Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chess

Alexander Alekhine has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Z1720 (talk) 02:46, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

I would like to update this, by adding a featured list, removing two former good articles that have been delisted, and adding four good articles. I anticipate that this will be an editor's nightmare. Would anyone object if I first separated the list of FAs from the list of GAs, and then made the list of GAs easier to edit, by either changing it to one-column format, or taking it out of table format altogether? Bruce leverett (talk) 01:06, 24 March 2025 (UTC)

:I see that the present format was adopted 'way back in 2009, by some editors who are not heavily active in chess-related article any more. I will carry out my proposed change, but document it in the talk page of that article, rather than here.

:Also, after reviewing the instructions for creating Wikipedia tables, I have figured out how to distribute the Good Articles into two columns, without having to redistribute them by hand every time one adds or removes an entry from the table. So I will do that, rather than changing into one-column format or taking it out of table format altogether. Bruce leverett (talk) 21:03, 24 March 2025 (UTC)

::It has been pointed out to me that Wikipedia:WikiProject Chess/Reviewed articles is an obsolete early version of Wikipedia:WikiProject Chess/Recognized content, and that WP:Chess transcludes both of them. The right thing for me to do, therefore, is just delete the former version and remove the transclusion of it. Sorry for any confusion I may have caused by the above paragraphs. Bruce leverett (talk) 14:40, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

Magnus Carlsen has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Z1720 (talk) 17:13, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

Until now, this page redirected to just chess. But in common chess parlance, the term "classical chess" usually refers to long time controls, the opposite of fast chess, which has a dedicated article. After some deliberation, I've retargeted it to {{slink|glossary of chess#classical}}, which is a bit more appropriate, but should this be its own article? The history of classical chess is currently not adequately covered anywhere on Wikipedia. 9ninety (talk) 07:50, 5 June 2025 (UTC)

:To me "classical chess" is just "chess". MaxBrowne2 (talk) 11:46, 13 June 2025 (UTC)

Hi, this looks like a worthy article, but we need to get some sources together to demonstrate notability. Certainly many world class GMs participated in the event between 1954 and 1977. Kazic's "International Championship Chess" (1972) is a solid source but dated (it only covers events up to 1972), while Olimpbase faces the self-published objection, though we have found it to be reliable and useful over the years. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 05:04, 6 June 2025 (UTC)

:It seems most of those events had a tournament book of some sort, usually written by Jaroslav Sajtar. [https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?ds=20&kn=student%20chess%20championship&ref=ds_ac_d_26&sts=t] They were organized by the International Union of Students, independently at first and then in conjunction with FIDE. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 23:40, 9 June 2025 (UTC)

::Another possible source is Kenneth Harkness's Official Chess Handbook (1967), which covers the events from 1954 to 1966. Any other source suggestions are welcome. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 00:11, 10 June 2025 (UTC)

:::[https://uscf1-nyc1.aodhosting.com/CL-AND-CR-ALL/CL-ALL/1960/1960_08_2.pdf Here] is a link to an article about the 1960 World Student Team, from Chess Life. I will post more about it in the talk page of the draft article. Bruce leverett (talk) 14:39, 11 June 2025 (UTC)

:List of chess openings has always been bad, but can it be redeemed? I would have nominated the list for deletion years ago if I thought there was any realistic chance it could be deep sixed to put it and us out of misery. I think Max has expressed concerns about this page as well. Quale (talk) 18:48, 8 June 2025 (UTC)

:Looking at both the edit history and the talk page, I guess it has gone through several stages. The present stage looks too unwieldy, not to mention unsourced. But was there an earlier stage when it was more plausible than it is now?

:I might also ask: since Wikipedia has its own ideas of what a "List" article should look like, is it possible to fit the chess openings into that model? Bruce leverett (talk) 19:24, 8 June 2025 (UTC)

::The question of what the list should be is interesting. My personal inclination would be to have a much leaner list, something along the lines of https://www.365chess.com/eco.php, but this might be pointlessly redundant to :Encyclopaedia of Chess Openings. I can also understand why some people would prefer a more comprehensive list, even including the goofy stuff. The list :lichess uses is as far as I as am willing to go: https://github.com/lichess-org/chess-openings. I have qualms about creating such a list based on a single source, but since lichess is kind enough to make their data available in machine-readable formats, it would only require a few tens of lines of Python to spit out :H:WIKITEXT that we could paste directly into the article. Quale (talk) 00:01, 9 June 2025 (UTC)

:::Another possible format would be [https://www.chessgames.com/chessecohelp.html this], with one line per ECO code. This article used to have a format like that (for example [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_chess_openings&oldid=76314390 this version] which is from 2006), but editors weren't content with it. Since this is Wikipedia, editor want to link from this article to our own articles about openings; but this often leads to two or more links from one ECO code. On the other hand some ECO codes don't have any links; these include some very popular variations, such as "symmetrical English". So the ECO codes aren't perfect as a framework for creating a Wikipedia list of openings, but they are quite a lot better than nothing; I have often consulted the chessgames.com list to look things up.

:::The present version of the article bears a superficial resemblance to the Index of Named Openings and Variations in the back pages of The Oxford Companion to Chess. But for every entry in that list, there is an article in the book, however short, that refers to it. At least I think there is, based on my sampling of the list; there aren't "links" (page numbers) back to the articles, but it's easy to find them, since it's all in alphabetical order. I think that for the present format to be encyclopedic, we could not give a name for any variation or any opening unless we mentioned that variation or opening by name in some openings article. Moreover, all those mentions should have anchors, so that we could link back to them from this article. Bruce leverett (talk) 18:18, 9 June 2025 (UTC)

::::[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_chess_openings&oldid=337732 This version] is better than what we have now. We could use something like that and retitle it to something like "list of chess openings by ECO code". We could still mention the more important sublines within ECO codes, but we need to lose all those stupid meme opening names. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 23:18, 9 June 2025 (UTC)

The Erik Kislik article that got PRODed has more merit than the William Graif one which recently got accepted, after being rejected 2 years ago. MaxBrowne2 (talk) MaxBrowne2 (talk) 09:13, 13 June 2025 (UTC)

:I think that the references are a load of fluff. The uschess.org reference is a blurb advertising a podcast. The mention by Bryan Smith in chess dot com is just a passing reference. I googled his book, and found some blogs where somebody liked it, but no serious reviews. I would still say this is uncontroversial. Bruce leverett (talk) 14:42, 13 June 2025 (UTC)

::That one is at least debatable, as opposed to the connect 4 master. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 15:01, 13 June 2025 (UTC)