Talk:World Chess Championship 1886

A fact from World Chess Championship 1886 appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 11 December 2007 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that in 1886, Wilhelm Steinitz won the first official World Chess Championship?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2007/December.

Wikipedia

Game 1 diagram

Black has two light-squared bishops but there are no bishop promotions in the game moves. 91.107.151.55 (talk) 18:40, 9 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Never mind, it was obvious the bishop should be on c7 so I moved it. The game 20 diagram was also missing some pieces so I added these. Nevertheless, someone ought to check that the reconstructed positions are now correct. 91.107.151.55 (talk) 18:46, 9 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Analysis

The only analysis I have done on these games is a quick scan through Fritz 6 to see if any significant blunders/very good moves were made, if anybody can do any more detailed analysis/corrections, that would be superb! Andy4226uk (talk) 15:58, 10 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That might constitute original research. Look for published analysis instead. Bubba73 (talk), 17:10, 10 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Kasparov's My Great Predecessors vol 1 probably has some of these games annotated. Bubba73 (talk), 00:49, 11 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Work to do

First, the White King is missing from g2 in the diagram of game 20. But more important, I was struck by This opening would never appear in a modern world championship match. The move 3.f4 gambits a key pawn from the kingside and is now considered far too weakening. Did you expect Fischer to play the Pirc against Spassky? Nobody did. People weren't expecting the resurgence of the (antique?) Scotch Game with Kasparov. Nobody expected Korchnoi to play the Dragon against Karpov. Is the King's Gambit unsound because it gambits the same pawn, a move sooner? If people want to make sweeping judgements you have to quote someone. I'm OK with editors pointing out conventional stuff and quoting Fritz would be OK to me too, but just ad libbing opinions like that is definitely not encyclopedic. Pete St.John (talk) 15:20, 11 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I fixed the diagram. The article says that the analysis of game 20 comes from the book by Keene, so that may be the source of the text you mention. It needs to be made more specific, though. Bubba73 (talk), 16:55, 11 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Bubba. The Wiki is just too big, and my watchlist is too full. But I see that the diagrams can be editted easily as text, I hadn't realized that, so next time I may make fixes like that myself. The analysis, I just don't want to be in a new arguement :-) Pete St.John (talk) 21:17, 11 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It happens that I just wrote a Windows program to generate diagrams (a lot easier than doing it manually), see: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chess#Chess diagram program Bubba73 (talk), 21:38, 11 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Nationality Flag

Steinitz became citizen of the USA in November 1888. Hence the flag should be - no, not the oen of Austria, but the one of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Christoph Scholz (talk • contribs) 19:21, 18 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"Steinitz wanted the United States flag to be placed next to him during the match"

Wanted is a strange wording here, to me. So, did he get it? Double sharp (talk) 13:36, 11 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

If Morphy is mentioned his importance needs to be supported

Saying "The following year (1884) saw the death of Paul Morphy and so finally, nothing stood in the way of a first official World Championship match between the two rivals." implies that they had actively waited for his death to start the match, which I can't find a source for anywhere.

In fact it is well established that many of the masters of this time, including Steinitz, had attempted to get Morphy to pick up chess again, so waiting (for an implied fear that he would come to take the crown?) for his death goes against everything we know of that.

Also the same paragraph goes against the idea that they waited for his death when it is said that "preparations took nearly 3 year", after the 1883 Round Robin tournament - which is also not supported, but matches what I can find elsewhere (http://www.chessarch.com/excavations/item.php?a=1&source=New_York_Turf,_Field_and_Farm&date=1883.07.13). 2003:E3:F13:98EF:ACEC:8932:3EF8:3C96 (talk) 10:06, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]