User talk:Krakatoa

Chess articles

Thanks for your fine work improving articles on chess topics. I'm amazed at how much they've improved in the last few months (particularly the articles on the openings), and I think they will continue to get a lot better. Quale 5 July 2005 02:05 (UTC)

Thanks from me too, your work on these articles is excellent. Sjakkalle (Check!) 6 July 2005 08:54 (UTC)

Napoleon Gambit

I saw you talk about the Napoleon Opening on Quale's talkpage. THe talk-system on Wikipedia allows easy eavesdropping ;-) Actually it was I who brought nominated that article for deletion (Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Napoleon Gambit). When I nominated it, the article was quite messed up. [1] It appeared that someone had got this mixed up with Fool's Mate and Napoleon Opening, only the title had anything to do with the variation of the Scotch Game (the redirect was made after this was pointed out). You are right that this variation is extremely obscure, and that there is no need to sacrifice a pawn since simply Qxd4 gives White a wonderful game. But the bar for notability of chess openings has been set low, the precedent is the Hippopotamus Defence being kept with a clear consensus. Sjakkalle (Check!) 6 July 2005 12:58 (UTC)

I would actually vote to keep "Hippopotamus Defense," which I think is in fairly common usage (for an obscure line -- although Spassky drew twice with it in one of his world championship matches with Petrosian). But I've never heard of the "Napoleon Opening" and "Napoleon Gambit" except here, so they would definitely get the ax if it were up to me. Frederick R 6 July 2005

Sjakkalle, I was inspired by your article on the Napoleon Opening to write one on the equally ridiculous Parham Attack (2.Qh5). Frederick R 6 July, 2005

Thanks for the Parham Attack article. I didn't know that opening had a name. Oddly, just yesterday I had read an article that Hikaru Nakamura had played it in a GM tournament, but it never occurred to me that it could be made into an article. It's remarkable what googling "2.Qh5" will find. Actually Bernard Parham is an interesting guy. Apparently he won the 1967 Indiana State Championship and has been a fixture of Indiana tournament chess for 30 years or more. He advocates his "Matrix System", which supposedly applies vector analysis and geometry to chess. That's the origin of the crazy early queen moves.

About the hippo: I don't think the wikipedia article describes what GMs call the hippopotamus defense. The wikipedia article is based on a website by Adam Bogon, which applies the name to a Black system featuring ...Nh6, ...g6, and then ...f6 (possibly ...f5) intending ...Nf7. IMO, idiotic. I think GM usage of the hippopotamus refers to a cramped defense that probably usually arises from an English opening. I think I've seen Karpov games with it (on both sides), and other GMs have used it although I don't think it's currently in fashion. If you can improve the Hippopotamus Defence article, that would be great. Quale 7 July 2005 00:15 (UTC)

At the same time you (Quale) were writing the above, I was writing this:

OK, I take back what I said about the Hippopotamus Defence. Wikipedia's definition is completely different from mine. I would vote to delete the goofiness in Wikipedia on the subject. I would define the Hippopotamus as an opening system where Black fianchettoes both bishops, plays e6 and d6, and puts the knights on d7 and e7. I think you're right that the term also refers to an English line. I will try to add something to the Hippopotamus article when I have a chance to do some research. Frederick R 6 July 2005

Thanks. One of the fun things about Wikipedia is that it turns out that you can make decent, and even interesting articles about seemingly trivial things like 2.Qh5?!. Of course I had no idea that you had actually met Bernard Parham. All I know about him is from www.chessdrum.com and I hadn't visited that site before today. I forgot to mention that the easy way to time stamp your comments is to use four tildes instead of three, so when I do ~~~~ I get this: Quale 7 July 2005 02:07 (UTC)

Ah, OK, thanks for the tip. I had read that someplace, then forgot it. Here, let's give it a try: Frederick R 7 July 2005 02:11 (UTC)

Notability and WP:VFD

Notability is a pretty controversial thing on WP:VFD. I would qualify as what many wikipedians would call a deletionist, since I think that editorial judgement and restraint as to what we choose not to give an article conveys important information that's lost when everything is included regardless of significance. Currently, inclusionists tend to get their way, in part because wikipedia has intentionally made it much easier to create articles than to delete them. I agree with this policy, but I don't agree that everyone and everything deserves an encyclopedia article. I admit that there are some advantages to a simple standard of "if it's verifiable and can be written in an WP:NPOV way, it can get an article". Unfortunately the encyclopedic notability standard I prefer is a lot more subjective, and since it must be applied case by case, it's more work, and people will disagree. Maybe subjective standards can't work in a world-wide collaborative community like wikipedia.

To be honest, I think most people who are truly notable don't care if they have an article in Wikipedia. They're too busy doing whatever interesting and important things they do that makes them notable to worry about vanity. The ones who want it the most are the ones who shouldn't get it. I figure that if the answer to the question, "Who would be hurt more if this bio article were deleted: wikipedia or the subject of the article?" is the subject would be hurt more, then the article is vanity and it should go. I think Wikipedia also has a problem with too much pseudoscience and crackpottery, and think that WP:NOR should be wielded like a giant hammer to crush that garbage. I also have a fairly low tolerance for fancruft. I enjoy a lot of fannish stuff in my real life, but I really don't think it belongs in WP. Of course I suppose some would consider my interest in chess trivia to be equivalent. Sjakkale (sorry, misspelled his user name and pointed to a Wikipedia:Doppelganger account) Sjakkalle is someone I respect who has a more liberal view of what should be included in Wikipedia (I'd say he's in the middle, not inclusionist or deletionist), and he's contributed a lot to the chess articles and has contributed to wikipedia for a lot longer than I have. Quale 7 July 2005 02:36 (UTC)

All of what you say sounds reasonable to me. I guess that means I fall in the deletionist camp too. Frederick R 7 July 2005 02:46 (UTC)

Polish Immortal

Thanks for adding the "Polish Immortal" to the Dutch article. I was thinking that maybe this game deserves its own article. If you look at Category:Chess games, we already have articles on a few famous chess games. (Also, regarding your user name change: I'm sure that sort of change is fine. Wikipedia used to move user names for people on request, but apparently it's technically difficult and that service has been suspended for quite a while and is unlikely to return anytime soon. I think you could change your old user and talk pages into redirects to the new pages if you want. Sjakkalle could advise as he is a very proficient wikipedian and an admin.) Quale 7 July 2005 21:15 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice. I had had the same thought about the Polish Immortal when I tacked it onto the Dutch Defense article -- so I have now written an article about it. It's just a stub, but that's a start. I may add annotations (as you might imagine, it's annotated at various sites on the Internet) when I have some time. Krakatoa 8 July 2005 02:08 (UTC)

Very good. Because of WP:NOR, you will want to source provide a reference for any annotation or observation about the game that isn't obvious, even though you're probably a strong enough player to annotate it yourself. (I'm not a strong enough chess player to be tempted to do much original research--I just look up most of this stuff on the web or in books.) In addition to famous games, we also need more articles on famous chess tournaments. If you look at Category:Chess competitions, wikipedia has Hastings 1895 chess tournament but lacks New York 1924 and 1927 and a bunch of others.

I will try to write an article on New York 1924 when I get a chance. I like that tournament because old man Lasker scored 80%, winning IIRC 1.5 points ahead of Capablanca, who had crushed him 3 years earlier in their world championship match. Moscow 1935 was pretty cool, too. Lasker, age 67, was 1/2 point out of first, the only undefeated player, just behind co-winners Botvinnik and Flohr, and ahead of Capablanca, whom he crushed. I like Lasker better than Capablanca -- can you tell? Krakatoa 8 July 2005 20:21 (UTC)

I think the success that Lasker had and Korchnoi continues to have late in their careers is fascinating because it's so rare in chess. (Lasker and Korchnoi aren't directly comparable in all ways of course, since I think Lasker was World Champion around age 25 and Korchnoi didn't develop to World Championship strength until much later in his career. Korchnoi's gradual improvement into his 40s and 50s until he reached the World Championship level seems almost unique in chess.) Now that I'm on the other side of 40 I have more empathy than I would have 20 years ago. I think it's a shame that the current fashion for rapid play puts such a great premium on youth rather than experience.

Last week I was reading a few of Lasker's letters reproduced at chesscafe.com (they're halfway down the pages) and he certainly could be ornery. If you write about New York 1924 you might want to read what Lasker had to say about his experience when he explained why he didn't play in 1927--he wasn't happy at all. Still the life of a chess professional has always been hard, and I think it was even much tougher then. I think I can understand why he felt that tournament organizers showed favoritism toward a charismatic Cuban over him. Apparently Lasker thought that Capablanca had been rude to him during their negotiations for a championship match, and maybe the fact that Capablanca got some financial support from the Cuban government (I don't know if Capa actually worked as a diplomat) was irksome to Lasker too. Quale 9 July 2005 04:34 (UTC)

Openings

On to a different chess subject. The chess opening article is much improved over what it was a long time ago, but it still has some rough edges. In particular, the very beginning and the first section (Aims of the opening) need work. Those are the only parts of that article that haven't been rewritten in the last few months. (If you look at the article history and go back to say February of this year, you can see how far the chess opening article has come.) In particular, I really dislike this sentence in the intro: "There are a number of openings, some defensive, and some offensive; some are tactical, and some are strategic; some openings focus on the center, and others focus on the flanks; some approaches are direct, and others are indirect." It isn't false, but it doesn't sound encyclopedic. For the chess opening#Aims of the opening section it might be simplest to just paraphrase a list of classical opening principles given by Reinfeld or Fine and credit the original source, and this would also avoid the original research problem. We should mention that classical opening principles are frequently violated today, and current grandmasters have gone beyond even the territory staked out by the hypermodern school.

