Talk:Stefán Kristjánsson

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Stefán Kristjánsson/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Sportsfan77777 (talk · contribs) 01:13, 15 July 2018 (UTC)

I am planning to review this article in the next week. Sportsfan77777 (talk) 01:13, 15 July 2018 (UTC)

My preliminary comments are that if Kristjánsson was primarily a professional poker player in recent years, there should be a separate section titled "Poker career" after his chess career. I imagine you can describe which poker tournaments he has competed in, in a similar manner to the way his most notable chess tournaments are described. You can also discuss whether he played online or in live tournaments (or both). Check out other poker player GAs for ideas about content and formatting (e.g. Joe Cada, Darvin Moon, Mike Matusow).

@Sportsfan77777: Thanks for the review.

There is almost no coverage of his poker career outside of the mentions in the obituaries. I have found a couple references to him competing in EPT Copenhagen in 2009 (see [1] and [2]), though these are just lists of participants in a tournament. I am unable to find coverage in RS that could support a "Poker career" sub-section. (I doubt he would meet the notability guidelines as a poker player.) The mention of his poker career in the personal life section is similar to the coverage of his poker career by the sources in that it is used as a transition to the discussion of his drug problems and his death. Hrodvarsson (talk) 21:58, 15 July 2018 (UTC)

Okay, here are the rest of my comments:

Lead

• Start the second paragraph by saying he didn't start playing chess until age 11. Then, highlight that he was awarded the IM title as a teenager.
• At least one of his best chess results should be mentioned in the lead. You could pick from him winning the Reykjavik tournament twice, or winning the First Saturday GM tournament. Or if Iceland did well (or got an all-time best result) in any of those team tournaments, you could mention that. Or you could say that the highest-rated player he defeated was Sokolov at 2666 (I'm not sure if there's a source that says that).
• Mention in the lead that he seldom played chess after earning his GM title.
• Split everything after that (poker + death) into a third paragraph.
• Change this sentence somehow to avoid using the word "die" twice: "He died in 2018 at the age of 35, becoming the first Icelandic chess grandmaster to die."
• I would mention his cause of death in the lead, but you don't have to.

Chess career

• He Stefan continued to improve: he won the Icelandic School Chess Championship in 2000. (too many sentences with "he")
• Mention who Björn Þorfinnsson is. (e.g. Chess journalist Björn Þorfinnsson)
• Change "held from 27 December 2004 to 5 January 2005" to "held at the start of 2005." (There is no need for the dates to be that specific.)
• Start this sentence "Stefán's interest in chess faded somewhat after this point as he focused on other pursuits" by noting that Stefan began to play less frequently. (I think that's what you are trying to say?)
• For those not familiar with chess, you should clarify that his rating was still too low to become a GM even though he had all three norms. (sort of MOS:JARGON)
• State Iceland's best result in those Olympiads, or those European Championships, or both -- even if it wasn't very good. If I checked correctly, the best result in those years was 22nd at the 2002 Olympiad. See http://chess-results.com/tnr1081.aspx
• I think it would be better to state his peak Iceland ranking, rather than a recent one. Also, the link doesn't show the February rankings, just the current ones.

Notable games

• an Elo rating ratings of over 2600.

Personal life

• The way this is currently laid out isn't really a "Personal life" section at all. The first part is his "Poker career" and the second part is his "Death." I think it should be split into those two separate sections accordingly.
• For the poker career section, I agree there is not much known. However, ...
  • I believe this source (Skákheimurinn syrgir Stefán Kristjánsson) says that he played primarily online poker. Google Translate tells me that "Í samtölum Vísis við vini Stefáns kemur fram að hann hafi efnast ágætlega á spilamennsku á netinu." means "Vísi's conversations with Stefán's friends reveal that he has a good online presence." I interpreted "online presence" as playing poker online. Is that what you think? (I presume you can read Icelandic.)
  • You can then say he also competed on the European Poker Tour in 2009, citing the sources above.
  • In this sentence, "His ability to calculate translated well to poker", I would add "calculate chess moves" or "calculate chess lines." The word "calculate" by itself is MOS:JARGON.
  • This doesn't sound too encyclopedic: "he became a successful player—earning enough through the game to buy an apartment without debt, as well as a Lexus." I would change it to something like: "He was believed to be a successful player based on the facts that he was able to buy an apartment without debt, as well as a Lexus."
  • That whole sentence at the end of the poker paragraph should be three separate sentences.
• For the death section...
  • You should begin the section by stating the day he died along with the cause. After that, you can go into the background.
  • Near the end, clarify who mourned him.
• You can also have a separate "Personal life" section.
  • The source you re-used a lot says he has two sisters Lára Kristín and Anna Margrét.

