ratings that are used as input to calculation of revised ratings resulting from tournaments and matches; and the concept of a performance rating is cannot be applied. Bruce leverett (talk) 13:56, 24 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree a bit for the first part, it's not really used, but it's still calculation that was made during that time, that was used for 1967 and thus indirectly 1970 the first fide rating. Olympbase show chessslife rating of 1967 1968 and 1969. And 1964 rating list is not a 5 year peak average, the 5 year peak average stats are apart from the top 101 players that were calculated with the iterative method which was the method elo used to initialise rating. TPR is tournament performance rating and shows if the player overperformed or underperformed compared to his rating. It's an intersting info since it can tell if he, the player, did a good tournament or not. Deniz of givet (talk) 18:14, 24 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Based on the 1962 article it seems Elo's original motivation for calculating ratings for international players was to allow the performances of US players in international tournaments to be included in their domestic USCF ratings. If these were actually applied to USCF ratings (I haven't confirmed that they were) then their status was I suppose "official" within the US context.
That doesn't mean we should be looking at historical tournaments through a modern lens. It was not standard practice to use Elo ratings for international tournaments before 1971, and they were not included in any contemporary reports, so they should not be included in the historical reports or crosstables for these tournaments. That's WP:SYNTH, a form of original research. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 21:40, 24 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ Arpad E. Elo (April 1964). "The Second International Rating List and the Historical Ratings" (PDF). Chess Life. Vol. XIX, no. 4. pp. 81–83.

Nomination of Sagar Shah for deletion

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A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Sagar Shah is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sagar Shah until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article until the discussion has finished.

Sportsfan77777 (talk) 17:44, 1 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Citing sources

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Recently there has been slightly increased activity from knowledgeable chess editors to improve articles on chess openings. This is great, but almost none of the edits have cited any sources. Although we have been very deficient in citing sources in the past (many of our foundational articles are very old and in the distant past inline citations weren't seen as as important as they are today), I think it would be better to add inline citations for most content edits made in 2025. Just because an uncited claim has been in a chess opening article for ten or fifteen years doesn't make it OK to change it to a different uncited claim today. In that vein I think I will look at a few of the articles to see if I can add inline WP:CITE citations that were overlooked when they were written. Quale (talk) 02:33, 10 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I am seeing a lot of unnecessary editing and re-organizing of opening articles that have been stable for a long time. That doesn't mean they can't be improved, of course, but the way to improve our chess opening articles is to cite sources, not to do your own engine and database research, or to "name dump" variation names just for the sake of giving the name. I am also highly opposed to the completely unnecessary recent spinning out of 1.e4 e5 2.f4 exf4 3.Nf3 g5 to a new article called King's Gambit, Classical Variation, a term most chess players won't even recognize (they just call it "the ...g5 line" if they call it anything at all). It was already perfectly well covered in the King's Gambit article. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 09:33, 28 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It seems this discussion (for all topics) will be continuing at Talk:King's Gambit, unless someone wants to move it here. I strongly prefer the separate page for readability purposes. It allow allows a briefer description of 3...g5 to be given on the main gambit page, with more detail and diagrams on the 3...g5 page, without requiring any more new articles for 3...g5 lines (Muzio and Kieseritzky already have their own pages) in the future. Dayshade (talk) 22:00, 28 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Just another thing I want to note, there is no particular reason why different alternative moves must be listed in order of database frequency. I much prefer having the article organized thematically. The Fischer and Becker defences to the King's gambit are best listed immediately after 3...g5, to which they share similar themes and often transpose. The most frequently played move in lichess blitz games is not necessarily the best move, or even the most theoretically significant. I am honestly hard-pressed to find a single edit you have made to the chess opening articles that was actually a positive improvement. I know that's harsh, but your editing style is ... bad. It might be different if you actually cited reliable sources, but you don't. You just remake the articles that have been stable for years according to your own personal preferences. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 01:07, 31 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
:o Dayshade (talk) 07:16, 29 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

https://chess.game

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I removed the reference to this website from the article Checkmate because something looks profoundly "off" about it. There are no credited authors, the information presented is inaccurate and often ungrammatical, the articles are superficial listicle type things of little to no instructional value ("the 5 most aggressive openings" etc), and there is no indication of who is running the site or even where they are based. The "FAQ" turns out to be non-existent, and the "About Us", "Terms and Conditions" and "Privacy Policy" all prove to be useless. I get the distinct impression the website was written by ChatGPT.