Finally the chess opening#Indian systems (1.d4 Nf6) section needs short descriptions of a few openings that I didn't write anything for, including Modern Benoni, Benko Gambit, Knight's Tango, and Bogo-Indian. I tried to describe each opening briefly in 1-4 sentences and keep the amount of discussion roughly proportional to the importance of the opening. Owen's Defense and St. George's Defense got only a single sentence together, and many of the irregular openings listed in the flank section don't get any discussion in the text at all. Looking at this again, the Semi-open section needs more, especially for the Sicilian, French, and Caro-Kann because they're a lot more important than is made apparent by the text of the article. Actually Open games needs work too, because the Ruy needs more discussion and the King's Gambit isn't mentioned in the text at all. Quale 8 July 2005 04:31 (UTC)

Yeah, I noticed that the opening article needed some work. I should be able to do some of that. How do I provide sources -- link to them in the article? Mention them in my description of the edit? Something else? Krakatoa 8 July 2005 05:35 (UTC)

Some people use refs right in the text footnote style, but in general I think this is unnecessarily picky for chess articles unless we need to provide a source for something controversial. Footnotes seem more useful for heavy philosophy and law, and maybe history and science. Also, I think it will be relatively unusual for a chess article to have more than about a half dozen references total, so it shouldn't be too hard for people to figure out. Generally I've just been putting the references I find most useful either in the "References section" or the "External links" section at the bottom of the article. There is a standard Book reference template that can be used in the references section. I find external links harder to deal with because there isn't a set standard way to format them. You can look at Wikipedia:Cite sources for the standard policy on this. It's linked near the bottom of the edit page whenever you do an edit. For the individual chess opening articles we could cite NCO, MCO and BCO for nearly every opening but I haven't been doing that. Usually one or two have more interesting things to say than the others, so I just list the ones that provided info used in the article. Naturally the chess opening article lists them all as references. The Oxford Companion to Chess comes up in a lot of chess articles because it has good historical info with bios and dates, and has a good reputation for scholarship. Quale 8 July 2005 14:11 (UTC)

Some technical notes

Hi Krakatoa! Sure, it's fine to make a new account as long as you openly declare it like you have done. It is when people create multiple accounts to vote multiple times that policy is breached (this practise is called "sockpuppetry"). Technically it is possible for the developers to merge the history from your old account to your new account, but since that is a time consuming process, that service has regretably been shut down.

I think redirects are what you were looking for. To make a page "point" to another you write:

#Redirect[[Target article]]

After merging two articles together, a redirect should be left behind and there should be no deletion. In part this is because the GFDL license requires the author(s) to be attributed and the easiest way is to preserve the page history in a redirect. Also, redundant redirects may be useless, but they are also quite cheap and harmless. Sjakkalle (Check!) 8 July 2005 08:06 (UTC)

Checkmate

I saw your good edits to checkmate. I don't like this sentence: "Traditionally, when checkmate occurs (or is thought to be inevitable) one lays one's king down on its side to indicate that the game has ended (by checkmate or resignation of the game)." For one thing, the word "checkmate" is used twice, and it seems to me that should be avoided. Secondly, I've never seen any knoledgable person tip their king in resignation AFTER they've been checkmated.

I don't think that you wrote the original sentence, but I think you would be a good one to revise it. Bubba73 00:17, July 10, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, Bubba73. I don't like that sentence, either. I am actually partly responsible for it -- I added the "by checkmate or" terminology at the end, since the way it was written it read that someone who was checkmated tipped over his king to indicate resignation. Huh? But as you suggest, the whole notion of tipping over one's king after being checkmated is weird: the game is over and the "checkmatee" need not (and in my experience does not) knock over the king to acknowledge that. I would accordingly have been inclined to take out any reference to tipping over one's king after resigning, except that the previous writer actually posted a photograph of a knocked-over checkmated king. I will try rewriting the sentence to say that one normally tips over one's king to indicate resignation, but that one can also do so if checkmated -- although it's really not necessary.

In my opinion, the whole "tipping over the king" discussion probably should be axed altogether, since it's not really directly related to checkmate. First, one does not normally tip over one's king to indicate that one is checkmated, but rather to resign. Second, one resigns when it is apparent that one has no chance of winning or drawing the game -- even though actual checkmate might be many moves away. Krakatoa 00:41, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

Légal Trap

Thanks for spotting that we already had an article at Legall's Mate when I created a second article. It is merged now. The score between us now stands at 1-1. :-) Sjakkalle (Check!) 12:58, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

Blackburne Shilling Gambit vs Giuoco Piano

It would be fine to say Italian Game instead. At first I didn't put Blackburne Shilling under anything at all, until I remembered that Burgess had called that trap the "Oh my god" trap in his Mammoth Book of Chess. In that book he puts it in the GP section, which is understandable even if not precise. I just followed his lead for convenience. Really all the lines after 3.Bc4 could be considered one opening, and the Evans Gambit, GP, and Two Knights could be considered variations. They're certainly more strongly related than all the lines after Black's second move in the QGD. Quale 19:05, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

Yes, that last is an interesting point. The different "flavors" of the QGD (2...c6, 2...e6, 2...Bf5, 2...Nc6, 2...c5, etc.) are radically different from one another. It's odd that they're all nominally one opening. I took your suggestion about Italian Game, writing a (very un-original) article about it, adding it to the Chess opening article, changing the terminology in the Giuoco Piano article, and recategorizing the Blackburne Shilling Gambit under "Italian Game" in the Category:chess traps article. Krakatoa 23:46, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

I just looked at the Mammoth Book of Chess again and found that I didn't even accurately report what Burgess wrote. He does define the Italian Game just as you did in the new article you wrote. (I think sometimes Italian Game is used only as a synonymn for Giuco Piano, but I think the definition you use is more useful and better.) In the book index, his "Oh my god!" trap shows up under Giuoco Piano, but when you turn to the referenced page you find that Burgess put it in the Italian Game section, just as you proposed. I had only looked in the index when I made my earlier statement. Interestingly Burgess didn't seem to know about the Blackburne Shilling Gambit name for the trap, but I didn't either until I read your excellent article. I also put something on the Hungarian Defense talk page about something I had put in the article originally that was probably just wrong. Take a look and see if you think we should fix up that article, since 5.c3 doesn't seem to be an especially good reply to 4...exd4. Quale 00:13, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

Nimzo-Indian

I agree 100% that the article should be Nimzo-Indian Defence, with a redirect from Nimzo-Indian. We have the same problem with the Bogo-Indian. Since articles already exist at the redirects and they have had edits, we can't do the move ourselves. Probably the best bet is to ask User:Sjakkalle to make the move, as he's an admin. He's also a chess player, so he'll understand why the full names are better. (I wrote Defence above instead of Defense since it looks like that article was originally created using British spelling. The wikipedia practice is to conform to the spelling that was used to create the article. If the article is about a clearly British subject, British spelling should be used, and the reverse if it's a U.S. subject.) Quale 01:20, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

Ah, OK, I didn't realize an admin had to do the moving. I figured it was just another thing that I didn't know how to do. I'd noticed some time ago that someone (maybe Sjakkalle, I dunno) had renamed the Lilienthal article "Andor Lilienthal" (it had been "Andre Lilienthal" or some such) and figured anyone who knew how to do it could rename an article. I'll suggest to Sjakkalle that he rename the Nimzo and Bogo articles. Thanks. Krakatoa 18:07, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

OK, I'll move them. Usually also non-administrators can move these articles using the "move"-tab. The primitive copy-paste moves should be avoided since they don't move the article's history. There are three restrictions on moves:

• Anonymous users (not logged in) cannot move.
• If an article already exists at the target, it cannot be moved there. (The article must first be deleted by an administraor to "make way")
  • Exception: If the only thing at the target is a redirect pointing back to what you are trying to move, and there is no further history, it can be moved there anyway.
• Anybody moving an article to "(article title) on Wheels" or "(article title) is Communism" will be in serious trouble... (For an explanation of this one see this page.)

I see that the redirect at Bogo-Indian Defence has a prior history so I'll need to delete that one first.

Incidentally, I'm not a particularily strong chess player, my national rating is at 1188, and after the last rated tournament I played, it's amazing that I still have rating points left... The contributions I have made to these articles is from knowledge gathered from various books and web-references which I've only been able to apply limitedly in actual games.