Overall

• This link is dead: Viktoría Hermannsdóttir (29 August 2014). "Misstu mömmu eins og hún var"
• No plagiarism detected.
• I don't think the article is too far from being a GA. Most of the comments are minor.
• The most major comment is with re-organizing / splitting up the Personal Life section

I'm placing the review on hold to give you time to address these issues. Sportsfan77777 (talk) 00:27, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments. I will address these concerns soon. Hrodvarsson (talk) 00:41, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

@Sportsfan77777: Okay, I think I have addressed the concerns. I also have some replies to your comments:

• I don't know what to replace "the first Icelandic grandmaster to die" with. All that comes to mind is euphemisms for "to die".
• The cause of death was not publicly announced. This is common in drug-related deaths, where privacy and respect for the family are taken into consideration. I know that it was heart-related, but this is not verifiable by RS.
• His FIDE profile has been removed so the rating progress is unavailable. The March 2014 rankings is archived and he was No. 6 then but he may have been No. 5 at some point due to inactivity or rating decreases of other players. There are no RS regarding this in any case.

Chess-db mirrors the FIDE rating data and has his rating as 2447 from April 2017 to February 2018. I know from memory that he was ranked No. 10 in the February rankings but have instead added an archived version for November 2017 where he also is No. 10 as it is verifiable.

• The "Misstu mömmu eins og hún var" article seems to have 404'd recently. It is archived but only as a paywalled version. There is a digitization of the physical newspaper however, so I have cited it instead.

Do you have any other suggestions? Hrodvarsson (talk) 21:51, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

Second round of comments

Okay, I understand the explanation and layout of his death better now.

Here are a few more comments:

• Lead
  • He won the Reykjavík Chess Championship twice in 2002 and 2006
  • He Stefan achieved the required norms (too many 'he's)
  • He represented Iceland at played in five Chess Olympiads and four European Team Chess Championships for Iceland. (one less use of the word "played")
  • Outside of chess, he was also a successful poker player
  • You could close by saying: "He passed away in 2018 at the age of 35, becoming the first Icelandic grandmaster to die." or "He died in 2018 at the age of 35, becoming the first deceased Icelandic grandmaster."
• Chess career
  • Before "His overall Olympiad score," you can mention his highest board positions: board 4 at the 2008 Olympiad and board 2 at the 2005 Euros.
• Poker career
  • in on the European Poker Tour at the Scandinavian Open in 2009.
  • translated well to poker, and helped him become that he was a successful player.
• Personal life and death
  • He squandered much of the money (I assume he didn't lose all of his money...)
  • In the second paragraph, add a sentence saying something like "The cause of death was not specified."

@Hrodvarsson: Overall, the article looks much better. I'll pass it after these changes are addressed. Sportsfan77777 (talk) 00:35, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

@Sportsfan77777: I have implemented these changes, apart from two:

• I don't think another "Stefán" is needed in the lead. There are no other individuals mentioned so there should be no confusion as to whom "he" refers to, and there are only three instances of "he" before "Stefán" is used again. The recent FA Percy Grainger uses "he" more often than this article does, for one example.
• I thought of "passed away", "passed on", etc. but these are WP:EUPHEMISMs. Using deceased in that way seems more awkward to me than just repeating "die".

