Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chess

Harlequin69 is making some valid points. There is a case for "list of chess openings" and "list of ECO codes" co-existing, but I hated how the the chess.com "every opening has to have a name" crowd took it over. How should we proceed? MaxBrowne2 (talk) 11:45, 15 December 2025 (UTC)

Suggestion: Change the name to "List of Named Chess Openings". Then we can at least require reliable sources for opening names. Not chess.com or chess365 or whatever. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 11:48, 15 December 2025 (UTC)

Thank you — I think this is a constructive direction.

Requiring reliable, non–site-specific sources for opening names is entirely reasonable, and I fully support excluding meme-based or purely internet-origin labels.

One small concern with the proposed title “List of Named Chess Openings” is that it may unintentionally narrow the scope toward nomenclature rather than conceptual structure. Many historically established opening families (e.g. Open Games, Semi-Open Games, Indian Defences, Gambit families) are meaningful precisely because of their ideas and structures, not just because of a single canonical name.

Perhaps a way forward could be:

• A curated, concept-oriented page (whether titled List of chess openings or similar) that:
  • organizes openings by families and ideas,
  • includes only historically established and reliably sourced names,
  • explicitly excludes informal or meme-based labels;
• alongside List of ECO codes as the technical classification index.

This would address the “everything needs a name” concern while preserving a human-oriented overview that helps readers understand how openings relate to one another.

I’d be happy to help outline sourcing criteria or a basic structure if that would be useful. Harlequin69 (talk) 12:47, 15 December 2025 (UTC)

The first issue is sourcing. Have you found sources from which to get your organization? We shouldn't just make stuff up.

I'm worried that you are going in the direction of Pawn structure, which classifies openings in a plausible way, but is entirely unsourced, and so is not sufficiently credible. Bruce leverett (talk) 16:08, 15 December 2025 (UTC)

Thank you — that’s a fair concern, and I agree entirely that we should avoid any original or unsourced classification.

To clarify, I’m not proposing a novel organizational scheme (such as pawn-structure–based taxonomies), nor anything derived from personal synthesis. The intent is to rely on long-established opening families as they are already presented in authoritative chess literature.

For example, classifications such as:

• Open Games
• Semi-Open Games
• Closed Games
• Indian Defences
• Flank Openings
• Gambit families

are not modern inventions, but appear consistently in classic and mainstream sources, including:

• the Encyclopaedia of Chess Openings itself (in its volume structure and introductory material),
• standard opening manuals (e.g. Nunn, Fine, Pachman, modern repertoire books),
• and long-standing chess encyclopedias and reference works.

In other words, the proposed structure would be derived directly from published sources, not synthesized independently. The page would essentially summarize how reputable sources already group openings, with citations at the family level.

If it would help, the next concrete step could be to:

• list specific sources that define these families explicitly, and
• draft a minimal outline where each family heading is backed by at least one reliable reference.

I’m very open to keeping the scope conservative and source-driven — the goal is accessibility, not reinterpretation. Harlequin69 (talk) 20:57, 15 December 2025 (UTC)

ECO generally avoids using opening names, which often vary between countries. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 00:15, 16 December 2025 (UTC)

I completely agree — and that’s precisely why List of ECO codes is so valuable as a technical reference.

My suggestion isn’t to replace or reinterpret the ECO system in any way, but to acknowledge that it deliberately optimizes for standardization rather than reader orientation. Avoiding opening names solves one problem (ambiguity across languages), but it also means ECO is not designed to serve as a conceptual overview.

That’s the gap I’m hoping to address: a separate, source-driven overview that reflects how authoritative literature discusses opening families and ideas, while leaving List of ECO codes to do what it already does very well.

In short: ECO for classification; a curated list for comprehension — coexisting, not competing. Harlequin69 (talk) 05:37, 16 December 2025 (UTC)

I suppose the concern is that if we recreate the article it will end up like this, full of unsourced names for openings which hardly anyone plays and which you won't find in any standard reference. The article was truly a magnet for low quality edits. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 09:36, 16 December 2025 (UTC)

The ECO system functions essentially as an index. Much like a library classification system, its purpose is to tell you where something belongs — not why it is interesting, how it relates to other works, or where to begin as a reader.

Listing chess openings exclusively by ECO codes is therefore comparable to listing an author’s books by ISBN numbers rather than by title or theme. This is entirely correct from a technical and cataloguing standpoint, but it is not especially informative or approachable for non-specialist readers.

This is precisely why the ECO system works so well as a reference tool, and also why it is not designed to replace an explanatory, concept-oriented overview. The two serve different but complementary purposes.

