Brittle heaven

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Welcome!

Hello Brittle heaven, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

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DYK

Did you know? has been updated. A fact from the article Wolfgang Uhlmann, which you recently created, has been featured in that section on the Main Page. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.

--Gurubrahma 06:32, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Minor edit

Hello. I noticed your edit to the page List of strong chess tournaments, which was marked as a minor edit. You may wish to review Help:Minor edit; most people only use the "minor edit" feature to mark edits which do not change the meaning of a page (but only formatting). —ptk✰fgs 19:09, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Mikhail Botvinnik

I agree that there are too many images on Mikhail Botvinnik, but the one you removed is the most famous one of him. I think that one should stay. Bubba73 (talk), 01:37, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Please expand

I saw that you have plenty of contributions to the chess articles. Can you also expand and edit the article Rogelio Antonio Jr.. Thanks!!!

Furman

Hello. We have two articles about Semen Furman: Semen Furman and Semion Furman. Hope you can repair that situation. Regards pjahr 19:22, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Hello

Just a social call. Thanks for adding my missing parenthesis to Klaus Darga. Nice to meet another chess-playing British Wikipedian :-) I touched Harriet Hunt 'in the corridoor' once, at the Portsmouth Congress. I also saw James Sherwin's winkie. Shall I add these two facts to the articles? Hmmm? :-) Joistmonkey 15:41, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

— You mean you touched her a full four or five years before I did? You have sullied my happy memories now. Thinking back though, not only did I touch her in the corridoor, but it was between the legs (the 2nd and 3rd legs of the top grouping at the Portsmouth Congress) as well. Still, if you stroked her somewhere near Sherwood Forest, when she was just nineteen...

... As for Sherwin, I think he was trying to psych me out (as I had been doing to my opponants in the tournamant by reading - what turned out to be - a 'gay porn novel' between moves). Either that or he was just taking a whizz. (n.b. for legal purposes, I must clarify that 'whizz' in this case DOES NOT refer to the drug 'speed'. Mr Sherwin was not trying to gain an unfair advantage). Joistmonkey 08:20, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Anna Hahn (chess player)

It would have been better to move the page rather than doing a copy and paste rename, and easier too, since the move creates the redirect for you. The most important reason to move rather than copy and paste is that history gets moved if you do it right, and it doesn't after copy and paste. Also right now the project templates on the old Talk:Anna Hahn (chess) page are broken because the talk page didn't get moved with the article, as it should have. See WP:CPMV. Quale 05:30, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

• You're right that it's hardly a tragedy, and the history is still pretty readily available. It becomes more of a bother if the original article was Anna Hahn as a chess player then later turned into a disambig or used for someone else, as the history is harder to untangle then. I didn't create an account here until 2005 and I think that the Move function existed then, although I'm not sure. I'm just trying to get used to using {{DEFAULTSORT:xxxxx}}.... Quale 00:26, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

List of chess players

Hi Brittle heaven ! In my opinion, the List of chess players ought to contain only players whose biographies appear in the Wikipedia (English version). It would make sense from merit and esthetic points of view. By the way, until now there are only 10 "potential" players to eliminate. Best wishes, Mibelz 9:50, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Wikiproject chess

Hi, I have noticed you have done tremendous work on chess related articles. Could I invite you to join Wikipedia:WikiProject Chess? On the talk page Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Chess we discuss issues relating to the overall consistency of chess related articles (for example a few days ago someone suggested the idea of an infobox for chess openings). Recently we set up a page Wikipedia:WikiProject_Chess/Review discussing the upgrade of chess articles to A-status. Also here we could use extra manpower. In any case keep up the good work! Voorlandt 10:10, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Hi! I replied to your question on my talk page.Voorlandt 20:23, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Unspecified source for commons:Image:RustamKasimdzhanov.jpg

Thanks for uploading commons:Image:RustamKasimdzhanov.jpg. I noticed that the file's description page currently doesn't specify who created the content, so the copyright status is unclear. If you did not create this file yourself, then you will need to specify the owner of the copyright. If you obtained it from a website, then a link to the website from which it was taken, together with a restatement of that website's terms of use of its content, is usually sufficient information. However, if the copyright holder is different from the website's publisher, then their copyright should also be acknowledged.

As well as adding the source, please add a proper copyright licensing tag if the file doesn't have one already. If you created/took the picture, audio, or video then the {{GFDL-self}} tag can be used to release it under the GFDL. If you believe the media meets the criteria at Wikipedia:Fair use, use a tag such as {{non-free fair use in|article name}} or one of the other tags listed at Wikipedia:Image copyright tags#Fair use. See Wikipedia:Image copyright tags for the full list of copyright tags that you can use.

If you have uploaded other files, consider checking that you have specified their source and tagged them, too. You can find a list of files you have uploaded by following this link. Unsourced and untagged images may be deleted one week after they have been tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If the image is copyrighted under a non-free license (per Wikipedia:Fair use) then the image will be deleted 48 hours after 08:37, 18 August 2007 (UTC). If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. Conscious 08:37, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Fair-use images

WP:FU prohibits us from using a fair-use image solely to depict a living person even if you cannot find a freely-licensed replacement. --Yamla 23:52, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Győző Forintos

Hi. You added The Oxford Companion to Chess as a reference to the Győző Forintos page [1]. I think I have the edition of the Oxford Companion to which you refer (the 1996 pbk reprinting of the 1992 2d ed), but I can't find an entry for Forintos and no page number is given. The second edition dropped some bios from the first ed. Could you check this and either add a page number or correct the edition information if it is from the 1st ed.? Thanks. Quale 06:46, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

• It's a good thing you have the original version. I think maybe as many as 200 bios were dropped, so you have access to information that those of us who have the 2d ed. don't have. Quale 14:56, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Anne Sunnucks

My 1970 edition (587 pages) has Sunnucks as the British Woman Champion in 1965 on page vii, but 1964 on page 447. It's a shame that it isn't a fully trustworthy source (your query made me double check that I didn't put 1965 in Anne Sunnucks), as it's difficult to find good sources for chess history. I don't think I've ever used it as a sole source for any important claims, but clearly I should be careful.

There is apparently a 2d edition from 1976 that's a little longer (619 pages). I don't know if it has corrections or significant updates I haven't seen it for sale for (what I consider to be) a reasonable price. Here's the info on the two editions and the UK printing from the U.S. Library of Congress:

LC Control No.:       78106371 
Personal Name:     Sunnucks, Anne, 1927- 
Main Title:        The encyclopaedia of chess. Compiled by Anne Sunnucks, with
                     contributions from M. Euwe [and others]
Published/Created: New York, St. Martin's Press [1970]
Description:       xv, 587 p. illus., ports. 24 cm.
================================================================================
LC Control No.:       76021149 
Personal Name:     Sunnucks, Anne, 1927- 
Main Title:        The encyclopaedia of chess / compiled by Anne Sunnucks ;
                     with contributions from M. Euwe ... [et al.].
Edition Information:  2nd ed.
Published/Created: London : Hale ; New York : St. Martin's Press, 1976.
Description:       619 p., [16] p. of plates : ill., facsims., ports. ; 24 cm.
ISBN:              0709146973 :
================================================================================
LC Control No.:       73499956 
Personal Name:     Sunnucks, Anne, 1927- 
Main Title:        The encyclopedia of chess. Compiled by Anne Sunnucks, with
                     contributions from M. Euwe [and others]
Published/Created: London, Hale, 1970.
Description:       xv, 587 p., 16 plates. illus., ports. 24 cm.
ISBN:              0709110308

It looks like I have the first of these and you the last. (At least the UK printing has an ISBN—the New York:St. Martin's Press printing is identified only by LCCN, both by the Library of Congress and on the book itself.) Unfortunately I'm not very close to Washington, D.C. There's a good college library only minutes from where I live, but it only has the same 1st edition that I have. Quale 00:32, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

• I was fortunate to stumble across a copy of Golombek's Encyclopedia of Chess at a local used bookstore. I think it's pretty good, and definitely worthwhile for anyone interested in chess history, although I think Edward G. Winter is critical of it. Unfortunately it only takes us up to 1977 or so. Nathan Divinsky has a newer chess encyclopedia that I've never seen, but Winter really doesn't like it at all. Quale 01:58, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
• Winter harshly criticizes almost everything, and his criticisms can verge into the nearly trivial at times. Still, I've never seen anyone question his scholarship (although his close relationship with Capablanca's widow makes me not sure he's always entirely objective when discussing the Cuban champion), and there is a lot of bad chess writing out there, especially anecdotal "histories". Calvin Olson's The Chess Kings seems to be a very careful and scholarly account of chess champions up to 1940, and it has a very nice annotated bibliography. I intend to use it as a source to do something about wikipedia's complete lack of any account of championship chess before 1963. I agree with you—I think wikipedia could become the most encyclopedic source for chess history, but it will take a few more years of work before we get there. I think that is an excellent goal to aspire to. Quale 18:11, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Hungarian Chess Championship

Hi! It is a problem with actual numbers of Hungarian championships. Of course, the history does not begin in 1945. Best wishes. Mibelz 18:31, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

The case of Yugoslav Chess Championship is perhaps a good example of such a problem, which has been solved by Ikaria. Best wishes, Mibelz 19:38, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

European Junior Championship

Hi, I have created an article on the European Youth Chess Championship and European Junior Championship (same link, but I probably split the article in two once i am done with it).

From having a look at the articles of the winners of the European Junior Championship, I think you might have a very good source on it. The data in those articles are remarkably accurate. I used as source mainly the german wikipedia, which took it from the 2007 manual of chess by the ECU. However, as I started to discover, the ECU made a lot of mistakes. I have tried to correct them using the tournament finder of scid/chessdb. Now, I think I got most of it right now, but if you have a good source, would you mind checking that table? For clarity, I am talking just about the Junior Championship, not the Youth Chess one. Thanks in advance Voorlandt 21:12, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Thank you so much for your quick reply! It is nice to have this list double checked and to have some more context. I have incorporated all what you said and moved it into its own article European Junior Chess Championship. Now all the winners need to be linked back to that article and we are done. Voorlandt 07:24, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Bukhuti Gurgenidze

Thanks for fixing my botched spellings of Tbilisi and Olomouc. I should be more careful. If I had tried to link them, that would also have tipped me off. Quale 02:25, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Edgar Allan Poe and Chess

Hi! Would be so kind to answer Midnightdreary on the "Famous people who were/are avid chess players - The people in this list are famous in other areas of activity, but are known to have played chess or maintain a current interest in chess." (List of chess players, see: History). He demurs at Poe as an avid player.

