Talk:Chess

Not improvements

The lead was better before, certainly more neutral and less parochial. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 01:19, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

I'd take out "each having a king and an army battling against each other in a simulated war." Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 01:34, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

I've reverted several recent changes, both to the lede and adding images. @Chaturaji: please discuss here before re-instating your changes. User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 01:46, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

Chaturaji's edits thus far (and their username) suggest a single purpose account only here to promote chaturaji and chaturanga. -- Pawnkingthree (talk) 12:47, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

Prefer to assume good faith. We all edit in our own areas of interest. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 12:56, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

I have no problem with the deletion of "recreational and competitive". In the hope that this was not controversial, I'll redo it. Bruce leverett (talk) 02:20, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

I'm generally more in favour of removing stuff from the lead than adding stuff to it. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 02:48, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

western chess, international chess, modern chess

Murray (1913) uses "modern chess" to refer to the game after the introduction of the mad queen, i.e. post-1500. Mark Weeks ([1]) uses it the same way. Otherwise I do not recall seeing this usage. Is it common in, for instance, India? (Searching for it using Google does not give very helpful results.) It should also be noted that there is an article about Modern Chess, which is a chess variant. It's not much of an article, but there it is.

I do not know how common the usage of "Western chess" and "international chess" are. As with "modern chess", searching for these via Google generates a lot of noise. Bruce leverett (talk) 17:58, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

Anecdotally, a Chinese workmate referred to the game as "international chess", which is in fact the translation of the name the Chinese use for the game. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 01:59, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

This game is not called ‘western Chess’ but rather European chess in all scholarly chess works including ‘A History of Chess’ by H. J. Murray who is the highest authority on this subject. This therefore needs to be changed to ‘European chess’. Chaturaji (talk) 02:04, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

Draft:Introduction to Chess

Hey everyone. I just got a message saying that Draft:Introduction to chess could be deleted soon. I won't be on Wikipedia that much for a while, so if anyone wants to work on it feel free.  AltoStev ^Talk 02:18, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

I don't see any need for such an article. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 04:09, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

There isn't much there at present, and what is there seems to be covered by Outline of chess. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 05:07, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

Apparently it exists because someone in the last FAR for Chess was surprised there was no Introduction to chess article. I guess Outline of chess is essentially the same thing. Pawnkingthree (talk) 13:02, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

We could redirect Introduction to Outline, for people searching for that. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 16:42, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

European Chess

This game is not called ‘western Chess’ but rather European chess in all scholarly chess works including ‘A History of Chess’ by H. J. Murray who is the highest authority on this subject. This therefore needs to be changed to ‘European chess’. Chaturaji (talk) 01:58, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

Murray's 1913 book does use the phrase "European chess". But that was over 100 years ago. What about in current and recent times? Also, it isn't clear at all that he uses "European chess" as a "thing". He seems to use it more in the sense of "chess as developed in Europe" around the 13th Century. I checked several chess encyclopedias and didn't find "European chess" at all. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 02:22, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

Earlier versions of this article cited recent sources in referring to "Western chess" and "international chess". Specifically, this article [2] from 2005 uses "international chess" and quotes Kramnik using that term; and this article [3] from 2006 uses "Western chess" in its title. If you could find a recent article that uses the term "European chess" to distinguish that game from other (Asian) variants, one could justify using that term here.

It is true that Murray refers to the modern game as "European chess", but unless that usage has caught on (i.e. unless it is common enough that readers are likely to have seen it), it would be inappropriate to mention it in our lead paragraph. Bruce leverett (talk) 03:08, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

 Administrator note Please note that I have blocked Chaturaji for their continued edit warring (for which they were previously blocked) at various articles, most recently at Chaturanga. It is ironic that they consider Murray "the highest authority" on chess but then repeatedly edit in a tendentious manner (per their edit summary) and actually remove his book as a source. --Kinu ^t/_c 17:34, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

"Rating inflation", "title inflation" etc

You often hear about "rating inflation" and "title inflation" and "the grandmaster title doesn't mean what it used to" from casual commentators, but when Haworth and Regan did actual objective research, they found that this isn't actually the case. I don't think we need to give false equivalence to uninformed opinions. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 15:54, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

Removing semi-protection

Why is such a basic, non-controversial page semi-protected? I believe it should be removed, as most articles should be free to edit and not require protection. Siccsucc (talk) 16:47, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

I cannot speak for the current semi-protection, but the general rules can be found at WP:PROTECT and specifically WP:SEMI.

Regarding "basic, non-controversial", if you press the "view history" button, you will see that this page is edited frequently, and there are frequently disagreements about it. Bruce leverett (talk) 19:43, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

Among other things we've had Iranian and Indian nationalists pushing their POV about the origins of chess, people who take it upon themselves to rewrite the rules (and getting them wrong), people who argue about whether Fischer or Morphy or Kasparov is the GOAT, and people who insist on describing chess as a "sport" in the lead sentence. The bad edits generally come from IPs and new editors with agendas. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 23:27, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

Whenever semi-protection is lifted there is a stream of either vandalism or disruptive edits. Check the page history. Pawnkingthree (talk)

per MOS:RELTIME, this article should avoid use of the term "current"

The word "current" is used in various places in the article, but the Wikipedia Manual of Style states that that word should be avoided.