My intention is not to weaken the technical rigor of the ECO classification, but to ensure that, alongside it, there remains an encyclopedic entry point that helps readers understand what the main opening families are and how they relate to one another — before they consult the index.

In short: ECO tells you where to find an opening; an encyclopedic overview helps you understand why it matters. Harlequin69 (talk) 15:02, 17 December 2025 (UTC)

Yesterday Cbigorgne pointed below to the thing that wikipedia has that already does this. A list is not well suited to helping anyone understand why something matters. Once you start making a list you already know why the things matter—that's why you list them. Articles can explain why things matter, and wikipedia has Chess_opening#Classification_of_chess_openingsQuale (talk) 23:46, 17 December 2025 (UTC)

I think that we already have an excellent list in Opening (chess)#Classification of chess openings. Why not copy-paste this list?--Cbigorgne (talk) 09:31, 16 December 2025 (UTC)

Can someone please add some sources with WP:SIGCOV to this article? Thanks.4meter4 (talk) 15:20, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

I don't like this article's chances of surviving an Afd. I couldn't find anything in the usual sources (google books, internet archive), or even the self-published chessmetrics. Representing Norway at a chess Olympiad is something, but probably not enough on its own to confer notability, especially given his poor results there. Another self-published historic rating site, edochess, indicates that he was not a very strong player. 12th in the 1925 Norwegian championship confirms this.

Some time ago a Latvian gentleman added Wikipedia bios for dozens of obscure players who played for their countries in chess olympiads. He relied heavily on Olimpbase.org for his sourcing, which is problematic in itself since it's arguably a self-published site. It doesn't help that the olimpbase site has been having all sorts of problems lately with its cloud security provider, although it's a goldmine of information when it's actually working. Some of the articles he created survived Afd challenges and became decent articles once we'd tidied up the English and general style, but many of them didn't. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 02:19, 19 December 2025 (UTC)

Are you sure that 1999 is the correct year?

• 1999, 2000, 2002 2002 -- Volcanus (talk) 16:31, 28 December 2025 (UTC)

Hey, just was wondering if anyone had any input on whether they prefer:

1. Main line section to come first (after History, Basics, etc) followed by deeper and then gradually more shallow side lines; shallowest side lines first with deeper and deeper side lines following and then the main line's section last; or a hybrid approach (e.g. my preference is main line first and shallowest side lines last, but also to have a "Variations"/"Overview"/etc section that explains the main line and links to subsection anchors for the side lines, followed by the main line's section)
2. "Other fifth moves for White" (currently the most common), "White's fifth move alternatives" (keeps the most important words, "White" and "fifth", adjacent), or "Fifth move alternatives for White" (keeps the most important words both capitalized)
3. "4.a4 a5 (the Foo Variation)" or "4.a4 a5 (Foo Variation)"
4. "sideline" or "side line"

Dayshade (talk) 22:12, 30 December 2025 (UTC)

You will want opinions other than mine (if anyone cares enough to offer an opinion, and they might not), but 1. whatever you like best in a particular article (I don't think this must be exactly the same in every article), 2. whatever you like best in a particular article (I don't think this must be exactly the same in every article), 3. never "the Foo V." in a section title, just "Foo V.", 4. this is a question of English rather than chess, and I think "sideline" is correct. Quale (talk) 05:47, 31 December 2025 (UTC)

Well, there's an editor who wants to change King's Gambit to have the deepest theory last and start off with Declined lines first, but I'm more into keeping it with Declined last, so we have two different whatevers being liked best, which is why I asked. Same for #2 as Erukx changed the "Other fifth..." type stuff to "White's fifth..." but I sort of want to undo it or change it to the third option, but I don't care that much either I guess. As for #3, I meant when in the middle of a sentence in the body text of a section, like if I said 1.e4 e5 (the Open Game) vs 1.e4 e5 (Open Game) in the middle of a paragraph while listing some variations that may or may not have anchor links in the parentheses, not in a header/title itself. Dayshade (talk) 06:00, 31 December 2025 (UTC)

I'm glad you're watching that. I took a look at Talk:King's Gambit and was going to offer an opinion like yours that the accepted lines are vastly more important and should come first because there's a strong general principle that the most important material should appear nearer the beginning of an article than the end. I haven't said anything yet as currently the treatment of the declined lines is rather brief so I'm not sure the placement matters too much. It would matter a lot if putting the declined lines first pushed the important accepted lines to the end of a long article. Quale (talk) 06:23, 31 December 2025 (UTC)