I wrote: "Hi! There is an article on E. A. Poe in a Polish chess encyclopedia - Litmanowicz, Władysław & Giżycki, Jerzy (1986, 1987). Szachy od A do Z. Wydawnictwo Sport i Turystyka Warszawa. ISBN 83-217-2481-7 (1. A-M), ISBN 83-217-2745-x (2. N-Z), pages 923-924. 1. "Zabójstwo przy ulicy Morgue" (checkers and chess) 2. "Maelzel's Chess Player" ("The Southern Literatury Messenger", April 1836) - see, http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/The_Turk Best wishes, Mibelz 18:28, 27 October 2007 (UTC)"

He wrote: "Hi! I'm fairly well aware of Poe's "Maelzel's Chess Player" but I still don't see evidence that he should be included on a list of "avid" chess players. Just because he wrote an article on hot air balloons, for example, doesn't make him a balloon expert. Unless I see a source that says explicitly that he not only played chess, but that he was an avid player, it just doesn't seem like an appropriate listing. Thanks! --Midnightdreary 15:46, 28 October 2007 (UTC)"

Best wishes, Mibelz 16:50, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

from Voorlandt

Thanks a lot for your kind words! Would be great if you could correct the lead of the Hungarian Chess Championship, perhaps also include something on the super championships (see talk page). I agree with the post war hypothesis on the numbering. On the golden book: I emailed Iclicki more than a month ago (iclicki@netvision.net.il), he has not yet responded -- maybe my email was a bit short. I am very curious whether your efforts will be successful. Richard Foster told me that the book contains a lot of mistakes, but is still very useful. On another topic, do you have any news on the missing years from the World Youth Chess Championship? I haven't raised the topic on the Wikiproject chess talk page, but there is another similar article which also has winners missing; that is the European Junior Chess Championship. Do you have any info here? All the best Voorlandt 20:35, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Re: Hi!, Hmmm the TWIC numbering is indeed puzzling (that is 49th = 1999); I suspect it is wrong. I converted the image that IM Gyula Fehér send me into text using OCR software, here it is (as you can see the conversion isnt 100% correct, but at least it shows you some more detail). The original looks very neat, and I cant imagine he made that especially for me; so I suspect it is a copy from a page of his magazine.

MAGYAR FËRFI EGYENI BAJNOKSAGOK 1991-töl									
num.	year	site 		part    avrrat  winner		p	2nd 			3rd                  p.
42	1991	Budapest	10	2530	Polgarjudit	6	Adorjan Andras	5'/2	S as Gyula                     S1/;
43	1992	Budapest	12	2504	Adorjan Andras	T/2	CsernyinAlekszandr	6'/2	Horvathjózsef           6VS
44	1993	Gyula		12	2511	Adorjan Andras	71			
45	1995	Budapest	12	2491	Horvath Csaba	TA	GrószpéterAttila	6l/2	Horvathjózsef             6
46	1995	Budapest	10	2520	Almasi Soltan   61/2	Gyimesi Zoltan		51/2 Tolnai Tibor 5
47	1996	Budapest	11	2474	Varga Zoltan	6	Horvath Csaba	6	Lukacs Peter                 6
48	1997	Budapest	5	2610	AlmasiZoltan	5	CsernyinAlekszandr4	Lékó Peter                     4
49	1998	Budapest	128		Horvath Csaba		Ruck Róbert		IzsakGy.-FaragóI.
50	1999	LiUafüred	10	2551	Almasi Zoltan	6	S as Gyula	S1/!	Varga Zoltan               S1/;
51	2000	Budapest	128		AlmasiZoltan		Gyimesi Zoltan		CsernyinAlekszandr
52	2002	Balatonlelle	12	2537	Ruck Róbert		Acs Peter		Cao Sang
53	2003	Hévfz		10	2565	Almasi Zoltan	7	Ruck Róbert	S1/!	Portisch Lajos             S1/;
54	2004	Budapest	10	 	Berkes Ferenc 6		Gyimesi Zoltan	S1/!	Almasi Zoltan             S1/;
55	2005	Kazincbarcika	10	2553	Gyimesi Zoltan	6	AlmasiZoltan	6	Ruck Róbert               4V4

In his email he also writes: Championship was organinzed k.o. system in 1998 and 2000 (and will this year). Hungarian Championship (with number) no was organized in 2001.

Note that I have no information inbetween 1962(2)= 21th and 1991=42th (those two are 100% confirmed). In particular I haven't got confirmed that there was no championship in 1990 (he seems very busy, so maybe he will come back to me about that one). In conclusion: it all depends who you believe TWIC (Zoltan Blazsik) or Gyula Fehér!Voorlandt 10:23, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

William Watson (chess player)

I just put a fact tag on William Watson (chess player). I think you added that great bit from Spassky. Since you added it I know it's true, but it would be best to have a reference because of WP:BLP and general Wikipedia principles. (I know you know this, but I didn't want you to think I was challenging the accuracy of your contribution.) Quale (talk) 16:04, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

• Super, thanks. I understand that including refs isn't always the most fun part of editing, but it can be a problem for material that might readily be questioned. I can also understand your reluctance to include colorful (in this case I should write colourful) material in articles, but I think that would be a shame. It's easy to write overly dry articles—for an examples, just look at any of my contributions. I welcome addition of humorous and colorful details in articles if they are referenced, although I share your concern that many colorful anecdotes are embellished or simply made up. This is a problem in chess history, because many of the great chess stories and anecdotes can be referenced but simply aren't true. Some take this very seriously (William Winter), many don't (Horowitz, Soltis, ...). Specifically concerning Spassky's amusing characterization of Watson: I don't consider it an insult and I'm sure it was never intended as an insult (it's really a compliment), but as you point out, a random reader might not understand that. I had not heard of it and my quick googling wasn't enough to find a ref, so I thought I'd ask. Quale (talk) 00:03, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Frank Parr

Your comment induced me to create a brief article for Frank Parr. My sources of information about him were very limited. If you know more, you might be able to improve the article. Quale (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 05:20, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

• Got this note on my talk page which might be of interest since you made some nice additions to the article. Quale (talk) 06:56, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Hi. I've nominated Frank Parr, an article you worked on, for consideration to appear on the Main Page as part of Wikipedia:Did you know. You can see the hook for the article at Template talk:Did you know#Articles created.2Fexpanded on December 18, where you can improve it if you see fit. Black Falcon ^(Talk) 06:25, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

i added an image to Frank Parr and created an article on Nikola Bochev Padevsky to help out with your Bulgarian Chess thing. You may want to tag it or add categories etc. Have a nice christmas! ♦ Sir Blofeld ♦ ^Talk? 17:07, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

I met Frank Parr several times and remember playing in the same competition as him at Paignton Chess Congress. I also have a contact that played him years ago(1950 time??) in the British Chess Championship. If there is any specific question I might be able to find out. ChessCreator (talk) 00:45, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Russia (USSR) vs Rest of the World

You've reverted my change and restored in the article the text "the USSR had raised standards to a level that other nations could only aspire to. Aside from the brief intervention of Max Euwe, they had produced an uninterrupted line of world champions stretching from 1927 to 1970", claiming in edit summary that Alekhine "certainly was a product of the USSR; born in Moscow, taught by mother, modelled on Chigorin and 28 before he emigrated". That's mistaken: 1. USSR and Russian Empire aren't synonymous. 2. A. emigrated in 1921; USSR was founded in 1922. 3. A. was one of the strongest players in the world already by 1914. 89.201.57.201 (talk) 20:51, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

• Thanks Brittle heaven for letting me know that characterization of Russian vs. Soviet was a point of discussion. I respect your work on wikipedia and I hope my edit didn't seem harsh or dismissive. This explanation is directed to the anon who commented about Alekhine's Russian roots rather than being aimed at you. It is true that Alekhine can be reasonably considered Russian, but this doesn't have anything to do with Soviet dominance of chess for much of the 20th century. Chigorin and Alekhine didn't represent Russian dominance in chess, full stop. Really there's nothing else to discuss here, as I think the anon's complaint is based on a misreading of the text. The string of world champions is just an example of the dominance of the Soviets, not proof of it. One great player (Chigorin) and one world champion (Alekhine) doesn't make a nation dominant. It wasn't seen that way at the time and it still isn't now. Many people didn't even think Alekhine was the best chess player when he was world champion. Although he had a splendid string of tournament victories he spent most of his time as world champion dodging a rematch with Capablanca, which many people though Capablanca might well win. When Alekhine was alive, the Soviets basically disowned him. Alekhine declined to return to Russia, and later the Soviets challenged him to a match with Botvinnik. It wasn't until 25 or so years later long after Alekhine's death that Averbakh claimed a rehabilitated Alekhine was one of the founders of the Soviet School of chess. This was (and is) pure historical revisionism. In any case, the Soviets weren't recognized as dominant in world chess until they crushed the U.S. team in the 1945 radio match. It's sometimes hard to believe now, but the U.S. team was extremely confident that it would win that match easily and it was a tremendous shock when the Soviets crushed them. It's clear that the Soviet Union became the strongest chess nation sometime during WW II. I don't think there's any way to know precisely when the Soviets surpassed the rest of the world in chess, but it was no earlier than 1939, more than 20 years after the Russian Revolution. This is clearly Soviet dominance, not Russian dominance, and to say otherwise would just be wrong. Quale (talk) 18:29, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Happy new year

I have added an image to Akiba Rubinstein; this one was easy, as it was on commons. Btw, I like the idea very much of having a list of pictures to find. Perhaps we can copy the list from talk to main WP:CHESS? That way, people keep getting reminded. One player that really needs a good picture is Bobby Fischer. Happy new year! Voorlandt (talk) 11:08, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Ok and a little more work, I have uploaded and added a picture to Richard Réti. I hope it will not get deleted though. The license is a bit dodgy :) Voorlandt (talk) 11:58, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

World Junior Chess Championship

Thanks for adding the notes that give a brief description of some of the individual tournaments. I think you commented to Voorlandt that the notes are brief (probably concerning the similar work you've done on World Youth Chess Championship), but I think they are exactly right. We probably don't want a really long discussion of each individual year, but brief notes are perfect. I want to do the same for other tournament pages as practical. Quale (talk) 00:39, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

I would like to second this. Great job on the championships! Also kudos on the new photos. Voorlandt (talk) 20:31, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