Both of these are very minor so I doubt it makes much of a difference either way, but I prefer the current versions. Hrodvarsson (talk) 23:03, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

Okay, I'll pass it! I suggested adding another Stefan to the lead, not so much because there were too many uses of the word "he", but because there are too many sentences in a row that start with the same word. That FA on Percy Grainger shows the difference. Sportsfan77777 (talk) 23:52, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

Definition of "Icelandic grandmaster"

@Quale: I'm not a chess expert, so my question regarding your revert: What is the exact definition of an Icelandic grandmaster? Bobby Fischer was a grandmaster, and he was a naturalized citizen of Iceland from 2005. I thought that would make him an Icelandic grandmaster. Or are the grandmaster titles somehow bound to the country of citizenship where they were originally earned? Gestumblindi (talk) 11:51, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

• @Gestumblindi: Those are excellent questions, and you aren't the only person to wonder if Fischer should be termed an Icelandic grandmaster. Here are what I think are some of the relevant considerations:
  • FIDE (the International Chess Federations) confers the GM title and every player is affiliated with a FIDE national federation. A player's federation can change over his or her career, but each rated player is always affiliated with exactly one federation. (In unusual circumstances the player federation will be recorded as FIDE itself rather than one of the national federations, but that didn't happen with Fischer.) Had Fischer ever been affiliated with the Icelandic Chess Federation then this would be strong evidence that he could be called an Icelandic GM, but Fischer remained affiliated with the US Chess Federation his entire career until his death.
  • Place of birth can be considered, but most often the FIDE federation is a better determiner. There are many cases of players leaving their birth country with their families when they were young children and earning the GM title 15 or 20 years later, and their chess careers would normally not be associated with a birth country that they left at age 4. If Fischer had moved to Iceland at age 8 and become a GM at age 15, it would probably be accurate to call him an Icelandic GM. Of course in this case Fischer was born in Chicago, Illinois.
  • Fischer never played a rated game of chess as an Icelandic citizen. He retired from competitive chess in 1992, twelve years before he went to Iceland. Can someone be called an Icelandic GM if they never played a competitive game of chess when in Iceland or as an Icelandic citizen? If an American baseball player born in the US retired to the Bahamas, would he be called a Bahamanian baseball player?
  • Looking at the Bobby Fischer article, it starts "Robert James Fischer (March 9, 1943 – January 17, 2008) was an American chess grandmaster". It doesn't say "an American and Icelandic chess grandmaster". Now it's reasonable to note that that presupposes the answer to the question, but the question whether Fischer was an Icelandic GM was considered at the central article and decided in the negative for the two reasons listed above.
  • Continuing the third item, Fischer is in Category:American chess players but not Category:Icelandic chess players. Categories are supposed to record defining characteristics. The "fooian chess player" categories are not for every fooian person who plays chess as a hobby, but for people for whom playing chess is a defining characteristic. Playing chess was the defining characteristic for Fischer, but playing chess in Iceland or as an Icelandic citizen was not—as noted before he had retired from chess more than a decade before he came to Iceland. The notable connection with Fischer and Iceland is that he was an American GM and former world chess champion who much later became an Icelandic citizen. Quale (talk) 16:21, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

@Quale: Thanks for the comprehensive answer which I find convincing. However, in German-language Wikipedia (where I'm mainly active), Gereon K. added Bobby Fischer in 2009 to a navigation template for Icelandic grandmasters with this edit, giving as reason that Fischer was a member of the Icelandic Chess Federation from 2005 ("War ab 2005 Mitglied des isländischen Schachbundes"). This seems to contradict your statement "Had Fischer ever been affiliated with the Icelandic Chess Federation then this would be strong evidence that he could be called an Icelandic GM, but Fischer remained affiliated with the US Chess Federation his entire career until his death." So, I wonder who of you two might be right about this? Gereon K. has written an enormous amount of articles about chess players in German (see his profile in German Wikipedia) and I think he's very knowledgeable in this subject area, too. Gestumblindi (talk) 16:56, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

He was passive member of the Icelandic Chess Federation since 2005, but apparently that was inofficial. In fact he never changed federation according to FIDE. Thus adding him to the Icelandic GM template was wrong. I apologize. Having read that he received a membership in Iceland led me to my edit in 2009 and I didn't read further. --Gereon K. (talk) 20:46, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

I wrote something really dumb when I asked, "Can someone be called an Icelandic GM if they never played a competitive game of chess when in Iceland...?" Of course Fischer played quite a few significant games of chess in Reykjavik in 1972, and he had played in a tournament in Reykjavik earlier as well. Adding this correction just in case someone wonders what the heck I was talking about. I'm afraid the insanity and tragedy of Fischer's chess career after 1972 sometimes overshadows what came before. Quale (talk) 22:27, 31 May 2020 (UTC)