Sorting lines by frequency is valid to some extent, but it shouldn't be the only criterion. Lines that are thematically similar or can transpose into each other such as the Fischer Defence and the Becker Defence compared to 3...g5 should be grouped together in my opinion (another reason I don't like spinning 3...g5 out into a separate article). I don't like to see 3...d5 sorted ahead of 3...d6 and 3...h6 just because it's the more common move. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 08:31, 31 December 2025 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm good with 3...d6 and 3...h6 above 3...d5. 3...d6 is common itself anyway. I also have been drifting towards no split for 3...g5 too, I'm just not sure how to avoid making the Classical Variation being super long/having way too many subsections when merging in the details about certain lines that don't need their own articles (like Allgaier, Salvio, etc). Maybe it's just fine for it to be long. Could always add the overview thing now present at Ruy Lopez with anchor links. Dayshade (talk) 15:00, 31 December 2025 (UTC)

An unrelated style thing that could be improved is the overuse of moves listed directly in section titles. These section titles are hard to read and hard to link. Sometimes this is unavoidable because some lines are important enough to deserve a section but don't have a well known name, but some of what we have is simply needlessly suboptimal.

There are many examples in Indian Defence, one is Indian Defence#Nimzo-Indian Defence: 3.Nc3 Bb4. The section title has the moves of the Nimzo but the moves appear nowhere in the article body text. The article has been that way for years, but I don't think this is good presentation. All the moves must be in the article text, not just in section titles. Quale (talk) 22:48, 31 December 2025 (UTC)

Would you like me to do what Budapest Gambit is doing (I guess this is asking - should they include all moves from move 1, or just the unique moves, 3.Nc3 Bb4 in this case?)? It would at worst do no harm to add such complete PGN to articles, yeah, although most casual readers always complain about finding it hard to parse PGN and prefer as many diagrams as possible. Dayshade (talk) 01:53, 1 January 2026 (UTC)

There's a near year-old discussion with IHTS in which he questions whether "Wing Gambit" is actually a generic term for an early b2-b4 sac, or a term for one or more specific lines. I am of the latter opinion. As far as I'm concerned it almost always refers to 1.e4 c5 2.b4. Hooper & Whyld also call 1.e4 e5 2.Bc4 Bc5 3.b4 the "Wing Gambit". If sources can be found (not gotham or other youtubers, or Eric Schiller) in which other lines are referred to as the "Wing Gambit" these can be used, but I still think we should resist the idea that the Evans Gambit or Benko Gambit are "Wing Gambits". The name may have been given to more than one line historically, but it's never been a purely generic term. I actually blame wikipedia for starting and spreading this particular piece of misinformation. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 04:08, 6 January 2026 (UTC)

I have noticed for the last few days that olimpbase.org appears to be dead. Does anyone know if this is temporary or permanent? A load of player articles use this to give details of players' Olympiad performances. Revision would be really painful unless there is a bot which adds archive.org versions of pages. Adpete (talk) 00:33, 19 January 2026 (UTC)

I see on my screen, "Hosting in maintenance / This site is temporarily unavailable". olimpbase has been erratic for months now, so perhaps this message means that somebody is actually trying to fix the problem. I wouldn't give up on it just yet. But it would certainly be a catastrophe for Wikipedia chess if that site became permanently dead. Bruce leverett (talk) 01:16, 19 January 2026 (UTC)

It's back up now. Cobblet (talk) 03:53, 22 February 2026 (UTC)

While I'm on the subject of Olympiads, I propose naming them by year instead of number. e.g. 1972 Chess Olympiad instead of 20th Chess Olympiad. Surely this is how most people would remember, and search for, chess olympiads. (e.g. the book "Chess Olympiad, Skopje, 1972" ). Also, nearly all sports events follow that naming convention. (The main counterexample which comes to mind is Super Bowls, but I am guessing that that is embedded in USA culture). Adpete (talk) 03:29, 19 January 2026 (UTC)

I don't object to this proposal. Bruce leverett (talk) 02:17, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

I would find that easier to navigate than the Olympiad numbers. Quale (talk) 04:41, 21 January 2026 (UTC)

In Chess, and in Magnus Carlsen, and in List of chess players by peak FIDE rating, we say that Carlsen reached his peak rating of 2882 in May 2014. However, at that time he reached 2881, according to the article we cite in Chess, and also according to his rating history at the FIDE website. He reached 2882 in 2019.