YYYY in chess

Thanks for the kind words. Feel free to dive in anywhere you like, if you care to. I've been putting a lot of work into these in the last few days, but a little fatigue has set in and my rate of progress has already slowed considerably just half way through 2007, nowhere near pre-TWIC years. It's fun for a while, but gets somewhat tedious. I actually think that so far I have relied far too much on TWIC (and to a lesser extent ChessBase News)–a greater variety of sources would be better, even for recent years. I agree that there won't be nearly as much detail available past the last decade or so, which is a shame, but I think we can do a fair job just summarizing Chess Life and BCM. If you have old issues of New In Chess, so much the better. About the level of detail, I think in a certain way there's already too much. I don't think the Events section should be trimmed. The month-to-month detail is nice, and if anything even more could be put in. (Although I have included all the national championships I could find, I have passed over some strong tournaments. It wouldn't be unreasonable to include all tournaments category 15 and above, for instance.) On the other hand, sometimes just the true highlights are wanted. Maybe we should have a summary section at the top of the article of just the very most important news (world championships, top 3 to 5 tournaments of the year). I absolutely agree that photos and diagrams would be great additions. Articles with a little bit of color and art are a lot more appealing. Right now 2007 in chess suffers a bit from being an uninviting wall of text, and it will only get worse if July through December are filled in the same way. Make any improvements that you see, as I'm not set on the current format. I was wondering if some of the prose wouldn't be better as small tables, for instance, a table with the ratings of the top 10 players would be more concise and readable than the dry prose I put in. I wasn't sure how to include a table without kind of messing up the brief item format of that section, but maybe if the table were small and floated to the right ... Wikipedia gives a great opportunity to experiment with different layouts and organizations, and I think if anything we tend to let articles ossify a bit too much after they are started. Although I hate to see a good article made worse, I think that the suggestion made on the Talk page to shake up chess might have lead to something interesting. There's a category searching tool that's a godsend for the Deaths section (and eventually Births once we get back to 1985 or so). There are probably other ways to get this info from the births and deaths categories, but I found this very helpful: http://tools.wikimedia.de/%7Edaniel/WikiSense/CategoryIntersect.php. It's broken right now but it was working well earlier. I used it to put deaths in 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2006 before starting the rest of those articles. Quale (talk) 12:10, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

William Fairhurst

That's a very nice, well written article. It's the best new chess bio I've seen recently. Quale (talk) 08:00, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

• The 2nd edition (1992) of Hooper & Whyld appears to have even fewer biographies than the 1984 edition. It's supposedly greatly expanded, but apparently some of that expansion came at the cost of some biographies. Really what would have been great would be a two volume Chess Companion: one volume with only bios, and a second volume with everything else. Quale (talk) 05:33, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Croatian Chess Championship

Hi, Thanks for adding the 2003 winner. I presume you used this link [2]. However, here not all games are listed. For instance Fercec, Nenad is listed with 6/8, which could mean he was the actual winner. Do you know what it means if FIDE doesn't have complete records? The wikipedia site [3] does agree with zelcic as 2003 winner. On the other hand this website says he won the 1998 edition and the otvorenim prvenstvima 1996. i 2003, which means something like the open championship of 1996 and 2003. If he won the closed section, I wonder why they don't mention it. Or maybe some editions are open, some are closed? A lot of questions :). Anyway, it is just that I don't trust FIDE very much. Thanks a lot for adding the venues; I'll have a look through the other TWIC issues for the remaining ones. Regards Voorlandt (talk) 20:32, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for your reply! For translation, I normally use google translation, bablefish and for the more exotic language intertran. In this case I also used translationbooth. They translate the sentence as and the at an open-loop primary 1996 and 2003 intertran gives: plus at an unreserved legitimate 1996 plus 2003.You are probably right that it doesn't matter whether it was open or closed. I also did spend a lot of time trying to track down a complete list (before creating the article). The usually way I find complete lists is entering in the google search box some winners together with a bunch of dates like 1999 2000 2001 2002. Anyway the closest I got was hr.wikipedia site. On a positive note, I just had a look for the women winners and found a complete list: [4]; I'll add it later. There were also championships before Croatia's independence. Would be nice to have a complete list there, and split it up like in the Slovenian Chess Championship. Anyway, only 4 winners left, should be doable. Thanks again for your work at Euro/World Junior/Youth Championship! I have a question, do you think the information on the start of the Youth Championships would be answered in the bound volumes of the British Chess Magazine? The years 1979-1985 might have the answer. The bound volumes are not that expensive, so I might end up buying them. Voorlandt (talk) 22:31, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Btw, I think we have come a long way with the national championships, and many pages are complete now. One page I would like to see completed is the Belarusian Chess Championship. Again, a complete women's winners list is available [5], but I didn't find such a list for the men's champions. Another championship which proves elusive is the Portuguese championship (literally I have only found a handful of champions); I posted a question on the portuguese wikiproject chess, but so far no replies [6]. What we could do, maybe not now, but in a few years time, is to compile a list of 100 top wanted chess questions, and perhaps some chess website would be so kind enough to publish it. Voorlandt (talk) 23:05, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Thank you so much for the info, I really appreciate it! Just a quick reply on the golden book: you are right, I never got a reply from Iclicki. It would be great if you could write Stewart Reuben. Regards, Voorlandt (talk) 19:55, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

New Zealand Chess Championship

Thanks for looking up all these first names. I will have a look at your comments/concerns when I have time later this week. I will add the remaining first names (only a few left and all recent players, so shouldn't be a problem to find them online) and remove the (2nd), (3rd), (4th) stuff, unless you object. Regards Voorlandt (talk) 22:16, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

I wonder if Brittle heaven(or at least somebody) could start an 'English Chess Championship article? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.5.169.186 (talk) 03:37, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

It's a fair request whoever you are, but the subject is not something I know much about; I'll try to look into it, but it won't be any time soon. Brittle heaven (talk) 12:47, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

1999 in chess

Thanks, looks good to me. I had imagined that the year articles would contain more detail, and much of that detail wouldn't be in any other articles. It would be a shame to lose something like the January 11, 2007 entry, an item that I think really needs a date and probably doesn't really fit in any other article in Wikipedia. (It doesn't merit a mention at Anatoly Karpov, and probably not even at Nigel Short. The ice chess match was part of the Russian Winter Festival or something like that, but I doubt we have an article on that event.) On the other hand, the day to day detail makes it too hard to get the overall picture, can be tedious to read and is certainly tedious to write and source. An anon enhanced the presentation a little by bolding the most important events. This helps, but probably a redesign along the lines you propose is needed. You should move your 1999 article out of the sandbox and put it in article space. I suspect that your format which is certainly friendlier for the reader will also be friendlier for editors, and is more likely to attract contributions. We can still experiment with this. What will 1922 in chess look like? I suspect that it will be a lot more like User:Brittle heaven/Sandbox than 2007 in chess. Quale (talk) 05:05, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks

... for leaving a kind message on my German talk page. I'll do my best :-) Regards, Stefan64 (talk) 23:42, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

AfD nomination of 1998 in chess

I have nominated 1998 in chess, an article you created, for deletion. I do not feel that this article satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and have explained why at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/1998 in chess. Your opinions on the matter are welcome at that same discussion page; also, you are welcome to edit the article to address these concerns. Thank you for your time. Fritzpoll (talk) 12:42, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

1997 in chess

These keep looking great, really good work. A formatting suggestion: the WP:MOS discourages linking in headers (because the blue links are unattractive in section headers), "FIDE top 10 players by Elo rating - January 1997" is an ungainly section title which will change every year, and as a minor style point it's better to have some prose after a section heading before a list or table (although I violate that all the time). How about titling the section "Top players", and then make the first sentence "FIDE top ten players by Elo rating, January 1997:"? Quale (talk) 17:06, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

• The category intersection tool is pretty neat. Eventually it will help in finding birthdays as well, possibly starting as recently as 1995. I'll take a look at the deaths entries from Burgess and Wall that we don't have articles for to see what I can find. The "by year" articles are hard work, but the good news is that the hardest part is getting them started. Once the skeleton and most important entries are in place, they can be expanded leisurely simply by adding individual items. I hope that the US/UK bias can be lessened too. I think there's a good chance that these articles will get some contributors once we have a few more years in place. Also it might help to rearrange the 2007 and 2008 articles to be organized more like your pages. It's relatively easy to add individual items to 2008 as the year goes along, but the detail of the page may scare some potential contributors away. Unfortunately when we don't have Burgess to draw on it's harder to decide the very most important items for a year since we have WP:NOR to contend with. It becomes easier the farther we go into the past as most of those pages will be shorter anyway. (Many fewer events and less accessible coverage.) Quale (talk) 18:54, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Genrikh Gasparyan

I support that move. I know almost nothing about chess problems or problemists, but Kasparian is famous enough that even I am familiar with the name. I suspect that a move might meet with resistance from some Armenian editors who consider the Russified transliteration of Armenian names to be insulting. I'm sympathetic to this, but I think that wikipedia isn't the right place to wage that fight. In this area wikipedia should follow what the rest of the English speaking and writing world does, not try to lead it. The article itself admits that outside Russia he's known as Kasparian/Kasparyan. English wikipedia is outside Armenia. Inside Armenia has http://hy.wiki.x.io, which might not even have an article on Gasparyan yet. These sorts of issues are annoying, and I'm getting fatigued by the fights at Talk:English Defense and Preston Ware, and past struggles at Arpad Elo and Pal Benko. While I welcome friendly competition of ideas to foster improvement, I prefer collaboration to conflict. Despite my general grouchiness on these points I feel like avoiding controversy for a while and just working on improving chess articles. Quale (talk) 11:53, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Template:year nav topic

I knew there must be a suitable template we could use somewhere, so it was just a matter of poking around until I found one. The template seems a little odd to me, since I don't really get the point of List of years in chess and Table of years in chess (both redlinks in the template), but List of years in music and Table of years in music provide examples of what another (much larger) wikiproject has done. Quale (talk) 22:41, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Vladimir Liberzon

Our page on Vladimir Liberzon says he died in 1996, but this is unreferenced (see Talk:Vladimir Liberzon for details). I notice that you didn't put him on 1996 in chess#Deaths, which suggests that Burgess didn't list him. (He was still in Category:Living people instead of Category:1996 deaths so he wouldn't have shown up in your CatScan.) Unfortunately this isn't enough to know even if Liberzon is actually deceased, let alone the date. Any ideas? Quale (talk) 03:44, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

• Thanks. If several people thought he was alive in 2006 then it's unlikely that he died in 1996. Since the edit was by an anon, I'm going to exhume him and put the article back in Category:Living people. Quale (talk) 10:58, 15 March 2008 (UTC)
• Forgot to mention that this sort of thing comes up every once in a while. There were two cases in 2005 that eventually were resolved with the assistance of a Bulgarian speaker (Talk:Georgi Tringov and Talk:Milko Bobotsov). We might need someone who can read Hebrew to help us lay this one to rest. Quale (talk) 11:10, 15 March 2008 (UTC)
• Forgot one final thing: I can't find Liberzon on the FIDE website (http://www.fide.com/ratings/seek.phtml?idcode=&name=liberzon&offset=0) which suggests that he may be deceased, but that sort of negative evidence isn't reliable enough to go on. Quale (talk) 11:14, 15 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Hmm. Gaige indicates that BCM is the best source for chess obits in English and he relies on it heavily. I don't have any BCM issues, and the libraries near me aren't any help either. (The local university library has some old BCM, but only until about 1910. That might be great for some uses, but not so helpful here.) If they offered scans of old issues on CD or DVD for a reasonable price I'd considering buying them, but I'm not aware of these being available. Quale (talk) 11:30, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