By the way thanks for your overhaul of the Ruy Lopez article, it looks much better now! Sjakkalle (Check!) 08:04, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for moving those articles, and for enlightening me on the "move" procedure. I agree that the Ruy Lopez article looks much better, but I'm not the party responsible for that. (I only made some pretty minor edits.) I believe (and my glance at the history appears to confirm) that Quale deserves the credit. Krakatoa 19:21, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

Ugly chess diagrams

Do you have any ideas what to do about the ugly chess diagrams (Template:Chess diagram) that are being advocated? I don't want to start a war over this, but they're popping up in chess articles all over and I think they are distinctly worse than the diagrams they are replacing. I dislike the new diagrams for several reasons. Although the green and buff colors of the old diagrams are perhaps not ideal, I think the contrast of the brown on brown proposed replacement is too low. Standardizing the diagram sizes at fixed regular and small sizes is good, but I find the regular size smaller than I like. The coordinates around the board of the new diagrams are rendered as bitmaps rather than actual font characters and aren't very pretty. Coordinates on all 4 sides of the board are redundant when only 2 sides are needed and take extra space. Finally, the biggest complaint I have with the new diagram template is fortunately easily fixed: the use of multiple boxes around the board is ugly, and simply adds unnecessary visual clutter. Zero boxes is the correct number. Over use of boxes is a classic novice's mistake in typography. Unfortunately the low contrast and cluttered appearance were deliberate design decisions, so I fear that it may be difficult to change anyone's mind about these. Quale 22:41, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

I completely agree with you. As you evidently noticed, I reverted the "Blackburne Shilling Gambit" article when someone changed the green-and-white diagram to one of the crappy brown diagrams. I don't know what to do about it, though. I'm not familiar enough with Wikipedia to know how these sorts of issues are resolved. Krakatoa 22:53, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

I think there was a discussion on the meta which led to this, here I think. I agree with you, the green was better, even though I am used to playing all my chess on brown boards. I think green is used in Rogaland, but brown is used nearly everywhere else in Norway. Sjakkalle (Check!) 08:35, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

I didn't know you lived in Norway. Your handle is suggestive, of course, but since you're a native speaker of English, and seem to write in "American English" (no Briticisms, etc. that I've noticed) I figured you lived in the U.S. It seems you, Quale, and I like the green boards; too bad that is apparently the minority view. Actually, I like the black-and-white boards the best (as used at the top of the Stalemate article, for example), but I don't know how to make them. But the brown ones -- yuck! Krakatoa 15:43, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

Schiller and so on

Just wanted to say thanks for the support over on Talk:Eric Schiller; it's really much appreciated. I've edited here for more than three years now and seen rather a lot in that time, but I think that's the first time anybody has called for me to be banned. Quite amusing really.

Thanks also for all the good work on other chess articles; I think the stuff on openings in particular has come on tremendously in the last few months. --Camembert 18:11, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

Glad to lend my support. I didn't think there was any great likelihood of you getting banned, of course, but Sloan's vitriol really pissed me off.

I agree that the opening articles have gotten a lot better in the last few months -- not that I'm wholly (or primarily) responsible. Quale and others have put in a lot of work. Krakatoa 19:01, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

Chess Opening Theory Wikibook

Would love your help on the Chess Opening Theory Wikibook. We've got a lot of theory in the wikipedia pages, but at some point I think this stuff goes beyond encyclopedia material. Wouldn't it be great to have a wiki version opening theory? Kind of a wiki-Nunn's so to speak.... Anyway, your help is always appreciated....

I will try to help, although I'm not sure how this will work unless we were to replicate NCO or ECO or MCO (or some combination thereof) online, which would of course be illegal. It's a huge undertaking in any event. Krakatoa 22:31, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

Yes, we would to avoid copying NCO/ECO/MCO analysis -- but the moves are not under copyright and our analysis would be original -- just like the opening sections in wikipedia. Huge undertaking is an understatement, but hopefully the wiki-gods will help... ThreeE 22:37, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

If our analysis is original, doesn't that violate the Wikipedia:No Original Research policy? Krakatoa 00:02, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

It would if it was on Wikipedia, but this would be on Wikibooks where original research is the name of the game.  :) This is another good reason to move the analysis off of Wikipedia opening entries. ThreeE 01:48, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Ah, OK. I didn't know Wikibooks had different policies in that respect than Wikipedia itself. Krakatoa 16:18, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Ray Nagin article

Where did I insert POV quotes, exactly, in the Ray Nagin article? Rather, I remember removing a dearth of information that was unsourced. If I did remove the information about the Posse Comitataus Act, it was completely unintentional. Another user, who you identify by their IP address, was in the midst of editing the article at the same time. I think this information was removed accidentally by me or accidentally/intentionally by this user.--Jentizzle 19:39, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

I did not attribute the addition of POV material to you, but to 209.247.222.81. I was not objecting to deletion of material about the Posse Comitatus Act (which I would welcome, since no one has cited any basis for the claim that Gov. Blanco's extensive 8/28 letter to President Bush requesting assistance was insufficient under that Act). I was complaining about your deletion of the following material, which my comparison of the 18:08 version (the last by me) and the 18:33 version (after four edits by you) indicates that you deleted:

"On Saturday August 27, President Bush "declared an emergency exists in the State of Louisiana and ordered Federal aid to supplement state and local response efforts in the parishes located in the path of Hurricane Katrina beginning on August 26, 2005, and continuing." [2] The president's "action authorize[d] the Department of Homeland Security, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), to coordinate all disaster relief efforts . . . ." The Department of Homeland Security's website states that, "In the event of a terrorist attack, natural disaster or other large-scale emergency, the Department of Homeland Security will assume primary responsibility . . . for ensuring that emergency response professionals are prepared for any situation. This will entail providing a coordinated, comprehensive federal response to any large-scale crisis and mounting a swift and effective recovery effort." [3] Page 43 of the National Response Plan issued by the Department of Homeland Security in December 2004 states, under the "Guiding Principles for Proactive Federal Response," that "Standard procedures regarding requests for assistance may be expedited or, under extreme circumstances, suspended in the immediate aftermath of an event of catastrophic magnitude." [4]"

Accidental, and I apologize. But I have to ask why you refer to Governor Blanco's request as coming on the 28th, when the document is dated and referenced by other newspapers as being sent on the 27th? --Jentizzle 20:21, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Bovineone in his reversion at 19:09 characterized your edits as "unexplained and unsubstantiated mass vandalism by Jentizzle." Krakatoa 19:51, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

If 209 anon keeps it up, I'll get the 3RR posse on him/her or do an Rfc on the issues.--MONGO 19:54, September 5, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, MONGO. Krakatoa 20:07, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Jentizzle, apology accepted, as I said on the article's talk page. But the Blanco letter appears to be dated August 28, as I said. [5] Krakatoa 22:11, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I've seen the .PDF, which I still don't think has any more credibility than the press release with the date heading of August 27. Furthermore, the press release is linked to the public site, not the .PDF. Somehow I'm uneasy about assuming that the whoever is updating the Lousiana state government's site just made a huge mistake. The discrepancy could at least be noted in the Nagin and Blanco articles, meaning adding both links, for the press release and .PDF. Beyond this, it's not as if the .PDF couldn't have been edited. Anyway, I've updated the talk page for Mayor Nagin with a link to a FEMA statement dated August 27 [6] which references a state request for federal assistance --Jentizzle 03:01, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

The assault on the List of sexual slang

Two users in particular The Literate Engineer & Voice of All(MTG) have apparently made it their duty to get rid of the list and they have been using underhanded tactics in an attempt to do so in any way they can.

But word is getting out, and supporters of the list are starting to rally against them and protect the list (via rerverting vandalism, countering their tactics, etc.).

The results of the 18 October AfD:

• Keep & clean = 3
• Keep, no clean = 11
• Delete = 2

The anonymous clean-up notice

The following anonymous clean-up notice was posted to the list on November 1st:

23:44, 1 November 2005 68.17.227.41

The notice was placed without group consensus, and there was no edit comment. Pretty sneaky.

This was the user's only edit. Nothing before or after. A sock-puppet.

The results of the 10 November Afd

• Keep & clean up =3 votes
• Keep, with no mention of clean up =7 votes
• Delete = 4 votes (including the nomination)

That's 10 votes to keep, out of which 3 voted to clean up. Seven out of ten clearly voiced their desire to retain the list without deleting its entries.

Dishonest report of Afd results

Voice of All(MTG) reported the results as " ", and he and The Literate Engineer used that as the basis to erase the content of the list, which they did in successive edits.

Non-consensual list move

During the 10 November AfD discussion, Voice of All(MTG) moved the list to the new article name sexual slang, citing the introduction at the top of the list as the basis for the move ("it is more than a list"). Several users then used the article title as an argument against including any list entries.

When an article is moved, the change history is moved with it, and a redirect is placed under the original article's title. If the redirect is edited, then the article cannot be moved back. That is exactly what has happened to the list. See Wikipedia:Merging and moving pages for more information.

The current situation

The change history of the list is currently stranded as the change history of Sexual slang.

The content of the list itself has been restored to List of sexual slang, where it was originally. This preserves the spirit of the results of the two AfD discussions mentioned above.

To summarize:

1. On Oct 18 the list was nominated for AfD (article for deletion), but this attempt to delete failed, and the vote was overwhelmingly to Keep.
2. An anonymous sock-puppet placed a clean-up notice on the list. It has been used as a justification to delete entries.
3. On Nov 10, The Literate Engineer made an AfD attempt against the list and it failed too.
4. Voice of All (MTG) underhandedly moved the list to the non-list name sexual slang, while the AfD was still underway.
5. Voice of All(MTG)reported false results for the 10 November AfD vote, and he and The Literate Engineer edited out the entire list.
6. I posted a rebuttal to the above antics on the talk page for sexual slang, and reverted the sexual slang article to the November 15 version in the article's change history (the complete list). My username ("Bend over") was banned as inappropriate or offensive.
7. Some editors stated that an article is not the place for a list, and used that as a justification to keep list entries.
8. So I replaced the redirect at List of sexual slang with the actual content of the entire list. Unfortunately, the change history for the list is still part of the change history for the article sexual slang.
9. An attempt is being made to protect the list against vandalism at its original location: List of sexual slang.

Remember, the three reversion limit does not apply when reverting vandalism. Only if enough concerned users participate will this be successful.

