Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chess

This is the talk page for discussing WikiProject Chess and anything related to its purposes and tasks.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

WT:CHESSWT:CHESS

Archives: Index, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40: 3 months

WikiProject Chess was featured in a WikiProject Report in the Signpost on 28 January 2013.

WikiProject Chess
Shortcut: WP:CHESS

Navigation Menu

Assessment statistics

Skip to: the bottom of page to add a new topic or see most recent new topics

Nomination of Sagar Shah for deletion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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:

Göring Attack (merge into Evans Gambit)
Swiss Gambit (merge into Bird's Opening; strange it had its own article but From's did not)
Balogh Defense (merge into Staunton Gambit as a declined line (probably?))
Irish Gambit (merge into King's Knight Opening? or would that be weird)
Sicilian Defence, Chekhover Variation and Sicilian Defence, Katalymov Variation (merge into Sicilian Defence)
Modern Defense, Norwegian Defense and Modern Defense, Monkey's Bum (merge back into Modern Defense as all three articles are short)
(edit) Grünfeld Defence, Nadanian Variation and Scotch Game, Classical Variation as well

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

Tennison Gambit and Lisitsin Gambit (merge into Zukertort Opening? I feel less confident about these, as you can see at Talk:Tennison Gambit and Talk:Lisitsin Gambit);
Maróczy Gambit (see Talk:Maróczy Gambit)
McDonnell Gambit and Rice Gambit - should these be merged into King's Gambit, Classical Variation?
Italian Gambit (it seems kind of cute though honestly, so maybe I'll expand; see Talk:Italian Gambit)

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.

There is already a topic in Talk:Göring Attack about how that article was merged into Evans Gambit in 2008, but then the related content was removed from Evans Gambit, so the editor starting the topic had re-created Göring Attack. I will try to review all this by looking at edit histories when I have a moment.
Göring Attack and Göring Gambit are not the same, but they are related and are named after the same guy. We should at least cross-reference them to each other via hatnotes. Bruce leverett (talk) 19:06, 31 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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?

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

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]

I agree that "golden age of Serbian chess" and "golden generation of Serbian chess" are not sourced, generally unencyclopedic, and indicative of a nationalistic bias. However, the article as a whole is not badly constructed or organized. In other discussions, we have concluded that an overemphasis on medals is not good in chess articles, but in Svetozar Gligorić it appears that a balanced selection of events he won or earned high places in is summarized -- correct me if I am neglecting something. Bruce leverett (talk) 15:08, 23 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It's not only Gligoric. Several other articles about Yugoslav/Serbian players like Ivkov, Matanovic, Trifunovic, Kostic etc have had the same treatment. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 21:39, 23 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Nomination of List of ECO codes for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article List of ECO codes 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/List of ECO codes 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.

Khiikiat (talk) 13:39, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]