• BCM is a good source, they used to try selling off back issue years cheaply, that may still happen, although I've not read a copy for many years to know. If you are very keen then perhaps contact BCM and ask. They will likely be able to answer about Vladimir Liberzon by email. Website: http://www.bcmchess.co.uk/. ChessCreator (talk) 14:05, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

William Fairhurst

Hello! You mention that "A gifted blindfold player, he held a twelve-board simultaneous blindfold exhibition in 1932 at the Glasgow Polytechnic Club, winning nine games and drawing three; this was also the year that he was awarded his International Master title." You are probably aware that the title did not exist before 1950 so I do not think that this detail could be correct. Could you please check? By the way - as a Hebrew speaker I promised to look into the death of Liberzon (I know that he passed away some 10-12 years ago and I will check the specific date). --Niemzowitsch (talk) 13:49, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

I found the correct date - it was 1953 : [7] --Niemzowitsch (talk) 14:14, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

IM year – sorry, you're right. Somehow I missed your message. It would be nice to think that it was because I had two edits to my talk page near the same time, but in any case I should have spotted it. I'll look into fixing up the reference. Thanks for pointing that out. Quale (talk) 02:46, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Erich Gottlieb Eliskases

I read in the article Erich Gottlieb Eliskases "He played under the German flag at the 1939 Buenos Aires Olympiad and this coincided with the outbreak of World War II, when Eliskases (along with many other players) decided to stay in Argentina (and for a while in Brazil) rather than return to the scene of the conflict. This, of course, incurred the displeasure of the nazi party and the wrath of the Brazilian authorities, whom had severed all links with the Germans."

I find that the last part is not logical: why should it incur the wrath of the Brazilian authorities, whom had severed all links with the Germans? Could you please add the reference to this? --Niemzowitsch (talk) 04:51, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

World Youth Championship

Hi! Thanks for the great work you are doing on this championship. A couple of weeks ago I bought the BCM 1984-1987 bound volumes. They are beautiful works, packed full of information, but unfortunately, I couldn't find anything from the Youth Championships. I will search again when I have more time. For now it seems that the magazine Chess is the best resource. Do you have the volumes from 1984-1987? If not, I might try to buy them. I posted some comments on the U16 vs cadets on the WYCC page. Including a link to this pretty picture [8]. It is amazing how hard it is to find information on world championship tournaments, played less than 30 years ago! Voorlandt (talk) 16:17, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Thank you so much for pointing this out! I had a really good laugh. Perhaps Ignatius could add a few lines asking readers for additions/corrections on that history section. I will write to him. He should also be able to tell when FIDE first recognised these championships. This already would be nice info to have. All the best, Voorlandt (talk) 17:56, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Ernő Gereben

Does the BCM obit from July 1988 include date or place of death? Currently all we have is 1988 and Switzerland. That may be all that is known since that's all that http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessplayer?pid=10685 has as well. Quale (talk) 06:42, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

• Thanks, checking Winter is a good idea, maybe I'll give it a try later. You and Voorlandt are doing a remarkable job of research on World Youth Chess Championship. I would like to help but I've stayed out of it as I don't have any references at hand that would help. The page is already the best available single source for results of these tournaments. Quale (talk) 07:06, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

More mud in the water

Thanks a lot for your comments, you found a lot of useful information The most sensible thing to me seems to put the cadets (1974-1980) in a different section, and not as a subsection of the U16. Then for each year, add the age limit (I am pretty hopeful this is doable with the information you have and what we found online, it will just be a matter of looking up the players). Now for the mud:

From BCM No 6,Vol 104,1984. A huge festival at Champigny sur Marne near Paris,1-14 April, had a number of junior events on the program.:

• World Cadet Championship (U-17), 42 players, 11 rounds, won by Alexei Dreyev (USSR) 81/2 ahead of J.Piket etc......
• Girls World Cadet Championship had 24 players for 11 rounds. The title went to the Hungarian girl Ildiko Madl who finished on 8 points...
• The international U-17 event was a Swiss of 9 rounds for 18 players. Angus Dunnignton scored 7 to share first place with West German O. Schulte, but the Yorkshire player was placed second on tie-break.

Perhaps because it was played in France the U17 cadet was revived for just that one year? Note that all other sources say 1984 Alexey Dreev was U16. If not, this really messes things up! Voorlandt (talk) 20:41, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for the info. It seems that the wikipedia article is getting pretty complete. Would be nice to have good picture though. I wrote to the author of the article that has this nice photo of Bucaramanga 1983. Perhaps, if he answers, I can ask him to upload the photo on wikipedia. Some comments:

• 1983 U16; Mexico 1-2 F.Khasanova USSR, Arbunic CHI. Khasanova was born Jan-23-1964 and therefore about 19. Most likely the author confused this championship with the World Junior Chess Championship played in 1983 which Khasanova won (and which was played in Mexico City).
• Quite a while ago, I asked Richard Forster on info on the WYCC. Among other things he writes: The Fide Golden book has a reference to those Girls' Championships in the 1920s and 1930s: "Shortly after its foundation FIDE sponsored the FIDE Girls' Open Chess Championship, but the pre.war entry was almost entirely British." Then events from 1926 to 1936 are listed, all taking place in London. The winners were V. Menchik (26+27), R. Gregory (28-30), H. Bullen (31-33), M. Ballard (34), R. Dew (35) and E. Saunders (36-37). It's not clear whether it means there was an event each year or whether when multiple years are listed, those persons were simply the "reigning" champions. He also says: 'Just keep in mind that the book is riddled with errors - hardly a page without.' Do you know the age category of these championships?
• I think to complete the article (and to clear out the conflicts), the best we can do is write to different people. And once we have a picture and notes for every edition, I think the WYCC will be a very nice article. Fortunately, with wikipedia, there is no time rush. Regards, Voorlandt (talk) 17:03, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Stoltz - Spielmann

I found mention of the Stoltz–Spielmann match in Chess Review, April 1933, p. 3. "Rudolf Spielmann the Austrian master, had an extended tour in Sweden recently. During his stay he contested several matches with the younger Swedish experts, with varying success...." It goes on to say that Spielmann beat Stoltz 4½–1½, then lost to Erik Lundin 3½–2½, and then lost to Gideon Stahlberg 5–3. Unfortunately it doesn't say exactly when these matches occurred, so either late 1932 or early 1933 is possible, and the matches may even have spanned both years. As you note, Gösta Stoltz says a Spielmann match happened in 1930 with a different score. This needs some investigation and confirmation.

This site has some results for 1932 and 1933 that partially match what we are looking for. (Single games are given in what are described as matches.) It also has more complete results for a Spielmann–Eliskases match in 1932. This might be worth noting in the article, if we can find a good source to confirm. Quale (talk) 01:02, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

1932 in chess

Burgess' comment that 1932 was a weak year for tournaments agrees with what Kashdan wrote in 1933, so it seems that we still see it about the same way that the participants did at the time. I have a reprint of Eales' Chess: The History of a Game and I recommend it. It has very good and readable coverage of all of chess history up to about the time the book was published. It's a lot more compact than H.J.R. Murray's opus but covers more ground more evenly (Murray is very strong on the Indian and Arabic orgins of chess and on chess in the Middle Ages, but weakens a lot around 1800 and disappears around the middle of the 19th century), and offers a more modern perspective. I haven't used it as a source in articles very much yet, but that's mostly because recently I haven't been writing about the topics it would be most useful for. There is some good critique (mostly praise, but Eales points out some flaws) of A History of Chess that I should use to improve that article. It would be an excellent source for many chess articles (ones we already have, and ones yet to be written). For instance, I think he has some good information on the evolution of the rules to their modern form. Our articles are getting better on this, but they could still be improved.

I enjoy writing these, but I'd say tedium is the biggest obstacle to getting these done so I'd say you should expand Category:Years in chess next wherever you like. I started working backward from 2008 but got bored scouring TWIC and ChessBase News, so I thought I'd try something different. I jumped in at 1932 because Chess Review started in January 1933, so that was the first year for which I had a reasonably complete source (the January 1933 Chess Review has a "1932 in Review" article). My intent is to work forward from 1932. If I make it to 1946 I may be able to start to use ancient Chess Life, but I haven't looked at those early newspaper format issues to know if they will be much use. (Krakatoa has pointed out that Chess Life is available as scanned images in PDF format on DVD. In fact the USCF sells a 4 DVD set that includes all issues of Chess Review (1933–1969) and all issues of Chess Life through 1975 (1946–1975). Since it's less than US$50, I bought it, and they actually shipped the thing fast enough so that I got 2 days after ordering. All scanned images, so no text search, but it should be good enough to scan issue by issue through a year to produce a year overview article.) Quale (talk) 00:00, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

6/3 DYK

On 3 June, 2008, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Viktorija Čmilytė, 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.