Thank you for taking the time to read this letter. Red Rover 22:10, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Game against David Sprenkle

David Sprenkle was at the University of Illinois in 1982 (at least part of it) while I was there. Were you there too? Bubba73 (talk), 04:26, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Hi, Bubba73! No, I attended Illinois Institute of Technology and Columbia Law School, not the U of I. I played the game against Sprenkle at the "Master Challenge" tournament in one of the Chicago suburbs. Krakatoa 04:29, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

reply

"I never knew it was possible to add all that stuff about playing chess, liking chocolate, ,,,"

Those are userboxes that I originally got from other user pages, and then from Wikipedia:Userboxes.

" Not with you on the Country/Western thing, but your line made me chuckle. A friend of mine who moved from Chicago to Texas had used that line with me ("We've got all kinds of music here. Country AND Western."). I gather that neither he nor you originated that line."

The C&W thing is actually a joke. I like some C&W, but it isn't my favorite. I got the line about both kinds of music - country and western from the Blues Brothers movie.

"Keep up your good work on the chess articles."

Thank you, and you too. I'm the one that misspelled "desperado". I put in a link to it at the terminology, but at the time I suspected that you might be making an article about it, and you did. Those stalemate lines in Keres-Fischer are remarkable, aren't they? Bubba73 (talk), 17:28, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. Actually, now that you remind me, I think that my friend had mentioned that he got the line from the Blues Brothers. Yes, Keres-Fischer is unbelievable. I see why Fischer was so shocked to realize that he had no win after Qe5! simply allowing him to queen. Perpetual check I can believe, but having stalemates in three different lines is incredible. Maybe the most problem-like position I've ever seen in an actual game. Krakatoa 17:35, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Promotion (chess)

Promotion (chess): my contribution wasn't vandalism (rv), I just try to directly point promotion. Sorry for thr word. --AndrejJ 18:00, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

No problem. As you may have noticed, I deleted my earlier discussion that double promotion could happen if White played e5xNf6xg7xRh8 and Black played bxNc3xb2xRal, which is now redundant since it's shown by the illustrative game. Krakatoa 18:09, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

promotions and underpromotions

I just added a breakdown of promotions and underpromotions to these two articles.

The 2006 ChessBase database of 3,200,000 games, the breakdown of promotions is approximately:

• queen - 96.8%
• knight - 1.8%
• rook - 1.1%
• bishop - 0.2%

I suspect that most of the promotions to a rook were not necessary to win the game (or not to avoid stalemate), but to give enough power to win, and give a hint that it is time to resign. But I certainly have no reference to that. Do you know of anything along those lines, or a way to mention it in the articles without being an opinion? Bubba73 (talk), 00:39, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Also, only about 1.5% of the games have a promotion. I think it is much higher than that at the amateur level. Bubba73 (talk), 00:41, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Huh, that is all very interesting -- and largely counterintuitive, at least to me. I would've thought that promotions to queen were well over 99%. I agree that the percentage of games with promotions has to be much higher at the amateur level. Sorry, I don't know of anything discussing why people chose to underpromote. Krakatoa 13:42, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

There is a way that those statistics can be biased. Chessbase only counts the number of games with each of those types of promotions. So if a game has two or more promotions to a queen, it will only be counted as one. It may be that a lot of those promotions to a rook are cases when it is going to be immediately captured anyway, so for fun they promote to a rook instead of a queen. I can sook at some of the games to check, but I haven't done that. Also, there are probably a lot more promotions to a queen in amateur play, since masters will probably resign before a pawn is queened. Bubba73 (talk), 15:52, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

That is all true, although I would think that if people wanted to underpromote a pawn that's going to be captured anyway, there'd be more bishop promotions, since they're so unusual normally. I saw a game of Keene's where he did that; he said he wanted to see how careful the chess magazines were. (A guy once played a8(N)! in that situation in a tournament game against me, just to amuse his friends who were spectating.) I think some of the rook promotions might be in (decisive) K and P vs. K situations. If someone played out an ending with a lone king against me, I'd probably promote to a rook, just to underscore how ridiculous it was for the guy to play on. Once in a tournament game against a complete fish, I promoted five pawns to knight (I also had one of my original knights), and then mated with just the six knights, not using my king, rook, or bishop. Not all of the games in ChessBase are master games, by the way: some are from the "Girls Under-12 Championship" and such, and those kind of games doubtless contribute a disproportionate share of the promotions. I was very surprised by the percentage of knight promotions in the ChessBase database; it amazes me that almost 1 out of 50 games has a knight promotion. Krakatoa 17:48, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, a promotion to a queen or rook might be immediately captured by a minor piece, and the side tht just did the promotion captures the minor piece. Therefore a promotion to a rook or queen might result in winning a minor piece. A player likely wouldn't sacfifice a minor piece for a promotion to a minor piece. ... You are right about not all of the games being at a high level.... Still there were only about 880 promotions to knights out of the 3.2 million games. (and about 96 to bishop, 528 to rook, 46,100 games with a queen.) The fact that most of the games are at a high level skews the stats compared to amateur games, since there are relatively so few promotions at all. Masters know when they're beat. Bubba73 (talk), 18:38, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Something is a little funky about the ChessBase statistics: they add up to 99.9%, but I would think that there's a non-trivial number of games featuring two different kinds of promotions (the Irish championship game I cite, for example, has promotions to queen and rook). Those ought to be counted twice, which would bring the total over 100% -- but it's not. Maybe ChessBase only counts the first promotion?! I've now put into the "promotion (chess)" article examples of rook and bishop underpromotion. If you can find a nice example of a game with a knight underpromotion, you might want to throw that in. Krakatoa 19:36, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

It is 99.9% because I rounded off the percentages to one digit after the decimal. There should be some games with more than one type of promotion. I noticed the stull you did about underpromotion in the promotion (chess) article. Some of that might be better in the underpromotion article, with a link to it from Promotion as the main article about underpromotion. Bubba73 (talk), 19:41, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

(uninent) There are between 47,500 and 47,600 games with promotions, which is about 100 fewer than the sum of the individual ones. So using that figure puts Q: 97.1%, R 1.1%, B 0.2%, N 1.9%, qhich adds to 100.3%, after rounding. So maybe it should be stated that way. Bubba73 (talk), 19:48, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

OK, yes I think that is probably better. I will change the article to that.

You may well be right about the underpromotion article being more appropriate for my illustrative positions (except the part about mutual promotions to queen in the opening, of course). I have to go do some work, but if you want to move it, feel free. Krakatoa 19:55, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

There are 46,100+ games with at least one promotion to queen. However, there are 28,100+ with white and 19,000+ with black, total of 47,100 to 47,300. So that will change the stats slightly. I need to run each piece seperately for white and for black. Bubba73 (talk), 19:58, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Huh, that is a funny statistic too. I wouldn't have guessed that White promotes about 1 1/2 times as often as Black does. Krakatoa 20:03, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, that's the way it is across the board. Running the stats the better way, Q 96.9%, N 1.8%, R 1.1%, B 0.2%. This is ignoring cases where one side has more than one promotion of the same type, and I think that is the only flaw. That might make Queen promos slightly higher. Bubba73 (talk), 20:09, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

But those statistics are only counting once games with two or more kinds of promotions, right -- since now they add up to 100.0%, rather than 100.3%? Krakatoa 20:23, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

I had the database count each of the promotions to Q/R/B/N for both white and black. It gives the number of games of each. So the only promotions that are missed by this method are where the same player promotes two or more times to the same piece.

Here is a position like I talked about: 1k6/6PB/p7/1p1b4/2pp3P/8/PPP2rr1/1K2R1R1 w - - 0 32 white promoted the g pawn to a rook, and black saced a B for it. A Q promotion would have been the same, but a minor piece probably not. I think many of the rook promotions are like this, and not ones that the position required it. Bubba73 (talk), 20:38, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, Tim Krabbe talks about that (not sure if you're the one who put the link to his stuff in the "underpromotion" article) phenomenon -- he says that most underpromotions are not "true" (necessary) underpromotions. Krakatoa 21:13, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

I ran the search on my own database of my 163 tournament games. It found 5 promotions, all to queen. But off the top of my head I remembered one game that it overlooked. Happens that the promotion was the last move of the game, which may be why it overlooked it. So that may affect the stats. I've written to ChessBase about it. Bubba73 (talk), 02:20, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

American

I noticed that you recently added a link to American here. American is a disambiguation page as the phrase has many uses including a person from the Americas or the United States. In the future, could you link the term to one of the articles listed on the American disambiguation term, that would be great. As an example, if you're linking to something related to the United States, you would input [[United States|American]]. Thanks! --Bobblehead 07:14, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Category:Chess Players

I noticed you added you-know-who: I had to laugh! Seems the article has gotten the attention of antisemites...at the same time, it would be nice to foreground the chess content and not the poor fellow's recent history. It's as if John Nash were only remembered for his nuttiness. Billbrock 02:47, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

True. A third or so of the article is about what a nut case Fischer is. Ty Cobb was a loathsome human being, but the article about him concentrates primarily on his baseball. Odd that in all that time no one had noticed that Fischer really ought to be on the list of chessplayers. Krakatoa 05:00, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

I think the section 1967-72 is weak, particularly 1970-71. How to fix? Billbrock 05:54, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