This Manual of Style (MoS or MOS) is the style manual for all English Wikipedia articles ...

If any contradiction arises, this page has precedence.[1]

Absolute specifications of time are preferred to relative constructions using recently, currently, and so on, because the latter may go out of date.

The information that "The current president, Cristina Fernández, took office in 2007" ... is better rendered "Cristina Fernández became president in 2007".

from MOS:RELTIME

Wherever possible, we should fix the article to conform to this Wikipedia Manual of Style guideline.

- 05:25, 16 February 2022 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2804:14D:5C59:8693:519D:B173:5F5F:B3E4 (talk)

Chess player number

I made an edit to mention that hundreds of millions, rather than just millions, of people play chess. Later, it was reverted due to being unnecessary, according to the edit summary. However, I believe that “hundreds of millions” more effectively illustrates chess’s popularity. Thoughts? ISaveNewspapers (talk) 11:06, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

I think I agree. The difference between "millions" and "hundreds of millions" is significant. Do we have a reliable source estimating the number of chess players worldwide? Quale (talk) 16:48, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

Whereas the word "millions" might be thrown around casually, the phrase "hundreds of millions" implies actual precision and is more likely to be challenged. That means, must cite reliable source.

Alright, I'm back. Is the United Nations a good source? ISaveNewspapers (talk) 05:02, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

Yep, that looks good. I'll add it to the body and lead. Endwise (talk) 05:46, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

Actually, it is pretty embarrassing to be using a blurb for World Chess Day as a source for an encyclopedia article. See WP:RS. Could you try to find where they got those numbers? Bruce leverett (talk) 15:08, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

It apparently comes from research conducted by YouGov for FIDE/Agon. Here is a primary source[4] [5] on FIDE and a secondary source which mentions it: [6]. I'll update the article accordingly. Endwise (talk) 15:21, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

Sorry, no, that secondary source was wrong. It is an estimate done by FIDE itself some time ago, they just happened to quote it in that analysis which The New Republic didn't fact check properly. From FIDE's press release: In an official International Olympics Committee (IOC) submission a few years ago, FIDE cited the number of chess players worldwide to be 605 million. Yougov's analysis was only looking at five different countries, and they did not estimate the total number of players worldwide. Looking further, I came across these two blog posts about the figure: [7] [8]. It seems this is something FIDE has been claiming for an extremely long time; they put the number at "over half a billion" in 2000. The source for the 605 number seems to be a quite dubious unpublished estimate of FIDE's (which the author of those blog posts don't really believe). I don't think I really trust this figure anymore, but it does seem to have been repeated by many sources we'd normally consider to be reliable, so there's that. Endwise (talk) 15:39, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

I see a lot of speculation and uncertainty about all the numbers, especially the often quoted "605 million". There are approximately 800,000 players on the FIDE rating list, and only a minority of players registered with their national federation have FIDE ratings. There are probably as many players again who know the rules but only play casually. So I think we have enough evidence to justify "millions", but not "hundreds of millions". Some further reading at a favourite source for wikiproject chess editors: "Nobody knows, even roughly, how many people play chess, and nobody should pretend to know." MaxBrowne2 (talk) 03:35, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

I think I'd definitely value the opinion of a chess historian like Edward Winter over what seems to be a very suspicious claim by FIDE. Possibly it could be mentioned in the body of the article somewhere that FIDE claims there are 605 million chess players, but some have called this estimate dubious. Regardless it would probably be better leaving it as "millions" in the lead for the time being. Endwise (talk) 05:47, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

Association football says that that sport is "played by approximately 250 million players in over 200 countries and dependencies, making it the world's most popular sport." That claim is made in the lead paragraph, without a citation, but is repeated later in the article, with a citation of a study by FIFA. That claim says, "... regularly play football." The word "regularly" is presumably important. Is anyone aware of such a study regarding chess? Bruce leverett (talk) 17:01, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

"Ajedrez" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect Ajedrez and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 March 6#Ajedrez until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. eviolite (talk) 00:08, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 4 April 2022

change : "Harbour workers playing chess in Kotka, Finland in 1958" to "Harbour workers using chess pieces to play checkers in Kotka, Finland in 1958" or remove the picture altoghether. If you look closely, all the pieces are on dark squares, there are possibly three Kings and Queens on the board and the position does - if it were a chess game - would not make any sense. The harbour workers shown in the picture were obviously using chess pieces to play checkers. 2A02:A03F:618E:3100:B471:4439:3802:B6D (talk) 16:03, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

 Done (kind of): I edited the caption to read that they were playing using chess pieces, so it no longer states they are playing Chess. If someone wants to remove the image altogether, as IP suggested, I won't object. Happy Editing--IAmChaos 16:53, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

re Movement

Could I suggest that as this paragraph covers the basic points, another point - even more basic, more helpful to beginners - be included? This is that (in the Staunton set at least) the distinctive shape of each main piece clearly indicates the form of the move it makes. 145.224.65.34 (talk) 13:26, 18 April 2022 (UTC) Caroline Ashley-Cooper