--Bedford ^Pray 07:01, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Chess images

Thanks for your post on my Talk page. I think the issue you raised is important and have copied your post to Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Chess#Centralised_image_gallery, along with some ideas I had about work-rounds. Philcha (talk) 11:53, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Memorials

Hi, Thanks, the page needs more context though. I enjoy making pages on annual tournaments with lists of winners, as imo this is very much encyclopedic. Also they glue all the chess bio's together, and should make browsing the wiki-chess encyclopaedia more enjoyable. That said, there is a lot of back-linking to do (from the bio's to the tournament pages). There seems to be quite a few memorial tournaments, apart from the ones we have, there is Keres, Staunton, Nezhmetdinov, Najdorf, Euwe, Alekhine, Lasker, Torre etc... Would be nice to have a page, list of memorial chess tournaments. About the chess encyclopedia, there is good news: there will soon be the possibility of creating a pdf from a collecting of articles. [9] There is the possibility to have chapters, sections, etc.. For chapters we could have Openings, Bios, Tournaments (with subsections WC, national, ..),... I can't wait until they implement it! Voorlandt (talk) 18:08, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your message and your recent clean up of the Chigorin Memorial. I make a lot of mistakes (and poor English) when I write in a hurry. Btw, do you have any idea on the 1975 winner? Also there was apparently a Chigorin Memorial in 1938/1939 [10], any sources on the winner of that on? For the rest, I actually think the article has all editions that were played (I found several numbering schemes for the Shogi period, but they all seem to underestimate the number and do not add up). Do you know if anyone here has Gaige's crosstables books? On the PDF: I understand it pretty much in the same way as you: the feature can be used to download an article in pdf format, or on a more advanced level to make one large pdf from a collection of articles (which can be structured and organised freely). I think it would be great to take all chess articles, organise them in a proper way, and generate a pdf. The result would be a chess-encyclopedia (printed, it would probably come close to one volume of a standard encyclopaedia, see [11]). Unfortunately, the quality of our articles varies much to widely, to be anywhere near to be fit for print. But I find this a worthy goal to work towards too. On the Rubinstein Memorial: I am very sorry, not sure how I could have missed it. I did a copy and past job from pl.wikipedia, but it looks like it was a shared victory. The main source for the article is [12] the translation [13] confirms it was a shared victory. Best regards, Voorlandt (talk) 18:20, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the info! I think I have sorted out the numbering. So basically I guess they are two numbering schemes, one is 2/3 ahead of the other one (because 3 non-Sochi tournaments were taken into account). Now you say 1976 was the 11th, this page says 1973 was the 9th; so 1974 was the 10th and like you say, there was probably no regular edition in 1975. Chessbase says 1980 was the 14th, so there was also no edition in 1978. Going back to the sochi numbering only, we have 1974 is the 7th; Chessbase says 1966 is the 4th, so it all adds up, 1966=4th; 1967=5th; 1973=6th; 1974=7th; 1976=8th (in view of no 1975) and 1977=9th and 1979=10th (in view of above). All the other years are covered, so there is no problem later on. I genuinely believe the article has now no missing winners following the Sochi numbering. Thanks a lot for the info! (your 1974 and 1976 were the missing unknowns to complete the puzzle). By the way, I also made a page of the Torre Memorial, which was an easy one. Currently working on the Keres memorial, which seems a lot harder! Voorlandt (talk) 07:15, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Review of Howard Staunton

Hello Brittle heaven, 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) ? 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)

Response to note regarding reformatting of elements within List of chess players

Thank you for the note and the kind words. I tend to divide my time among numerous projects and lengthy, unfinished, lists, and occasionally neglect to return for a proper conclusion. In this case, however, as you have appropriately pointed out, a list which is already part of Wikipedia, should have the same style throughout, and not remain in limbo of transition for extended periods of time. Unlike other lists, which must be created, this specific exertion is mechanical work which goes relatively fast and can probably be fully completed after about two to three hours of sustained effort. In any event, this project will be brought to conclusion by myself and/or others by next Sunday, July 20.—Roman Spinner (talk) 04:45, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

More thanks for your help and for being so considerate as to send another note. Words of encouragement are always appreciated.—Roman Spinner (talk) 15:08, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

AfD nomination of The Snapdragons

I have nominated The Snapdragons, an article you created, for deletion. I do not feel that this article satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and have explained why at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Snapdragons. Your opinions on the matter are welcome at that same discussion page; also, you are welcome to edit the article to address these concerns. Thank you for your time. Do you want to opt out of receiving this notice? Tenacious D Fan (talk) 17:22, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

My vote to keep this article was, of course, entirely unsolicited. As an infrequent visitor at AfD, I learned about The Snapdragons' submission for deletion only by accident, while visiting your talk page to leave a comment about List of chess players. Over the years I've spent with Wikipedia, one of the great pleasures has been the wealth of knowledge about people, subjects and ideas which flows in on a continuous basis. Whether it's philosophers, footballers, chess grandmasters or singing groups, they are all part of the whole in the grand scheme, and if they stake any claim to notability, as The Snapdragons clearly did for the two years and nearly four months of the article's existence, they have earned their place in Wikipedia and I'm glad to have happened along at the right time and place to cast a proper vote.—Roman Spinner (talk) 23:55, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Paderborn

Hi! Yes, I thought of adding the most important computer chess tournaments. I think they are all covered now. On your specific questions: The WCCC99 was played in Paderborn, but was not part of the IPCCC series: Compare for instance [14] with [15], the WCCC had almost twice as much participants. The first website is as far as I could tell correct in its numbering, so no 1996. Also they were two 2005 editions, from the official homepage: [16] and [17]. Thanks a lot for checking my work (glad at least someone looks at these articles)! Voorlandt (talk) 17:17, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Chess life - Chess review

Hi! I just stumbled on this, and I thought it might interest you. With the low dollar and 40 years of chess magazines, this seems like a total bargain. Also, if you are interested, I have some really old chess magazines electronically (in particular 8 issues of BCM before 1900), the copyright has expired so if you are interested let me know. Regards, Voorlandt (talk) 09:05, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Hi, could you drop me a line at xxxxxxxxxxx? I will try to email them. Voorlandt (talk) 10:22, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Tilburg 1992-1994

Hi! Thanks for the tip on the Elo data. I had them already in another format, but text format is so much easier. Now, following the title of this message, do you have any information on the Tilburg chess tournament of 1992, 1993 and 1994? Specifically, do you have the ko tables for 1992 and 1993? Do you know how the winners of the 1-1 games were decided for 1994? I am not planning to add crosstables to all tournament series, but the Tilburg tournament series seems important enough to do so. If you have other background info on the Tilburg tournament, that would be good too, since the article needs much more text. Best regards, Voorlandt (talk) 06:55, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Thank you so much for this, I really wouldn't know who else to ask! I will add the results soon. In light of the 1992-1993 results, I think it would be best also to include the full scores for 1994. If you have time, would you mind looking them up? Thanks a lot, Voorlandt (talk) 07:30, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks again, great find! Brasilbase can be really useful and I forgot to check. It also has details on the time control (bottom of the page). I have BCM 1984-1987, so I will add context for those tournaments. Also something on my todo list is adding the category and start and finishing date (information is here [18] for the tournaments after 1984). Regards, Voorlandt (talk) 17:44, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

World Youth Chess Championship (yet again)

Hi! Slowly but steady I feel that we are getting there. Thank you so much for your work on this. I have some news and a few questions. My apologies for always bothering you.

First off, it seems that Pjahr (who basically created every chess article on the Polish wikipedia; including over 800 GM biographies!) has created Polish articles on the WYCC. Here is the portal: [19]. It is great to have an independent source, his Polish sources are really good. He lists top 3 for most championships. At first I was a bit disheartened by the seemingly ease in which he has found information. But then I noticed that for the years we miss results, he doesn't have any sources either (and seems to have copied from the english wikipedia - shows that we at least have found some pretty illusive info)!! I will compare pl and en carefully, to make sure we are consistent. I did notice that U10 1988, he has Horge Hasbun as second. So it seems technically, he hasn't won a WYCC. Do you think listing top 3 for all years is pushing it? Do you think it is worth doing? If you think it is, I'll update our tables.

So for the rest, his lists don't seem to help in any of the outstanding issues. He also does not mention the 1979-1984 early editions of the U14. I am pretty sure we have them all though. For the 1979 edition we already have a reference, which says it was fide endorsed: [20]

"Siendo 1979 Año Internacional del Niño, con el respaldo de la primera dama del estado, Mena Saucedo, quien fue secretario del Ayuntamiento en los años setenta, logra cristalizar la realización de un evento como el que no ha habido ninguno en Durango, del 29 de septiembre al 13 de octubre se efectúa el Primer Mundial de Ajedrez Infantil, certamen que fue avalado por la FIDE, Federación Internacional de Ajedrez."

And yesterday, I found another source confirming that there were 4 editions: (from an old auction: [21], [22]):

1981 XALAPA (MEX) [World Ch 'Infants'] Programme (16pp) opb [x3 one of them with a diff. cover]

1981 3 Campeonato Mundial Infantil, Mexico (brown) - 643x443mm [x3] [Lot 114]

1984 4 Copa Mundial Infantil, Lomas de Zamora - 577x408mm [Lot 113]

It also has 1985 1 Campeonato Mundial Infantil, Lomas de Zamora - 580x390mm [Lot 113]. Would be great to get our hands on one of these early posters, to put as an image to the article. Sources for these early championships will probably be in Spanish, so we have to wait until a South-American chess enthusiast joins wikipedia!

The polish wikipedia also claims there was no U16 girls in 82 and 83, but how about this classic photo [23]?

I might get the issues of "Chess monthly" prior to 1987 (1987-1979). Could you remind me which years you have? I will then try to get the other years.

Also over the coming weeks, I will add short notes for 1995-2007 from TWIC and other sources online. Then we have notes on all 1989-2007 (with the exception of 1991). Like I said, we are slowly getting there :) Voorlandt (talk) 19:32, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Various issues

Hi, Thanks for your message

1. I have merged the federation and website in Chess around the world, how does that look?
2. Yes the german list of strong chess tournaments is really nice. If I have time, I have a go at putting our article in table form. Although their layout is nice, I am not sure their list is better, so I will probably convert what we have and leave the comparison to others. I do most of my table work in excel and then use this tool to convert it into a wikitable (it will convert any tab delimited ascii table into wiki format, with all the |- and ||). The message of Pjahr was quite harsh, especially his use of "you" (You have so big potential, I cannot understand that you miss many important articles and many of existing are very poor - I couldn't help feeling targeted!). I think en.wikipedia has some excellent chess articles, like your superb series of years in chess. Do take your time for them, as long as you do more than one a year, the coverage is slowly closing in. Although we are seriously lacking behind de and pl when it comes to biographies of contemporary chess players (for <1950, Mibelz comes to the rescue), I think it is only a matter of time before we catch up. Also tournament-wise (especially national tournaments), en.wikipedia has a good coverage. I have several other tournaments on my todo list which brings us to point 3
3. Yes I am aware of the Alekhine Memorial, in fact the todo-list on my talk page, is a bit random, I have a todo list on my computer which is bigger. There are many individual tournaments that deserve an article. Also Corus and Linares need a make-over. For the memorial tournaments the todo list has: Lasker, Tal, Alekhine, Donner, Asztalos, Najdorf, Nezhmetdinov, Karpov (not really memorial), Oll, Agzamov and Muhamedzjanov. For Alekhine, I have in brackets 1956, 1971, 1961, 1992; which probably means that there was an Alekhine Memorial those years, not sure about other years.