My chess library is mostly in boxes at the moment (because of remodeling of our house), or I would try to fix it. There definitely should be more on what Fischer was doing before the 1971 candidates matches. He beat Petrosian 3-1 (+2=2) in the USSR vs. the Rest of the World in 1970. [7] It should be mentioned that Board 1 for the ROW was Larsen, whom Fischer demolished 6-0 the following year. Fischer also played in some tournaments in this time period, with crushing results. Krakatoa 04:43, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Nice start! I think it's hard to make a case for Fischer = #1 earlier than 1967 (Monaco/Sousse, e.g.); the amazing thing about his career is his withdrawal from active play & his reemergence in 1970--and his incredibly rapid demostration of being CLEAR & DOMINANT #1--this needs to be played up. (I think of Sandy Koufax, who didn't get good till year 5 in majors.) He was obviously something special, but he wasn't a true prodigy in the sense of (say) Reshevsky or Spassky (both considerably stronger at age 12)....so how did he get so good so fast? WP:NOR of course, but I think it's useful to think of this as a frame for the narrative. Billbrock 06:56, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. Yes, it always struck me how Fischer stopped playing, then came back stronger than ever -- no longer just one of the leading players, but as you say, clearly the strongest player in the world. Any normal human becomes rusty (as Fischer himself did in 1972-92). By the way, someone should write an article on Chess Informant already. Krakatoa 07:06, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

A good night's work! Article still sucks, but it sucks LESS. Billbrock 09:37, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Six-piece DB

Confirms the soundness of your study! 2K1b3/8/1R1k4/2n5/2n5/8/8/8 b - - 0 1 is a draw , as you assumed. Billbrock 21:41, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Billbrock 21:41, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! After playing over Karpov-Kasparov, I was pretty sure R v. BNN was a draw. (As I recall, Kasparov said he was surprised how few winning chances there were.) The defender constantly harasses the other side with checks and threats of RxB. (Another way to look at it is that KNN v. K is a draw and KBN v. K is just barely a win, so it's not surprising that if you give the attacker an extra minor piece over those endings, but give the defender a better piece (a rook), the defender can draw.) But it's good to have confirmation: I would have bet heavily that RN v. BB was normally a draw, but the computers say the RN side wins. BBN v. R is a win, which doesn't surprise me: it's much harder for the defender, since exchange sacrifices don't work, and the attacker thus can interpose a bishop to a check. Krakatoa 22:29, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Do you know of a page that summarizes the normal result of the six-piece endgames? Bubba73 (talk), 00:00, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

RN vs. BB - the R&N usually win for same-colored bishops, but draw for opposite-colored bishops. Secrets of Pawnless Endings, page 341, says it offers few winning chances unless the attacker starts with a very favorable position. Bubba73 (talk), 00:16, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

I think I may have been confused. I was under the impression that RN beat BB generally, according to the computers -- as I said above, a result I found very surprising. RN beating same-colored bishops makes a lot more sense. Throwing a few positions with RN v. opposite-colored BB into the Shredder six-piece database seems to confirm that a draw is indeed the normal result. Yay! Sorry, I don't know of a page summarizing the normal results of 6-piece endgames. Krakatoa 06:43, 17 October 2006 (UTC) (corrected 1 May 2007)

Secrets of Pawnless endings' has a table of the ones w/o pawns that were finished at that time, including those two endings. Somewhere I've seen the complete list, but I can't find it. Bubba73 (talk), 20:41, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Fischer article

Hi, I don't wish to be critical of effort being put into improving articles, but see my comments on overlinking at Talk:Bobby Fischer. Rocksong 05:55, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Grandmasters

I believe it is a mistake to retrospectively call the likes of Morphy and Philidor grandmasters. They are not conventionally called that. I believe the term should be reserved for those who actually got called GMs: the original 5 GMs, plus those awarded the title by FIDE. (See International Grandmaster). Rocksong 04:54, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

OK, I agree. I thought there was some sort of consensus that people of obvious GM strength deserved to be on the list, since I saw that it contained a number of people whom FIDE had not awarded that title. Now I see that most of those were the five original grandmasters. I removed Morphy and Teichmann, whom I had added, and also Nimzowitsch, whom someone else had added. Someone (maybe you?) already removed Philidor. I'm going to remove Blackburne (added by someone else), too, for the same reason. Krakatoa 05:12, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I removed Philidor. Then thought I'd better discuss it before we started a revert war. As for Blackburne, someone called Mibelz added him on 23-Aug, dunno why. I don't think there's any official definition of who does or doesn't go on the list, I think it's just a result of different editors to different article. But I think we should go with the "conventional" definition of grandmaster, which as far as I know is what I said above. I don't hold any strong opinion on this, I just think it's nice for Wikipedia to be consistent. Rocksong 05:25, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

barnstar

		The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
		For many fine contributions to chess topics. Bubba73 (talk), 23:26, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! I'm touched. Krakatoa 06:43, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

SP

grammer → grammar Hey, in the same paragraph I said that I can't spell! If I do editing off-line I run it through a spell checker. If I edit on line, I make a lot of errors!  :-) Bubba73 (talk), 03:30, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

I know! I've fixed your spelling before! :-) Krakatoa 03:35, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Feel free to correct that or any of my other errors. Bubba73 (talk), 17:55, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Even when I run it through a spell checker (ad I did with the new material in "two knights ending"), I STILL make errors.! Bubba73 (talk), 23:09, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

That's the problem with spell checkers: if you type a known word, but it happens to be the wrong word, the spell checker won't flag it. Krakatoa 23:19, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Discussion about links to ChessWorld.net at WikiProject Chess

Hi, I started a discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chess#Links to chessworld.net - you are welcomed to contribute. Greetings, --Ioannes Pragensis 17:10, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

List of Ethnic Chess Openings

Hi... Umm... I er... nominated this list which you created for deletion, and you may review the AFD entry at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Ethnic Chess Openings and you are of course free to disagree with me. I sincerely hope that you are not too offended by the AFD, because in general, I hold your contributions to our chess articles in very high regard. Sjakkalle (Check!) 12:28, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject Columbia University

Greetings, fellow Columbian. I just created a WikiProject dedicated to Columbia University, the schools, environs, and the notable people who notably affiliated with it. If you want to be part of it, please check out WP:Columbia. It is very barebones right now, but with your help we can expand it and make it fully functional. If you have any questions please drop my a line on my talk page. --Valley2city^₪‽ 08:00, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Judy Miller

"Nor, by the way, is this a case where a reporter keeps silent to protect a whistleblower who told her about government wrongdoing."

Maybe it is. Depends upon what the meaning of is, is. Suppose one believed (falsely, but work with me for purposes of a hypothesis) that the CIA was culpable either through laziness or through its own maverick agenda in hiding information about the Iraq/Niger tie, yellowcake, etc. Then the White House/ Veep office etc. might be credited with "whistleblowing" in trying to bring the CIA's dereliction to the attention of the public. Against such presumptions, JM might have thought of herself as hiding the identity of a whistle-blower.

My point is only that terms like "whistle blower" don't define themselves. Any government is a variety of cross-currents, any of which may be hiding something (requiring that a whistle be blown on it) from the POV of other parts of the same government.

In the case of Mark Felt a/k/a Deep Throat, the White House and CRP -- and elements of the CIA -- were where the criminality was, and the FBI guy wanted to blow the whistle. Of course, if your sympathies lay with the plumbers, you might think of Woodward and Bernstein as helping a rogue FBI operative to smear innocent folk, etc. -- much the way you seem to think of JM and Scooter.

I don't quarrel with any of that, except to note the subjectivity inherent in it. --Christofurio 19:16, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Vienna Game

The last sentence in the discussion of 3.a3 in the Vienna Game doesn't seem right.

Also possible is 3...Bc5 4.Nf3 d6, when Black stands well after 5.Bc4 d6 6.d3 Be6, while 5.d4 cxd4 6.Nxd4 gives White little or no advantage.

This has Black playing ...d6 twice, on moves 4 and 5. Is something else intended here? Quale 18:19, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Woops! You're right, of course. I will fix it. Krakatoa 15:03, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Categorizing Soviet chess players

I've created a section on the WikiProject chess talk page to discuss how we should categorize Soviet chess players within Category:Chess players by nationality. I'm interested in what you think, so I invite you to weigh in with your views at WT:CHESS if you like. Quale 05:46, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Nationality of Dragoljub Minić

There is a question about the nationality of Dragoljub Minić. Our article says Croatian, but an anon commented that he was a Serb, and his place of birth and death do strongly suggest that. Do you know which is correct? The original source that you used to create the article (Indochess) doesn't seem to be available any longer, but I haven't tried any of the web archive sites. I'm also going to ask this question on Talk:Dragoljub Minić and WT:CHESS to see if someone knows for sure. Quale 03:32, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

I assume I got the Croatian thing from the Indochess article. I have no knowledge of Minić's nationality beyond whatever that article said. Krakatoa 04:38, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, makes sense. We'll see if anyone has anything to add. I don't have any references to Minić's nationality beyond saying he was Yugoslavian, so Croatian may well be correct. Quale 05:16, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Played by black

While it's true that both players are required to play the Wade Defence. Consider if you would say the Alekine's is an opening played by Black!? ...yet to play an Alekine's defense white is required to play 1. e4. Somewhat unsure. ChessCreator (talk) 20:52, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Certainly Black's 1...Nf6 is the move that finally defines a game as an Alekhine's Defense, just as Black's 2...Bg4 is the move that finally defines a game as a Wade Defence. It's not a huge thing, but to my eye it seems weird to say that "Wade's Defence is a chess opening played by Black." The "played by Black" is superfluous: the sequence 1.d4 d6 2.Nf3 Bg4 (or 1.Nf3 d6 2.d4 Bg4) makes a game one in which the Wade Defence is played. The article tells you that immediately, so you immediately know that Black plays the final move that makes the game a Wade Defence rather than some other opening. Even if you didn't know that, the fact that the opening is called a "Defence" tells you immediately that Black's move is the one that finally defines the opening. So "played by Black" tell you nothing that you didn't know either from (1) reading the word "Defence" or (2) reading the sequence of moves that defines the opening. Krakatoa (talk) 04:36, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, leave it out, it doesn't make sense to say it was played by Black. Although it is sometimes used that way in verbal language. ChessCreator (talk) 18:38, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Peruvian Immortal

Hi! I noticed that you did some editing on the above article. It has been tagged for notability concerns which could probably be cleared up by someone with a solid chess background...hope you can help. Thanks! --Stormbay (talk) 23:30, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Hi! Yes, I actually wrote this article. I have added a bunch of references. Hope this takes care of the problem. Krakatoa (talk) 08:32, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Articles for deletion

I feel I'm missing something. So please put me in the picture. Why do you want to have the Catherine Lip article deleted? It's one page on wikipedia that is linked from two others. It's reliably sourced. Sure it's a stub and stub quality article, as are most pages on wikipedia. It's notability is debatable, but even if it's wasn't notable, I don't understand a reason for it's deletion. So far as I'm aware the
Advantage of deletion are:

• One very small area on a computer hard disk is available to be recycled.