Further investigation shows they are plugging an app called "Edev Chess" by the company "Edev Group Limited", run by a Ukrainian named Olesia Shavaryn, and registered in the UK (although the website itself is hosted on a Cloudfare server in San Francisco). They have similar websites for other games including Hearts, Mah-Jong and Yahtzee. The mailing address, in Hatton Garden, London, is used as a mail drop by numerous companies. Obviously an unreliable source, but is this a sign of things to come? Internet sources just getting worse and worse as AI becomes ascendant? MaxBrowne2 (talk) 03:42, 22 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, appears to be spam. Good removal. Doesn't look like it's used anywhere else, and yeah we can probably expect more of this. :/ — Rhododendrites talk \\ 22:48, 28 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Has this occurred on any other articles? Dayshade (talk) 08:44, 26 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Issues with Mechanical Turk

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I recently looked over the article Mechanical Turk and determined it to have a number of issues which may compromise its status as a Featured Article. Please feel free to join the discussion here. Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 00:29, 2 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

FAR

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I have nominated Mechanical Turk for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets the featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" in regards to the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 17:51, 15 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

We need to resist the non-standard "chess.com names" of opening lines

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If it can't be found in a reliable source (Schiller doesn't count), then it's not a genuine opening name. Chess.com has a lot to answer for, and it seems a lot of other sites copy their ahistoric opening names, but that doesn't mean we should. There is not a single non-internet source that calls 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 exd4 4.Bc4 Bc5 5.Ng5 (?!) the "Sarratt Variation", for example. This ngram illustrates my point, as does this search of the internet archive. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 00:34, 29 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You can go ahead and remove every name you wanna remove, I'm just being lazy when drafting and I do kinda like how you can give stuff anchors and consistent look in the headers. Also, I wonder if their source might be [1] or something similar which seems to be actively updated every year and very reputable. But I'm not sure. I'm hesitant to cough up that much money lol. There must be at least some mistakes because it is definitely glaringly odd for them to go with "Two Knights Defense, Polerio, Bishop Check Line" over "Two Knights Defense, Main Line" when they do use such Main Line terminology for the Evans Gambit and several others. Dayshade (talk) 06:19, 29 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Also I think Gotham might be responsible for popularizing the use of "Fried Liver" for 4.Ng5 in the Two Knights. Dayshade (talk) 06:26, 29 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Was chatting on Twitch today when someone noted that just about everyone on youtube thinks every 4.Ng5 line is a "Fried Liver". I think we should avoid even mentioning this misconception unless it actually gets documented by a RS. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 06:39, 29 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know, I still feel like it's worth a brief exception to the rule just to make it clear for all the Gotham watchers who look at these articles, especially since it's an easily verifiable claim by googling to see all the incorrect usages of it. Maybe it's related to how 4.d3 is the main line of the Two Knights now instead of 4.Ng5 and people want to be able to disambiguate 4.Ng5 from that because "Modern Bishop's Opening" is too long to be worth saying instead of "Two Knights". Although MBO often just goes right into a Giuoco Pianissimo anyway, so idk. However, there is a really nice quality for more moves having names. Having a name that refers to all lines of 4.Ng5 (ie a word name, not "4.Ng5") is definitely useful for study purposes, which must be why he adopted it especially since allowing the actual Fried Liver is considered a bad move (I only see 5...Na5 and 5...Nd4 (going for the checkmate trap) being advocated). Also apparently 3.Bc4 h6 is called the Anti-Fried-Liver by some and it's not terribly rare. "Knight Attack" seems like a reasonable name but even that doesn't seem to be in RSes which is a bit odd although I should check my later pdfs. Prob has to do with it being the old main line. Dayshade (talk) 06:46, 29 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
By the way we're not anti-video as such when it comes to reliable sources, but we are kind of anti-YouTube. It is mostly self-published content and is generally considered an unreliable source per WP:RSPYT. DVD's issued by ChessBase etc should be fine, they're an alternative to books for people who learn better that way. We do link to Fischer's video commentary in the Opera Game article but more as an external link of interest than a source. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 06:58, 29 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm tempted to buy the thing just to get to the bottom of how many of the chess.com names are legit (their support is super slow and vague) but it's so expensive. Dayshade (talk) 07:08, 29 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There is no "official" list of opening names from chessbase or anywhere else. But we strongly prefer names that have been consistently published by reliable sources. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 11:43, 6 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Merger discussion for Konstantinopolsky Opening