Voorlandt (talk) 08:56, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Review of Howard Staunton

Hello, as you have participated in the A-class review of Howard Staunton, you may be interested to know the article has successfully passed a GA-review and is now a Good article. Thanks again for your help! SyG (talk) 09:10, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Image Question

Would you mind checking back at WikiProject Chess talk? I had another question. Thanks αЯβιτЯαЯιŁΨθ ^(talk) 01:06, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Simpson's-in-the-Strand

Hi. Our articles on Alexander McDonnell and Louis-Charles Mahé de La Bourdonnais don't say that their match was played at Simpson's-in-the-Strand. Apparently it was played at the Westminster Chess Club on Bedford Street, not Simpson's which was on the Strand. Also "1929" is clearly not the right date, but it's an odd typo since the actual match was played in 1834. Do you have a source for this? 165.189.91.148 (talk) 15:10, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

• It's cool, I was just checking. I know you're a stickler for accuracy, so I suspected that there was more behind this than I knew. Thanks. 165.189.91.148 (talk) 16:03, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Is not repeated linking

Hello:

The articles are OK. The links are OK. Is not repeated linking. Many articles contain several links in order to save work to the reader in order to give a near link. Users will not have to go all over the page and search to visit the page. I am doing a great job of linking what can't be done blindly by a robot and the oposite can be done if required. As a matter of fact. Yes I'm changing a lot of chess articles as a matter of fact too. Is wikipedia. Deal with people improving the articles. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.220.215.13 (talk) 14:18, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Details added to chess biographies

Hello Brittle heaven, thank you for your appreciations. I am Italian and work mainly on it.wikipedia, mostly with chess articles (I made over thirty of them) and also on geography. In the case of Leonid Stein, I added a detail that was already contained in en.wikipedia at the page "List of major tournaments", where for the Moscow 1971 tournaments it gives Anatoly Karpov and Leonid Stein equal first (though Karpov had a higher Buholz). I will try to give references for other contributions. Greetings, --Gabodon (talk) 13:53, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

New wiki pages on chess

I didn't look at your user page, you surpass me by far in the number of new biographies on chess players! When I make new pages on it.wikipedia I always take a look at the en.wiki page on that subject, over to taking information from books (I have about 200 chess books). Today I wrote the article on Alexey Suetin and took many data from your article. An interesting work outside wikipedia is the one I made for the site of the Turin 2006 olympiad (still online), with plenty of data on the history of chess olympiads up to 2006 (also in english). Maybe you will like to take a look at it. Regards, --Gabodon (talk) 14:12, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Torino 2006 olympiad and other

I also saw the full results of the Moscow 1971 tournament, a very strong one, in an issue of "L'Italia Scacchistica", though I'm not sure I can retrieve it since it is a single separate issue. The address of Torino is the following: http://www.scacchisticatorinese.it/olimpiadi_scacchi_2006/eng/olimpiadi_statistiche.php I will try to find the missing information on the world youth championships, though I think it will not be an easy task. My user name on it.wikipedia is Gab.pr. Greetings, --Gabodon (talk) 19:03, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

WYCC

Thanks for your message! Good find on Matthias Wahls. Do you have an account on ICC. It seems he hasn't logged in for a long time. Information about Stronghand(GM) (Last disconnected Thu May 13 2004 05:07), but if you have an account you can message him, and it might be forwarded as an email. Hopefully something comes out of it! Best regards, Voorlandt (talk) 11:04, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your WYCC message. I think we can now close the chapter on those U16 championships for girls. I have updated the article accordingly. Sorry it took me so long to respond :), life is busy. In January I am planning to take a week off and will work a bit more on the WYCC article. Excellent idea on the life magazine photos, they should all release them under the CC-BY license or the like. Merry Christmas! Voorlandt (talk) 18:14, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

World youth championship 1983 girls

Hello, I sent an email to the Colombian chess federation asking for this information. The event was played in Bucamaranga, Colombia, they should have it. I added some missing 2nd and 3rd places in the junior championship page, taken from the italian review "Scacco!". Greetings, --Gabodon (talk) 11:21, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Colombian federation will seek information

Hello, Mr Oswaldo Ceballos answered my email. He says he is in Dresden now for the olympiads and he will try to find the information on the girls youth championships when he'll be back home. I will let you know when he will contact me. Greetings and compliments for your very good work on chess players biographies, --Gabodon (talk) 19:46, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Colombian federation answered about the 1983 world-ch for girls

Hello Brittle heaven, Mr Ceballos sent me the following on the 1983 world-ch for girls: "Boris de Greiff, who was principal arbiter in the world tournament in Bucaramanga, tell me today that in this event played only men, no girls. The winner was GM Alexis Dreev. I don´t know about Guayaquil tournament. Best regards, Oswaldo Ceballos, Colombian Chess Federation, President." I have contacted the chess federation of Ecuador for the 1982 event in Guayaquil. Greetings, --Gabodon (talk) 15:43, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Quite probably there was no championship for girls also in Guayaquil 1982. The photo sent by Voorland [thttp://www.linach.cl/imagenes/Colombia1983.jpg] may refer to a shot taken before the tournament and afterwards it was decided not to play the girls event, though this a little strange. The words of Boris de Greiff anyhow cannot be wrong, he certainly remembers well. --Gabodon (talk) 15:53, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Mar del Plata 1941 chess tournament

Hello! Thanks for your last add on Balduin Wolff and Mar del Plata 1941 chess tournament. By the way, I have written the South American Chess Championship as Torneo Sudamericano in Spanish and Torneio Sulamericano in Portuguese. -- Best wishes, Mibelz (talk) 21:11, 19 January 2009 (UTC) PS. Do you think that a title "Chosen Country" used in the crosstable is correct? If not, change it, please.

• Thanks for your reply! -- Mibelz (talk) 09:23, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Paris 1900 chess tournament

Hi! Thanks a lot for your information and suggestion. Imagine, I have been absolutely sure (without a source), that Leon Rosen was a Polish Jew who came to New York City in the 19th century. I have found he won (jointly) Manhattan CC championship in 1909 (http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Lab/7378/manhat.htm). So, it is!

From the other hand, I think it is interesting to present an information on birthplace of American chess players not only by USA/USA. I know that there are The United States and different states, but USA and for example Ohio or New York State are not on the same level. From our European point of view, Ohio or NYS are countries as well as England (United Kingdom) or Bavaria (Germany).

Sorry, I do not know what is a difference between therm Native Country and Country of Origin. In my understanding of Native Country, it is a country (independent or not independent) of birthplace. -- Best wishes, Mibelz (talk) 17:41, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

You are right, the English language is so duplicitous. I use term "Native Country" in several variations:

first - independent or nearly independent state (country), for example: Gunsberg (United Kingdom/Hungary), Alekhine (France/Russia), Bernstein (France/Ukraine), Bogolljubow (Germany/Ukraine), Nimzowitsch (Denmark/Latvia), Reshevsky (USA/Poland), Najdorf (Argentina/Poland), Mieses (United Kingdom/Germany), Emanuel Lasker (Soviet Union/Germany), etc.

second - occupied country: Zytogorski (United Kingdom/Poland), Janowski, Rosenthal and Taubenhaus (France/Poland), Judd (United States/Poland), Steinitz (United Kingdom or United States/Bohemia), etc.

third - occupied country within an independent state, as Baltic Republics, Poland and other Central European Coutries in the 19th/20th century: Aron Nimzowitsch (Russian Empire/Latvia), Akiba Rubinstein and Gersz Salwe (Russian Empire/Poland), Paul Saladin Leonhardt and Edward Lasker (German Empire/Poland), Ignatz von Popiel and Kalikst Morawski (Austria-Hungary/Poland), Wilhelm Steinitz (Austria-Hungary/Bohemia), Julius Brach (Austria-Hungary/Moravia), Richard Reti (Austria-Hungary/Slovakia), Georg Marco (Austria-Hungary/Romania), Vidmar (Austria-Hungary/Slovenia), Matteo Gladig (Austria-Hungary/Italy), etc.

fourth - states within a state: Frank Marshall (USA/New York}, Pillsbury (USA/Massachusetts), Showalter (USA/Ohio), De Vere (United Kingdom/Scotland), Burn (United Kingdom/England), Em. Lasker (German Empire/East Brandenburg), Tarrasch (German Empire/Silesia), Mieses (German Empire/Saxony), etc.

fifth - colonial or non-European coutries for Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, etc. For example: George Alan Thomas (United Kingdom/Turkey), Cesar Boutteville (France/Vietnam), Klaus Junge (Germany/Chile), Herbert Heinicke (Germany/Brazil), etc.

Of course, you are right, there are different levels but how many informations !? Keep smiling :). Mibelz (talk) 20:00, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Since the issue comes up in several pages, I have raised the issue at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chess#Listing Native Countries in tournaments. Peter Ballard (talk) 01:52, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Berlin 1881 chess tournament

Dear Brittle heaven! I am just creating a page "Berlin 1881 chess tournament". Would you be so kind to look at the Gaige, and find Carl Friedrich Schmid's (22 April 1840 – 31 March 1897), Carl Wemmers's (1845 - 18 September 1882) and H. von Schütz's (Schuetz was born ca. 1850) birthplaces ? -- Warm regards, Mibelz (talk) 14:11, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks a lot ! Mibelz (talk) 19:35, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Cheating in chess article rewrite proposals

Cheating can be done many ways, including collusion with spectators or other players.

First of all, I think the article is poorly written and it purports that Cheating in Chess is a de facto entity. Although I believe that the article should be merged, I have no personal stake.

The one sentence is all I wish to talk about today. "Cheating can be done many ways" is imgrammatical. The preposotional phrase in many ways has omitted the preposition! What a stellar novelty!

Can you take your edit to the talk page and lets hash it out. I spent an hour on improving the first paragraph, and I concede that you were correct that beyond the first paragraph, I did more harm than good, but can we just compromise? I came to wikipedia looking for more info about Topalov (I have a friend attending the Topa-Kamsky match) and I'm looking for nothing else. I am looking for information, and not drama. Please help me rewrite the article to reflect the fact that cheating in chess is not an entity, but just an anomoly. There are always a few bad apples, but we don't have articles like the bad engineers in the profession of engineering and even if we did, its unfair to purport such so. About me, I'm a writer for a college newspaper. I have a huge passion for chess, especially if Kamsky defeats Topa, but I really intended to further work on the article, but I don't want to just sidestep you and get hit later with concensus crap.

Please open up a discussion on the talk page if you are willing to help me rewrite the article. If you can AGF me, then there is no way that down the road, I'll be hit with wp/own or wp/npov. We are already opposite ends of the spectrum and if I come to you for help, then you have clean hands and my intentions can be vouched by your participation alone!

I really don't want Kamsky's win or loss to have the slightest bit of stinch from this article about cheating. Let's work on this together and have it finished before Feb 27 (the date the match ends).

Wikipedia is the #1 search result in google, and all I want to do is improve the information that googlers will be lead to (whether Kamsky wins or loses--I just want the information to be verifiable, and neutral--at present time the chess cheating article is neither).

Please initiate (or respond at) the discussion on the Cheating in chess talk page.

Thank you, Lee Jaedong 71.54.173.253 (talk) 20:04, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Cheating in chess is any behavior outside the rules of chess intended to give an unfair advantage to a player. Cheating can be done many ways, including collusion with spectators or other players.