Disadvantage of deletion.

• Two existing linking articles go back to red links(or links removed).
• As the article would no long exist it's contains can't be improved on or added to.
• Someone chooses to recreated it over again - wasting editors time and then
• The possibility of another AfD being risen and more time spent pondering over it's possible usefulness or not.

Seems a no brainer to me. So perhaps I'm missing something. Please explain. ChessCreator (talk) 23:08, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

The last I heard, notability was a requirement for inclusion in Wikipedia. How important is that requirement? I really have no idea. But I don't think that Ms. Lip satisfies it. Krakatoa (talk) 02:12, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

It's a matter of opinion whether it meets the WP:Bio. I would certainly recommend you read WP:Bio carefully yourself rather then rely on the (mis?)interpretation given on it at the top of Ms Lip's AfD.

Certainly I feel that procedures have not been followed. It's gone from creation to AfD(twice) and the various steps before raising an AfD don't appear to have happened. ChessCreator (talk) 03:33, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject Chess

Hello, I have noticed you have deleted your name from the list of the participants at the WikiProject Chess. As you are a valuable and charming member of the project, I feel sad about this. Is there anything we could do to help you change your mind ? SyG (talk) 21:09, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

I hope you will stay. Most likely you are the best chess player among the editors of the chess articles. Bubba73 (talk), 23:50, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't have any doubt that Krakatoa is the strongest player (formerly) a member of WP:CHESS. I had hoped to get his help to update Ruy Lopez with the lines mentioned in Talk:Ruy Lopez#Another line. Quale (talk) 04:04, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the kind words, everyone. Sorry, I was in a very pissy mood, primarily for personal reasons having nothing to do with Wikipedia. I have rejoined WP:CHESS. It does strike me, though, that if Swindle (chess) isn't better than a B-class article, there's something wrong with how Wikipedia assesses articles.Krakatoa (talk) 21:22, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Welcome back to the fold! If I may say one thing about the Swindle article, I'm glad to have it, but I think it is too extensive for an excyclopedia article. It could easily be a series of several articles in a chess magazine or a few chapters in a book. Bubba73 (talk), 21:39, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks very much for coming back, and sorry for the personal issues you come through, whatever they may be. Regarding Swindle (chess), even if I am not sure it can become a FA article one day, I think it definitely has the potential to become a GA article. Still, I agree that the quality criteria on Wikipedia seem to become harsher every day, and this can be quite frustrating. SyG (talk) 09:40, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, guys. Krakatoa (talk) 16:10, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

First move advantage

Good work on the first move advantage article! This was a section in the article draw (chess), but I didn't think it should be there. I moved it to its own article, but otherwise I did little with it. Bubba73 (talk), 14:19, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! Glad you like it. I am a little vexed about one thing: I know I recently read somewhere that Benko said that Fischer told him that he thought the advantage of the first move was almost strong enough for a forced win with perfect play. (That statement is in some tension, of course, with Fischer's statement to Evans that he realized that he could play for a win as Black, rather than just trying to equalize.) Benko said that this statement was more supportable than it seems, noting that Fischer had a big plus score (and no losses) as White against Benko, while Benko as White beat Fischer thrice and only lost once, that after missing a win. I looked through Benko's biography, and also the interview of Benko in The Wandering King, but can't find this. Most annoying! Krakatoa (talk) 17:59, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't know where that could be, I don't remember hearing it before. I do remember Fischer saying that he could draw with white against God. The other person asked him what if God payed the Sicilian? Fischer said that he would play B-QB4 and be OK. I don't remember a source though. Bubba73 (talk), 18:44, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I have heard that one somewhere, too. I was surprised by the Benko statement. I consider Berliner's claims of a forced win for White, or close to it, nuts (and am not alone in that assessment), so it was surprising to hear Fischer and Benko saying much the same thing, if a little less categorically. Krakatoa (talk) 19:49, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Mihai Şuba

Hello Krakatoa. I think that you should have a look at this thread at ANI, since you are the creator of the article that caused it, Mihai Şuba. Regards, Húsönd 18:21, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

First-move advantage in chess

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April 2008

Thank you for your contributions to Wikipedia. It appears that you recently copied the contents of a page and pasted it into another with a different name. This is what we call a "cut and paste move", and it is very undesirable because it splits the article's history, which is needed for attribution and is helpful in many other ways. The mechanism we use for renaming an article is to move it to a new name which both preserves the page's history and automatically creates a redirect from the old title to the new. In most cases, you should be able to move an article yourself using the "Move" tab at the top of the page. If there is an article that you cannot move yourself by this process, follow the instructions at Wikipedia:Requested moves to request the move by another. Also, if there are any other articles that you copied and pasted, even if it was a long time ago, please list them at Wikipedia:Cut and paste move repair holding pen. Thank you. Onorem♠Dil 02:50, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Copy and paste moves

You should use the "Move" tab to move a page—copy and paste is suboptimal. See WP:MOVE and WP:CPMV. Basically copy-and-paste loses/obfuscates the page history, which is unfortunate. We should probably repair this. I don't have any experience doing it, but we have editors like User:Sjakkalle who I think do. Quale (talk) 02:56, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I've been getting multiple messages advising me of this. I have moved the article and talk page back, and put in redirects at the intended new article and talk page for the time being. I will see if I can get Sjakkalle or someone to help me with this. Thanks (to you and others who apprised me of my blunder). Krakatoa (talk) 03:05, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Hi, I have the admin button back now, and I have moved the article. (I figured this was the quickest way to get it done, the last time I requested a fix-up of a copy-paste move it took five days to get an administrator to do so. Such moves are difficult to reverse, so I guess admins are generally reluctant to do so unless they understand the situation very well.) My screen says that a bot will take care of most of the link fix-up over the next few days. I deleted eight old revisions of First-move advantage in chess, and a review shows that they mostly consist of attempts at a failed move, so I don't think they need to be restored (but if you want them restored, just ask). BTW, excellent work with that article. :-) Sjakkalle (Check!) 07:57, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Alright, I have moved the talkpage as well. (I thought I had moved it along with the article, but apparently I hadn't. The "delete and move" doesn't look the same way as it did in 2006.) Sjakkalle (Check!) 08:48, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks again. Krakatoa (talk) 08:56, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Reuben Fine's book

After a ref to "The World's Great Chess Games", Reuben Fine, (McKay, 1976) p.30.", I notice you've added "However, Fine also regards Staunton, Anderssen, and Morphy as having been "world champions." Id., pp.3-4.". I can't find that in my copy... could you give me a quote, or section title, so I can locate it? I'm also a bit surpised that Fine woul say that, since he has comments which sort of say the opposite, e.g. on Anderssen (p.14 in my copy), Fine writes, "Anderssen was now the unofficial world champion; the title was not yet in existence". Peter Ballard (talk) 07:53, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Woops -- I think I cited the wrong book. The book I meant to cite is not Fine's The World's Great Chess Games, but rather Fine's Great Moments in Modern Chess, Dover Publications, 1965 (a verbatim reprint of The World's a Chessboard, David McKay, 1948). Chapter 1, beginning on page 1, is entitled, "The World's a Chessboard." Starting with the last two words on page 3, Fine writes, "Of the eight world champions of the past hundred years (Staunton, Anderssen, Morphy, Steinitz, Lasker, Capablanca, Alekhine and Euwe) all have been men considerably above the intellectual average." Id. at 3-4. Krakatoa (talk) 15:55, 27 April 2008 (UTC) Krakatoa (talk) 16:02, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

hyphens in ISBNs

Why are you deleting hyphens in ISBNs? They make the numbers easier to read and they seperate out the code number for the publisher, etc. Bubba73 (talk), 17:59, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:ISBN, which says to use hyphens, rather dashes. Bubba73 (talk), 18:02, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Göttingen manuscript

Talk:Chess_theory#Early_theory. You might want to check over some references regarding early theory. SunCreator (talk) 22:09, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Barnstar for your work on First-move advantage in chess

		The Content Creativity Barnstar
		For the tremendous work and material you put in the article First-move advantage in chess so that it reached A-class, I award you this barnstar. SyG (talk) 08:08, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Thank you! Woo hoo! Krakatoa (talk) 12:53, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

References in First-move advantage in chess

Hello Krakatoa, sorry for my mistake on "Mein System" in First-move advantage in chess, I had not seen it actually was in "References", that's why I wanted to put it in "Further reading". That brings another concern to me: we have put this book in "References" but it does not seem we are using it anywhere in the article (we are only using "Chess Praxis"), so maybe it should be deleted altogether ? In other words, what is the reason for mentioning this book ?