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An article which may be of interest to members of this project—Konstantinopolsky Opening—has been proposed for merging with another article. If you are interested, please participate in the merger discussion. Thank you. Khiikiat (talk) 23:02, 30 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Check my contribs for quite a few other merger proposals, such as Göring Attack and Swiss Gambit. Dayshade (talk) 23:08, 30 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Two requests:
Could you list all your merger proposals here, not just those two? Or perhaps list them in WP:CHESS.
Could you start each of the merger discussions, by starting a new topic in the talk page and writing your rationale for wanting to merge? I am interested and sympathetic, but it should be you that starts the ball rolling.
Thanks. Bruce leverett (talk) 01:27, 31 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The merger rationales are largely identical, just being stubs about relatively non-notable openings that can do well becoming a section on their parent article; many are also undersourced. I linked talk pages where I did post something separate but it wasn't anything particularly important. Dayshade (talk) 04:21, 31 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Also, I wouldn't say I'm invested in this or anything. Just trying to be helpful as Max mentioned he had been meaning to do this sort of thing for some articles. Dayshade (talk) 04:23, 31 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Or maybe I'm now a WikiHunter. Dayshade (talk) 06:46, 31 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Copying and editing from where this originated among my MWOTs at Talk:Ruy Lopez, these are the most deserving ones:

And here are some I'm not sure about. Max already said Jerome Gambit should stay.

Those were the most deserving ones I saw from going through the list. There are also several very notable gambits that don't have an article or even their own 2nd level header, like Vienna Gambit, which is interesting. Dayshade (talk) 04:19, 31 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

For McDonnell Gambit, looks like it should be moved to be an article about a specific historical game, and then the rest can be merged into KGCV I'd say. Dayshade (talk) 04:26, 31 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

As an aside, for anyone who reads this, feel free to take a look at and reply on (and about my revisions to the pages if desired) Talk:Vienna Game, Talk:Ruy Lopez, Talk:Petrov's Defence, Talk:Four Knights Game. Dayshade (talk) 04:36, 31 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding Göring Attack, here are a couple of comments.
Are you saying I should add a template note like the one at the top of Berlin Defence to the section header for Göring Gambit and the new section header (whenever I add it to Evans Gambit) for Göring Attack for disambiguation? I'm down to do that although I honestly don't think the crossreferencing would be necessary, especially because it's so rarely done otherwise, and they don't have literally identical names (unlike for some Steinitz Variations).
And here is the diff for Göring Attack: [2] looks like they were just referring to that list of moves; there was never any commentary. Clearcut merge I'd say. Dayshade (talk) 19:39, 31 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I have to admit that the cross-referencing I suggested is optional. But Göring is not as notable as, say, Steinitz, and when I saw that we were discussing his variation of the Evans, I first thought, "Aren't they confused? His variation is part of the Scotch." Maybe just me. Bruce leverett (talk) 22:00, 31 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah I just feel like it'd spam the page if we did that consistently. A footnote might be better, but I think it's fine. Also, the names are not very important, I think they're just nice for being able to refer back to with anchorable names, which is the main reason why I'm hesitant about Max's trimming of them sometime. There is a $200 curated online source that I think might have coined some of these. Are there any of the proposed mergers that you'd say you oppose? And what is the general philosophy on when merging is worth the effort? Dayshade (talk) 17:03, 1 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion at Konstantinopolsky has been very fruitful. I think Göring Attack, Swiss Gambit, and Balogh Defense are clearcut merges so if there are no objections I'll merge soonish. Probably the same for the short variation pages. I've also had no objections to merging Scotch Game, Classical Variation back in to Scotch but please do lmk if you disagree. Dayshade (talk) 18:53, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I performed the merges of Göring Attack and Swiss Gambit as no one objected. Dayshade (talk) 15:02, 10 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Irish Gambit or Chicago Gambit?

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I have requested that Irish Gambit be moved to Chicago Gambit. See Talk:Irish Gambit#Requested move 3 September 2025. I thought the move would be uncontroversial, but it turns out I was wrong. Does anyone here have an opinion on the matter? Khiikiat (talk) 10:27, 6 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Serbian nationalism and overemphasis on medals/team events

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Does anyone else see an issue with this? Even the whole "golden age of Serbian chess" narrative seems problematic to me. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 19:54, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It's not clear how the first two issues you bring up are related. Regarding your last point, if reliable sources support such a narrative and it isn't given undue weight, I don't see a problem. Cobblet (talk) 23:48, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
What if they're written by people who are Serbian nationalists though? (idk if they are) Dayshade (talk) 02:05, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
So long as they're following Wikipedia's WP:CONDUCT and content policies, their personal beliefs are irrelevant. Focus on article content during discussions, not on editor conduct. Cobblet (talk) 02:46, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
To figure out what you had in mind, I looked at Svetozar Gligoric, and at the talk page and contrib list of the guy who has done a lot of editing there. Anywhere else I should be looking? I am about to do some traveling and may not be able to make intelligent comments until Sunday or later. Bruce leverett (talk) 03:24, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]