Cheaters may use technology such as chess computers and wireless communication devices. Cheating occurs in both friendly games and competitions.

Cheating in chess can refer to unethical behaviors which are intended to give an unfair advantage to a player. Cheating can occur in many forms, and possibly before, during, or even after a match. Most cases of alleged cheating involve one of more of the following: collusion with spectators or other players linking to remote computers, rating manipulation, or bad-faithed psychological warfare (which can be rapidly disseminated through press conferences or the blogosphere).

Cheating in chess can refer to unethical behaviors which are intended to give an unfair advantage to a player. Cheating can occur in many forms, and possibly before, during, or even after a match. Most cases of alleged cheating involve one of more of the following: collusion with spectators or other players linking to remote computers, rating manipulation, or bad-faithed psychological warfare (which can be rapidly disseminated through press conferences, and through unconventional media like the blogosphere or sites like youtube).

What do you think? Its hard to make the first paragraph neutral without sounding overly verbose. By the way, on a chess note--I'm ecstatic over Kamsky's game yesterday! Lee Jaedong 71.54.173.253 (talk) 10:25, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Re cheating can occur "after the match"?

Yes definitely. There were allegations after the woman's match last year or the year before that the video tape was doctored to show that one player ran out of time before the other. I want to think it was for the woman's title, in a tie-breaker game.

Here are the two edits.

[24] This first one is exactly word for word what you wrote, which I think is VERY neutral and good wording. I like the can happen and can take place style (although I later removed the can in the first sentence as copy-editing--see edit #2).

[25] just some copyediting and grammar, a comma removal, and changed can refer to just refers and moved the word can to the very next sentence.

I think the lead paragraph is wonderful now. The style is neutral, and I absolutely adore the tie-in with ethics. That's what i saw you gather--that anything that is bad-intentioned and skirts the rules or is not directly addressed by a written rule, still constitutes cheating if it is unethical and gives one player an unfair advantage.

I'm very glad you understand this as well. The article originally seemed like it had a POV but I couldn't figure out what the POV was. Now it seems very neutral and encyclopedic.

Next, I wanted to discuss the overall structure of the body of the article. The lead paragraph is good, then the articles talks about the main ideas set forth in the lead-in, and then just cuts off and ends out of nowhere. I propose some sort of paragraph at the bottom which discusses the current scene on chess cheating (for example, the topa-kamsky match has cell phone jammers, and all players and coaches have to walk through metal detectors) and the article can talk about FIDE's commitment to prophylactic measures--as the topa/kramnik allegations and various youtube videos floating around suggesting collusion, really damage the sport. The last section that talks about the current status of cheating in chess should give an honest depiction of how much cheating allegations there are this year 2009, and possibly the last half of 2008. I really like the body of the article. The style is good, how it gives the reader an anecdotal account of chess related deaths, then gives a review of notable cases, and..

...then ends out of nowhere. What do you think of the idea of polishing off the article with a good final section on today's level of cheating in chess? The Topa-Kamsky match is very popular right now, so that could warrant at least a sentence (hopefully there won't be cheating and a single sentence will be enough--but my fingers are crossed--you never know these last 4 games).

I'll start working on it later today, but do you think the final paragraph is a good idea? Thanks Lee Jaedong 71.54.173.253 (talk) 14:46, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Today's chess scene

The most recent, serious allegations were probably the kramnik topalov match where blah blah blah. This year there have only been N incidents, notably the match of X1 held in T1 and X2 held in T2. FIDE organized events reflected increased concern of maintaining the integrity of the sport and event organizers take many prophylactic measures to ensure the integrity of the host country or whatever. Outro sentence

What do you think of this general format? It need not be a long paragraph, just a closing one. It also could use a better title than today's chess scene. Additionally it seems like an advertisement for FIDE--which I just used to serve as placeholder. I don't know who takes the most damage? --the players? the host city? the country of the player? I care so much about this article because it makes me sick of the sport when I read the NY Times and see stuff about bathroom breaks being used to get comp assistance. Even if I can't clean up the sport, I can at least help clean up the article on cheating. Thanks again my friend in chess, LeeJaedong (talk) 15:00, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Update

I'll reply more tomorrow. I feel that there needs to be at least be one or two closing sentences. As it stands now, the article is much better than I thought it would be. I thought that each section would need to be micromanaged but the lead paragraph sets the tone and outlines the scope of the article, and the body of the article includes an anecdotal account and supports the main idea; all the article could use now is just a good closing line.

You are right, that a closing section would be subject to POV, so I was thinking that maybe we could reword the title of the closing section and just add one or two sentences saying that no disasters have happened so far in 2009 and I think we could call the article as finished.

What do you think?

And btw, you are an asset to WP. I have looked over your user page, and you have done excellent work to the chess niche of wikipedia. If you ever need me to go over copy-editing or grammar on one of your articles that you have worked on--just leave me a note. I am very good at copyediting and don't work on articles where my background is unappreciated, but I'm so joyed that someone shares my enthusiasm for making chess articles better that I'll extend my talent anywhere that you direct me.

I say that just one or two closing sentences to the Cheating in chess article, and we can call it a day. I look forward to enjoying the rest of the Topa-Kamsky match without imagining a heavy WP:workload at the end of each match (which is how I roll).

Thanks for helping me help the article. I have only worked on 2-3 articles on wikipedia, but you have been extremely polite and we share the same ideals on chess ethics.

Your friend in chess, Lee Jaedong

LeeJaedong (talk) 23:37, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

What do you think?

http://en.wiki.x.io/w/index.php?title=David_Bronstein&diff=272865118&oldid=272001018

I chiefly enjoy editing the bio sections and the lead paragraphs, not the chess sections which essentially list dates and accomplishments. I grabbed the first subject, David Bronstein, from your user page--if you have any specific players you would like me to work on next, I'll do them first; if not, I'll just work my way down the list.

P.S. I would have probably finished the article, or started a second article, but the Topa-Kamsky game was disappointing--and confusing (why did they switch the colors?)

Your friend in chess, LeeJaedong (talk) 02:12, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

19xx in chess

Hi! Thank you very much for such nice words and help to find information on chess players. I have already created pages "19xx in chess" for World War I and World War II. Well, it is time to look at another period. PS. I am going to go to China for tourist sightseeing in April/May. Warm regards. Mibelz (talk) 08:46, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Re:Milan Vukic

Hi. Litmanowicz "Encyklopedia A-Z" also says 1942. I believe that is correct year. Regards, pjahr (talk) 20:32, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Re:Mamedyarov/Mammadyarov

The version "Shakhriyar Mamedyarov" is the transliteration of this person's name based on its Russian and not Azeri pronunciation. What happened was the Azeri name was first transliterated into Russian, then the Russian transliteration was transliterated into English, distancing it more and more from the original pronunciation each time. For instance, the Azeri consonant "h" was first Russified into the Cyrillic "х" (pronounced "kh" in Russian, as Russian has no "h"), as was the "Mammad" element of the surname (which traditionally becomes "Мамед" – "Mamed" in Russian-language texts), then the Russified versions were transliterated directly into English via romanisation. To give you an example, it is the same as taking the name John Smith, transcribing it in Russian → Джон Смит, and then using the Russian romanisation rules to re-derive the English name in the form of Dzhon Smit. In my view, this is not acceptable, since Mammadyarov is an Azeri surname that belongs to a person from Azerbaijan, hence the name should be transliterated directly from its original language and not via an unrelated third-party language. I hope my explanation was clear. Parishan (talk) 21:38, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Side project

Hi Brittle heaven :) Thanks a lot for your email and your message (I hardly ever check my gmail account). I think your side project is a great idea, but I don't think I will have the time to help :( At least not for now, perhaps in a few years. While I used to contribute to wikipedia 2-3 hours a day, now I can only muster about 30min a week! I usually spend those with maintaining the list of chess topics (probably not the best choice heh :)). Best regards, and I do apologize for responding so late. Voorlandt (talk) 08:58, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Cities in Eastern Europe that changed ownership as a result of 1939-45

There are a lot of issues with Eastern European history, especially with the history of cities that changed ownership as a result of either the Molotov–Ribbentrop_Pact or as a result of the Allied settlement in 1945. For example, Polish nationalists insist that areas of Poland lost in 1939 are really Polish, and that areas of Germany gained by Poland in 1945 are also really Polish.

I put the {{citations}} tag on Lvov because there are no citations for most of the key facts about the history of Lvov. The history is complicated because a Ruthenian (Ukrainian) city was founded in an area inhabited by Lechitic (Polish?) people. About 90 years after it was founded, it was captured by the Poles, and for most of its history the city was part of Poland. There are Polish and Ukrainian points of view on this history. Most good sources on its history will be in either German, Polish, Russian or Ukrainian. My belief is that Wikipedia members should encourage the adding of citations to improve the article, and justify the facts claimed.--Toddy1 (talk) 11:25, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

I have commented on Toddy's talk

Chaosdruid (talk) 08:21, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Fair comment, you cant blame me for trying to get you editing with us lol - thanks for the good luck !!

Chaosdruid (talk) 13:05, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

The Oxford Companion to Chess

Hi. Here Bill Wall mentions The Oxford Companion to Chess when speaking about Alekhine's studies in Sorbonna. Could you look for the exact qoutation and number of page so that I could give a proper reference? I need this for ruwiki article, but I think, it can also be added in Alexander Alekhine here. --Blacklake (talk) 07:05, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

• Thanks for your help. Actually most of Alekhine's bio say, that he did gain a doctorate, that's why I must have overlooked Brace in Bill Wall's article - he said nothing new to what I have already read in other sources. And Hooper & Whyld were the only ones who contradicted to the majority. By the way, I am not sure if it is correct to call Nadezda Vasiliev the third wife - according to Shaburov's Alekhine bio, they were not formally married, although lived together for several years. --Blacklake (talk) 06:52, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

FYI...

I've reported an old edit of yours here for discussion. Basket of Puppies 02:53, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, but I don't have time to spend on the Ofra Haza article right now. Brittle heaven (talk) 18:41, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Barnstar

		The Chess Barnstar
		For many useful contributions to chess articles.