On another point, I have to explain my current reasoning concerning references. If a reference is used several times in the article, I put it in the "References" section and I only use a short notice in the "Footnotes" (e.g. "Watson 2005, p.12). But if a reference is used only once, I put it directly in the "Footnotes" at length (with the full "cite" template), because then I do not see the point of putting it in two different sections.

However, there are a lot of other systems that could be used. For example it could be decided to put all references in the "References" section, regardless of the number of times they are used in the article. Do you have a preference ? SyG (talk) 19:14, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Napoleon Marache

On 30 May, 2008, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Napoleon Marache, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

--BorgQueen (talk) 18:28, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

I hereby award Krakatoa the Bronze Wiki Award for great work on bringing First-move advantage in chess to FA.Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 05:45, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

As far as I know, I'm not quite there yet (maybe you know something I don't?), but thank you! Krakatoa (talk) 07:50, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Seasons v series

Hello Krakatoa. I saw your edits on the All Creatures Great and Small page and I thought I would drop you a note letting you know that the term series is a briticism. Where we in the US refer to "seasons" for ongoing shows the Brits have used the term "series" as far back as the 1950's. About the only British show that uses the term seasons is Doctor Who where it is applied to the 26 years of its original run. The new version of the show has reverted back to using the term series. By your edit summaries I think that you already figured this out but I thought that I would leave this message to confirm your suspicions. Cheers and happy editing. MarnetteD | Talk 09:38, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

List of chess terms

Hi, I have seen you spend a lot of work on the list of chess terms. Perhaps you are aware that there is such a thing called Featured Lists. I think the article is getting close the Featured List Criteria. Still missing from the criteria is the engaging lead (also a top figure would be nice). I think our list is pretty much complete (most of the missing terms from other glossaries (see the talk page) are trivial or common English words, but perhaps a few more are relevant). Another thing we need to think of is the name of the article, perhaps mentioning the words glossary (there is a discussion on the talk page regarding the name, but personally I don't mind the current title too much). Do you think it would be a good idea to try to nominate this article for featured list? Regards, Voorlandt (talk) 10:27, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't know. I think it is a very good list for our purposes. However, unlike almost every other chess-related article, the list cites virtually no sources. This has always seemed a little weird to me; I assumed (and still do) that the main reason for that is that citations would make the list take up even more space than it does and take even longer to load. Seems reasonable, but given the absence of citations, it seems to me that the list does not meet the Featured List Criteria of verifiability, citations, and reliable sources. We could try to add sources, but that would be an extremely time-consuming process, would I suspect be impossible in many cases, and would indeed result in a very big file that takes a very long time load. Given that, I don't see how we can meet the Featured List Criteria. Am I missing something? Krakatoa (talk) 16:44, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

I never thought about this, and you definitely have a point. However, most terms on our list are very well known, and, not controversial or prone to be questioned. Therefore, using the same logic, the general references we have (several good chess dictionaries) probably do suffice. Or also: most of the terms can simply be given the same reference, but with other page numbers. I went over the list of featured lists, and it does seem that individual footnotes are not required for every list item, eg. see Manchester_City_F.C._seasons or List_of_Kansas_birds. Voorlandt (talk) 17:39, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Sorry that I've been dilatory in responding. You're right that apparently the powers that be don't require footnotes for every list item. Our list is very good, so if you want to nominate it, I certainly have no problem with that. Maybe someone else in WikiProject Chess would have a better idea than I of what our list's chances would be - Sjakkalle or SyG, maybe? Krakatoa (talk) 11:33, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Review of Howard Staunton

Hello Krakatoa, and thanks very much for your review and your comments of Howard Staunton at Wikipedia:WikiProject Chess/Review#Review of Howard Staunton. Sorry if this sounds a bit bureaucratic, but could you please indicate to me if you think the article has reached the A-class level (as defined at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment), the GA level or something else ? I would like to have the opinion of the reviewers in order to close the review soon.

(You can answer on this page, I will watch it) SyG (talk) 21:03, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Many thanks for your answer in the review, and very sorry for having annoyed you during your vacation. Have fun! SyG (talk) 14:12, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

question about opposite colored bishops

I saw you cite from Mednis' Practical Bishop Endings and I have a question for you. On page 94 (bottom), he says that the farther apart the pawns are, the more likely they are to win, except for two rook pawns if the defending king is in front of the "wrong" rook pawn. But it seems to me that with two widely-separated pawns, when one is the "wrong rook pawn" and the defending king is in front of it, it doesn't matter much which file the other pawn is on, if the defending bishop can control a square in front of it, because the bishop can be sacrificed for the pawn, leaving the king in front of the "wrong rook pawn", and the position is drawn. Is this right? Bubba73 (talk), 16:50, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, that is exactly right. In those circumstances, it is a draw, period, irrespective of the number of files separating the two pawns. Krakatoa (talk) 02:57, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. Last night I gave my 11-year-old daughter a handicap, and we got to K+R vs K+N. I told her I could hold the draw because the knight was close to the king. But my king was stuck on the edge, and she won! Bubba73 (talk), 05:24, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Pretty good! My daughter (like her mother) has always refused to even learn the game. :-( Krakatoa (talk) 07:16, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

She got me un zugzwang, and she doesn't even know the term. Bubba73 (talk), 02:11, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Staunton and Soltis

Concerning the 2B+N vs R endgame, Staunton said that the pieces win without much difficulty, but Soltis said that is wasn't that easy. The way I read Soltis, he is only disagreeing with the "easy" part, not the conclusion. It does take up to 68 moves with perfect play. Bubba73 (talk), 02:10, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

You are right. That had occurred to me too, but I guess I was too lazy to fix it. Soltis actually goes further, which wasn't clear from my discussion. He gives a position from an actual game (Black Kg8, Rg1; White Nd7, Bd4, Kh4, Bh5; Black to play) and claims, "Black can draw if he keeps the rook in a position for rank and file checks, e.g. 1...Rb1." In fact, Muller and Lamprecht had correctly declared before Soltis' book was published, based on endgame tablebases, that from a normal position two bishops plus knight win by force. Plugging the specific position into one of the endgame tablebases shows that it is no exception to the general rule; the pieces win. I have corrected the text in endgame theory accordingly. Krakatoa (talk) 05:42, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Howard Staunton - Influence

The GA reviewer is demanding cuts in Howard_Staunton#Influence_on_chess. Since you wrote most of that section and are our resident expert on theory, can you please comment at my Talk page on the draft at User:Philcha/Sandbox#Influence_on_chess_-_for_Howard_Staunton. If you can see further ways to slim it down, please suggest them. -- Philcha (talk) 19:05, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! The painful part is losing the contrast between 19th cent and modern play in the Sicilian. I'll see if I can get away with a condensed version of Staunton's and Nunn's remarks - strictly at my own risk.

BTW have you seen The Openings at New York 1924? I found it while Googling for something to contrast with Staunton's remarks. -- Philcha (talk) 21:25, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

I've updated User:Philcha/Sandbox#Influence_on_chess_-_for_Howard_Staunton with a summary of the Sicilian smuggled in.

What would you think of removing most of the quotes in the notes? This GA reviewer counts bytes as well as words.

While you're thinking about that I'll remove from the main article the notes' extensive quotes of docs in the S-M controversy, since The Staunton-Morphy controversy now bears that burden.

BTW many thanks for several juicy quotes that are already in the article. My own favourite (in a close contest) is Hartston's "... A deep strategist living in an era when shallow tactics were still the rule ...", which summed up the impression I'd formed when looking for some illustrative games. -- Philcha (talk) 21:52, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Howard Staunton - S-M controversy

User:Philcha/Sandbox#Staunton-Morphy_affair.2C_for_Howard_Staunton_-_v_2 contain my current thoughts on the S-M controversy. The first part (Last para of "... final stages of playing career ...") looks too long to me, never mind the GA reviewer. But on such a sensitive issue ill-advised cuts could tilt the balance either way or just cause confusion (in which the participants needed no modern help).

Since you and I have rather different views of the affair, if we can agree which points can be omitted without tilting the balance either way, the result will probably be as equitable as such a confused mess allows. If you can find the time to comment, pleased do so at my talk page. -- Philcha (talk) 22:26, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments at User:Philcha/Sandbox#Staunton-Morphy_affair.2C_for_Howard_Staunton_-_v_2 - considering how complex the issue is, I appreciate the promptness. -- Philcha (talk) 22:37, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

There's one point where I've asked you to provide citations for a sentence you suggested and I'm happy with.

We also need to look at the summary of the events of 1858 (sub-section Last para of "... final stages of playing career ..." at User:Philcha/Sandbox#Staunton-Morphy_affair.2C_for_Howard_Staunton_-_v_2. It's too long, but removing items could tilt the balance either way. -- Philcha (talk) 22:37, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments last night, and for the effort you're putting into a topic on which our views differ so much.

Some of the 20th-century quotes need a bit more context if their intent is be summarised accurately.

Don't kill yourself over the summary of events. I'm reconciled to the prospect that the summary may have to be omitted - as The Staunton-Morphy controversy is fairly well developed, link phrases like "complex, confusing and controversial sequence of events" will give readers sufficient notice. -- Philcha (talk) 09:12, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

I like your attention to deniability :-)

Your Reinfeld quote at "A bit of fun" was a killer! -- Philcha (talk) 09:12, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

The deadline for the GA review is almost on top of us.