Bubba73 (Who's attacking me now?), 01:45, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

List of Grandmasters for chess composition

Hallo Brittle Heaven, how are you? Hope well, it's some time since I've heard from you. I've just finished to make improvements to the article List of grandmasters of the FIDE for chess compositions. I added an introduction and changed the list of grandmaster to sortable wikitable, in this way it will be easier to find names and countries. However, I don't like the present title, a better one would be "List of FIDE Grandmasters for chess composition" or better still "List of Grandmasters for chess composition", since no other organization than FIDE awards this title. At first I wanted to move the page to this other name, but then thought that it could be an hazardous move, also considering the work of changing the links. I contacted you for being one of the best editors of chess articles on en.wikipedia. Other pages I wrote recently are Bill Wall (with his own data), Women's Soviet Chess Championship, Cappelle-la-Grande Open, and enlarged a lot the page World Open chess tournament. Let me know your opinion on the list of grandmasters for composition. --Gabodon (talk) 22:10, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Many compliments for the Chess Barnstar! --Gabodon (talk) 22:13, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Hallo Brittle heaven, I agree that it's totally clear what the right title should be. However my only doubt is about using 'of' instead of 'for'; composition is right at the singular, no matter if someone used the plural in some cases. Though 'of chess composition' is right by itself, the two 'of' would sound a little clumsy, so I prefered 'for chess composition'. I already contacted someone else, namely Bubba73, for this matter, and he agreed on 'list of grandmasters for chess composition'. I have already moved the page to that name (besides changing the plain lists to sortable wikitables). No problem about being inactive for some time, a little vacation from editing will probably do you only good! Thank you anyway for answering, --Gabodon (talk) 22:59, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for cleaning up European Team Chess Championship

I haven't been very active here for almost 2 years so I haven't really had a reason to drop you a note recently, but you did a good job translating names on European Team Chess Championship. The random text in 2001 is caused by this strange edit which broke Template:Spa. The template is protected so I've asked the perp to fix it. Quale (talk) 19:50, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

I am dumb. Template:Spa was fine. The article needed Template:ESP instead. Quale (talk) 22:29, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

I missed that the team scores had gotten dropped from the article. If you care to put them back in, that would be great. It would actually be nice to have details sections for each of the competitions, but someone would have to write them. For now, removing them would probably be best. Something we could fix now is the year links in the table should be removed per WP:LINK. They could be removed entirely or replaced by links to the appropriate Category:Years in chess articles if we wanted something fancier, although I'm not sure those articles would be particularly relevant at least in their current state. As a final little thing, the table has a lot more boldface than I like. That's just my personal opinion. Apparently someone prefers the bold or they wouldn't have put it in.

I also hope to return to more active work on wikipedia's chess articles at some point, but for now I just hang out and try to keep an eye on things. There are some old articles I worked on that should be much better sourced (most have no inline cites because I didn't know better at the time). I should really help fix those up. Quale (talk) 22:57, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Big thanks for translations, I think currently both European team chess championship and world one looks far better--NovaSkola (talk) 23:22, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Move photos

You hit a goldmine of photos from GF Hund. Are you getting them from him directly or from the commons? Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 20:08, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Grandmaster (chess)

Thanks, your additions are better than the material for 1950 to 1965 that the article had before. I should have thought to ask you for help on the GM title requirements from 1970 on much earlier. You always deliver when a chess article needs help. Quale (talk) 03:12, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

I agree that not every change over the last 40 years will need mention in the article. Any important changes could be mentioned, but as you suggest I think a more detailed explanation of the current rules should be sufficient. Thanks again. Quale (talk) 18:08, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Tony Miles

Thanks for improving my poor english. --Turelion (talk) 14:55, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Andrei Sokolov page

Hallo Brittle heaven, yesterday I translated to it.wiki the above page, omitting something but including what Alexei Suetin said about him, which I think you added to the page in november 2006. A user on it.wiki put a tag of "insufficient references" to the page, mainly for that sentence I believe. If you can retrace the source, my colleague will be satisfied... Thank you and best wishes, --Gabodon (talk) 01:20, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Qualifying for GM

It was a little confusing, thanks for clarifying! Ihardlythinkso (talk) 18:41, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

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Image of Wilhelm Hanstein

Hello!

Would you mind check if de:Wilhelm_Hanstein picture it's avaliable to be uploaded at commons? Thank you!OTAVIO1981 (talk) 20:47, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

hey, no problem. I moved to commons myself and now the file is waiting review for an editor from commons. If someone deleted I'll notice because I put the file in his article and Pleiades from Berlin article. Thanks for answer, anyway! Regards!OTAVIO1981 (talk) 13:21, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Women in chess

Thank you for you compliment! I see you have also contributed a lot to chess articles, especially on individual players. As you can see from my work on the Womens' World Championships and Olympiads articles, some of the top female players are missing their own articles. Maybe this is something you and/or I can work on in the future. dllu (talk) 06:44, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Question about Jan Ehlvest's federation in January 1991

I have a question about Jan Ehlvest's federation in January 1991; see Talk:1991 in chess. Since you created the page, you may have a more definitive source than the old rating lists at http://www.mark-weeks.com/chess/ratings/. Quale (talk) 07:14, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Nomination of Fatal Charm for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Fatal Charm is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Fatal Charm until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion template from the top of the article. Northamerica1000^(talk) 02:39, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

WP Chess in the Signpost

The WikiProject Report would like to focus on WikiProject Chess for a Signpost article. This is an excellent opportunity to draw attention to your efforts and attract new members to the project. Would you be willing to participate in an interview? If so, here are the questions for the interview. Just add your response below each question and feel free to skip any questions that you don't feel comfortable answering. Multiple editors will have an opportunity to respond to the interview questions, so be sure to sign your answers. If you know anyone else who would like to participate in the interview, please share this with them. Have a great day. –Mabeenot (talk) 04:49, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Oxford companion to chess

Hi. Currently I am writing article on Boris Spassky in ruwiki and need some help involving material from the article "Spassky variation" in the companion. Could you quote the exact lines which the companion calls the "Spassky variation"? In 1996 edition it seems to be on pages 381-382 [26], but I van see just a small extract. Many thanks in advance. P.S. I also believe the Gathering and Anneke are amazing. --Blacklake (talk) 21:06, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

• Thanks a lot! --Blacklake (talk) 09:39, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

"Nuisance nominations" for deletion?

Does this look like a "nuisance" nomination to you? Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Rawle_Allicock. Perhaps you should brush up on some basic core policies. The chess articles here get no "free pass" at being non-notable and non-verifiable. Thank you. OGBranniff (talk) 00:36, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

• FYI -- OGBranniff has been blocked indefinitely.--Epeefleche (talk) 19:36, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

• And here is a bit more on the background. --Epeefleche (talk) 00:40, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

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List of people who have beaten

Hey, no worries. I have a ton of respect for you and your work on Wikipedia, and you need never apologize to me for any opinion you have. I am not offended when someone I respect has a different opinion than I do, and on the rare occasions that you and I differ I have to very carefully consider the not unlikely possibility that you are right and I am wrong. (Many other times there is no right and wrong, just different perspectives. That is of course the nature of opinion—it isn't amenable to proof or else it would be fact or falsity.)

As far as the "List of people who have beaten ..." articles go, I never really cared for any of them except for Fischer. I think the Fischer article meets WP:GNG requirements, as Fischer's losses specifically have been the subject of serious study by experts, both the individual games and together as a distinct topic or area of research. While each individual loss for the other champions can be documented, I'm not sure that any of them are a cohesive topic that has been researched as a whole. For that reason I do not intend to !vote on any of the AFDs other than the Fischer one, and you should feel free to express your honest opinion on any of them including Fischer without concern that I will be offended. My irritation is reserved for those who express uninformed opinions, and I have never seen you do so. Unfortunately I have let this make me peevish, which is not an attractive or helpful attitude to take on Wikipedia. I don't want you to think that any of that was directed at you, and I always wish you the best. Take care, Quale (talk) 03:25, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm very glad to hear that you may have more time to devote to Wikipedia, and if Voorlandt would return too that would be icing on the cake. My efforts have waned considerably over time. I was most active partly as an anon and partly as a registered user six to eight years ago. After a while I greatly reduced my production of new content and have mostly limited myself to minor gnoming-type work, occasionally picking fights with trolls on talk and chess project pages. In some ways that's a shame, as I could do a much better job writing new content today, especially in providing inline cites as I didn't realize how important they are back then. Recently I have been thinking about returning to work on the years in chess articles as well, although in a rather lazy way. I'm mining Category:Chess people to get birth and death dates to automatically generate Births and Deaths sections for the years articles. The sections would still need human editing for polish and to get some details right. Quale (talk) 02:05, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Algebraic notation box

the bulky box does tend to wreck the symmetry/order of some pages. If you can feed me specific article names, maybe I can work on them to improve the situations. Ok, Ihardlythinkso (talk) 12:49, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

As I replied on my Talk, I'm wondering if the "accidental location" of the box next to TOC occurs in just those two articles (Ruy Lopez and Modern Benoni) or in any others that you noticed. (Because I'm supposing the exceptionally wide TOCs in those two articles, squeeze the space between TOC and Infobox where the box normally falls. And am wondering too if it is further a screen width issue, as on my screen for both articles, the box isn't squeezed out. Bubba and I endeavored to slim the Ruy Lopez article TOC width, on your screen, is there *almost* enough room for the notation box between TOC and Infobox? [I'm wondering if the Ruy Lopez TOC is slimmed further it will solve for that article.]) Ok, Ihardlythinkso (talk) 06:51, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

I've shortened the box width for when used with TOCs, let me know if that helped at all on your screen for article Ruy Lopez. Thx. Ihardlythinkso (talk) 07:50, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

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Eales

Thanks for the note on a possible Eales source. It doesn't necessarily need to be a printed source, but we should be able to find enough on the author of Chess for Dummies and other books of considerably greater interest to chess fans. I haven't been very active on Wikipedia, but I keep telling myself I can always come back to do something constructive some day. Quale (talk) 04:27, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Wow, that's embarrassing. You'd think I'd be able to not confuse Richard Eales and James Eades, but of course I'll make every simple mistake if I live long enough. I have Chess: The History of a Game. I think it has some good material that could be used to improve several chess articles including history of chess, but so far I have only used it only in a footnote in Hugh Alexander Kennedy. I don't have his book on the Cambridge club, but it could almost certainly be used to improve the Oxford University Chess Club article or perhaps support a new article on the varsity matches. Quale (talk) 02:27, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Re: Player photographs in Commons

Thank you for kind words. Regars, pjahr (talk) 19:56, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Singular of dice is dice, if you're British

Strange, but true. See wikt:dice. Quale (talk) 02:43, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Yes. I think your revert was correct, but the reason is a bit subtle. Someone who is familiar only with British English might not know that dice is not used for the singular in the US, nor is it typical in gaming. Quale (talk)

Nomination of List of strong chess tournaments for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article List of strong chess tournaments is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of strong chess tournaments until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article.  Velella  ^{Velella Talk}   03:30, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of File:Adolf Albin (1895) (cropped).jpg

A tag has been placed on File:Adolf Albin (1895) (cropped).jpg requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section F1 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the image is an unused duplicate or lower-quality copy of another file on Wikipedia having the same file format, and all inward links have been updated.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Ich (talk) 10:19, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

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