I've put up a new draft at User:Philcha/Sandbox#Staunton-Morphy_affair.2C_for_Howard_Staunton_-_v_3. I've severely pruned the account of the events of 1858, an option I mentioned earlier. Even I feel that the previous version was a bit too long. I also feel that a selective summary would be very POVish. OTOH I think the handful of sentences in this draft reflects the rather narrow range of generally agreed points - after that, accounts diverge sharply in their selection and presentation of the facts and "facts".

Given the tight timescale, I'll have to incorporate this draft into the main article if I get no comments from you or the reviewer in 24 hours. I'm sorry if this catches you at an inconvenient time or while you're unavailable. We can still make adjustments after the review is finished. -- Philcha (talk) 10:05, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

PS: my biggest regret about the latest draft is losing the Hartston quote that you provided, as it's an honourable exception to the pattern of national bias. However Hartston falls into the category of "popular" (Diggle) and "non-historian" (Winter) writers, so I think it would be hard to justify including his comment when we're trying to slim everything down. -- Philcha (talk) 10:21, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Take it easy, have a vacation, spend time with the family, whatever. It's a GA now, so we can sort things out at leisure. -- Philcha (talk) 17:47, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Cambrian explosion calling card

Do you have time to fit evolution-related articles between family, business and chess?

I too find the anti-scientific backlash in the USA rather worrying - and you know my nationality. Russia's turned thuggish agan, China's just putting on a nice show (or a show of "nice") for the Olympics. The USA's current edge is based on more efficient use of science & tech. If it loses that, the world may regress to the dark ages - apart from the post-nuclear glow.

That's why I'm not keen on arguments that appeal to "consensus". OK, WP:RS is not about popular opinion, but even the collective wisdom of scientists screws up at times - see for example Continental drift. Closer to home, openings research is largely a search for oversights in the current consensus. -- Philcha (talk) 05:57, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately I don't know a lot about evolution, and don't have a 1,500-book library to aid my research, as I do with chess. I agree with you that the current situation is scary. Eight years of a brain-dead warmongering president have done terrible damage to the United States and the world. There is a very real chance that McCain will be elected (to my mind his only "qualification" is being whiter than Obama, who is a far superior candidate on every sensible criterion), which would mean a continuation of Bush's suicidal policies. Krakatoa (talk) 06:08, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't know enough to comment on the US presidential scene. But I don't have a 1,500-book library on anything - unless you count Google plus Wikipedians who point me at things. -- Philcha (talk) 06:50, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Howard Staunton - Personality

This section also expanded a bit , and I've slimmed it down a bit at User:Philcha/Sandbox#Possible_.22Personality.22_for_Howard_Staunton. It would be great if you could look that over.

One big favour - could you provide a page number in the Oxford Companion for Ranken's "With great defects he had many virtues". I've wanted ever since the start to point out S's Jekyll-and-Hyde character, but could never find a ref. -- Philcha (talk) 22:08, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Oh, did I not give a page number? The long quote I gave (including Ranken's appraisal) is from page 392 of the second edition (1992) of The Oxford Companion to Chess. Krakatoa (talk) 17:40, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Great, thanks! -- Philcha (talk) 18:01, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

On the lighter side, I suspect Sellar and Yeatman's 1066 and All That might have described Staunton as "a Bad Man but a Good Thing" - for samples (of 1066 ..., not Staunton) see wikiquotes -- Philcha (talk) 11:39, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

World Youth Chess Championship

Hi, User:Brittle heaven pointed out the excellent work you have done at the World Junior Chess Championship. He and myself have been working very hard on the World Youth Chess Championship, but there are a number of open issues (ie. missing winners and/or not knowning whether certain tournaments have taken place). The open issues have been collected here. Since you seem to have excellent sources, would you mind having a look at them? I would be especially interested in number 3 and number 7. I am sorry to bother you with this, but we are seriously stuck on those! Thank you so much for any information you can provide. Best regards, Voorlandt (talk) 10:01, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

In theory, I should have all issues of Chess Life and Review magazine (later Chess Life) from December 1973 to date. (In actuality, I don't know the whereabouts of some of them.) I also have all 100 volumes of Chess Informant except for 91 and 94. Between those two sources I should be able to answer most if not all of these queries. I will try answering a question or two a day (maybe more if I get on a roll). Unfortunately I don't have all the answers readily at hand from one source as I did in the case of World Junior Chess Championship. Krakatoa (talk) 19:03, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

Thank you so much for having a look at those! Best regards, Voorlandt (talk) 19:57, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Stalemate/desperado

The section on desperado starts with "many draws have been saved this way...", without saying what a desperado is. The section above it ("more complicated positions") does define desperado. I think the definition either needs to be in the desperado section or the desperado section should be a subsection under "more complex...". Bubba73 (talk), 03:42, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes. I was just about to eliminate the desperado section heading, which I have now done. If you think about it, virtually every example of reaching stalemate from a complicated position involves one or more desperado pieces, which sacrifice itself/themselves, usually with check, to leave the defender with only a stalemated king (and perhaps other pieces or pawns that have no moves). Krakatoa (talk) 03:51, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

First-move advantage in chess‎

Hi again, First off, thanks for your work on the World Youth Chess Championship, although what you found didn't answer any of the open questions, it is useful information that can go in the notes (once I find the time). Now on your wonderful article, the first-move advantage in chess. There are two things I have been wanting to ask/tell you:

I will keep working on World Youth Chess Championship when I get a chance. I just noticed this stack of Chess Lifes that I'd forgotten about; it may well have the one I need to answer that question I couldn't answer. Lately I've been working on stalemate, which Bubba73 wants to get to GA.

Thanks for the compliment on the article. It's funny how much I ended up being able to write on that subject. When I first looked at the article, it was a little stub by someone that Bubba73 had moved from the Draw (chess) article because it didn't really fit in there. The subject seemed pretty uninteresting to me at first, but I just kept finding more and more relevant material, and I eventually realized that it was actually a very important subject.

• There is an early reference on the first move advantage in the book "Guide to Double Chess" by J. T. Howard - 1885 (you can view part of this book in google books -depending on were you live). In any case, I reproduce it here:

In ordinary Chess the player who begins possesses the advantage, after each of his moves, of having made one more move than his opponent. And this advantage, skilfully used, gives him the privilege of the attack: whilst the player who had the second move is compelled to remain upon the defensive until the attack has been repelled. In short the attack belongs to the first player until he loses it by wasting a move. But in Double Chess neither player has any advantage at first starting: and the attack becomes for the first time the privilege of the player whose opponent first wastes a move absolutely or comparatively. Whichever therefore of the two gets his men out best and soonest will in time possess the attack. And as attack is easier as well as more advantageous than defence, no pains should be spared from the first to make every move tell.

Double chess as explained in the book is a two-player game played on a board similar to Four-handed chess. The first player makes a move, the second makes two moves, than the first one makes two moves, then the second one makes two moves, etc... So the player who has just moved is always a move ahead of his opponent. So the author claims that in this chess variant, there is no such thing as first move advantage. I will have to think about it :) Anyhow, one chess variant that has absolutely no first move advantage is Bughouse Chess, as the game is in fact a theoretical draw (if identical moves are played cross-diagonal, the game is a draw, however in practice draws are extremely rare!). Perhaps a line can be mentioned about chess variants not having a first move advantage.

I had never heard of double chess. That is a very interesting concept. It's similar to the idea I (and doubtless others) had for avoiding/minimizing the home-field advantage in two-team sports series like baseball's World Series: play game 1 on Team A's field; games 2 and 3 on Team B's field; gaves 4 and 5 on Team A's field; games 6 and 7 on Team B's field. I have played bughouse chess many times. I didn't know it was a theoretical draw - though if I wanted to say so in the article, I would need a more authoritative source than you for that proposition. :-) (I have Penn and Dizon's Comprehensive Bughouse Chess, but thumbing through it I don't see anything about this.) In any event, I am disinclined to put in a sentence saying that White has no advantage in chess variants. This must vary depending on the variant. For example, in Capablanca chess, the pieces are so much more powerful (especially the queen+knight monster) that I would think that White's advantage would be greater - maybe even decisive? (Coming soon to a bookstore to you: White to Play and Win at Capablanca Chess by Weaver Adams' ghost!)

• The second thing I have been wondering: The first move advantage gets larger as the players get stronger. How can this be reconciled with the fact that chess is probably a draw? It would be nice to have some theory about this. Say in increasing steps of average strength, the score % would be: 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 56 55 54 53 52 51 50. It is strange, but possible. I wonder how you felt about this.

I hadn't thought of that. It does seem a little paradoxical, although to me it makes sense if you think about it. Games between very weak players approach complete randomness, so White's first-move advantage is almost meaningless. (So too with a material advantage: in Chess handicap, I cited Larry Kaufman's observation that in games between weak players knight odds is only a small advantage, equivalent to 50 Elo rating points or so.) As the players become stronger, any small advantage, including that of the first move, becomes more significant. But once you get to players of infinite strength, who have perfect understanding of the game, they also have perfect defensive abilities and can hold the draw in any position that is a theoretical draw, even if just barely so. In any game between those players, the actual result of the game will be the same as the theoretical result of a perfect game. So if in fact chess is a draw with perfect play, every game between them will also be a draw. Krakatoa (talk) 15:29, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Sorry for going on about this, just had to get this of my chest. Happy editing! Voorlandt (talk) 14:43, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Half Barnstar for Howard Staunton

		The Half Barnstar
		For the great work Philcha (a British) and Krakatoa (an American) were able to produce together in order to reach a neutral point-of-view in the article Howard Staunton so that it reached GA-class, I award to each of them half of this barnstar. SyG (talk) 08:30, 1 September 2008 (UTC)