So this should not be hard to fix, but I thought it would be prudent to check here before doing something stupid. Bruce leverett (talk) 23:09, 25 January 2026 (UTC)

All the refs, including the FIDE site, confirm his peak is 2882, which he reached twice: in May 2014 and August 2019. The problem is the citation in chess is outdated: he reached 2881 in March 2014, and the cite used (Chessbase Feb-28-2014) is referring to that. I've (hopefully) fixed it: Adpete (talk) 00:09, 26 January 2026 (UTC)

Ill-conceived merges damage articles. The specific example I have in mind the recent merge of Neo-Indian Attack to Indian Defence. The Neo-Indian is insignificant, but now it gets 10 times the space in the article as the Nimzo, QI, and Gruenfeld combined. That's WP:UNDUE weight in this article and will only serve to distort the view of the reader. The facile suggestion is to beef up the coverage of the important lines, but since the Nimzo alone is more than a million times more important than the Neo-Indian it's completely impractical. I've warned about this problem recently on talk pages of other chess openings such as at Ruy Lopez where a recent expansion of the Schliemann is actually very nice, but has the same weight problem as it has four subsections with nearly as much text as all lines of the Closed Defense combined. Again, adding more to the discussion of the Closed lines is not the answer because the Ruy article is already long and making it longer will not improve it. (We should be looking to make it shorter, if we can.)

This merge was especially unfortunate since the merge request really didn't get any discussion. Probably not a lot of people cared, and others like me might not have seen it. Quale (talk) 06:07, 27 January 2026 (UTC)

I can work on adding more summarized content from the others and trimming down the merged sections. I don't think it'd be impractical; would just need to add a few paragraphs on main variations and maybe some other basic info. Looks like main article links are missing too so I'd add those. I also think Neo-Indian should change to Seirawan, since the term Neo-Indian, which seems to refer to 2.c4 e6, doesn't seem to be in use anymore to my knowledge, and isn't being used outside of 3.Bg5, which is awkward. East Indian also has no consensus for whether it refers to ...g6 or ...e6, so I want to remove that name too. Dayshade (talk) 18:57, 27 January 2026 (UTC)

Looks like zero reliable sources came with the merge, so it shouldn't have been merged. An absence of RS + a WP:WEIGHT claim is sufficient to just remove it, requiring more/better sources to restore. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 03:28, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

I'm not following. The merger seems to have maintained a couple of inline citations from the merged articles. And by remove, do you mean delete or something else? Dayshade (talk) 04:02, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

Neither of those citations look like WP:RS to me. I basically mean delete, yes (I think most of us don't use "delete" very often, since anything on Wikipedia is so easily undone). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 17:17, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

Akash Payasi National chess coach He trained World youngest rated chess player. ~2026-64148-1 (talk) 19:25, 29 January 2026 (UTC)

Morphy number has several lists of Morphy numbers for particular players. Most players in the lists are not supported by a cited source, and we should improve sourcing or trim or perhaps remove the lists. Personally I would favor better sourcing combined with a slight trim as the list includes some chess officials and IMs who I don't find particularly notable in this context. See https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Morphy_number&action=history and User Talk:Quale#Morphy number. What do you think? Can we improve the sourcing for these lists, or should they be removed? Quale (talk) 04:23, 11 February 2026 (UTC)

A good thing would be to find a game between the pair in checcgames.com. But that seems like it would take a lot of work, unless someone can automate it. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 05:14, 11 February 2026 (UTC)

I thought we had a consensus that articles like List of people who have beaten Paul Morphy in chess and List of people who have beaten José Raúl Capablanca in chess (links to the AfDs) were not suitable topics for Wikipedia. If that consensus has not changed, these Morphy number lists are equivalent to lists of people who have played (not even beaten) Paul Morphy in chess, or Adolf Anderssen, or Henry Bird, etc., and are plainly unsuitable. Cobblet (talk) 20:57, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

I've been working on a new article for the Chess World Cup 1988–1989 and translated some material from the German article. Unfortunately, the text references two 1988 issues of Deutsche Schachzeitung (6 and 12). I can't find online copies and the only borrowable print copies I can find are in libraries in Germany and Austria, which I have no access to. If anyone is able to verify the sources, I would be grateful.

Also, I assume that, if no one is able to access the sources to verify the text, it should be removed from the article in the future. Is that correct? I'm a new editor so I don't have enough experience to judge for myself. Em-as-in-emily (talk) 19:24, 17 February 2026 (UTC)

Maybe you could reach out to German wikipedia on the talk page of that article? Most Germans are good at English and they might be able to provide the info. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 22:49, 17 February 2026 (UTC)

Good idea, I'll do that. Em-as-in-emily (talk) 23:15, 17 February 2026 (UTC)

Thank you so much for creating an article on this tournament – it fills an omission that others have noticed since the very beginning of this WikiProject. I've verified and corrected the statements using other sources, e.g., Timman played Karpov, not Kasparov, in the exhibition game. Cobblet (talk) 14:31, 18 February 2026 (UTC)

Wonderful, thank you very much! Em-as-in-emily (talk) 20:28, 18 February 2026 (UTC)

Just notifying members of this project that there is a Conflict of Interest edit request relevant to this WikiProject at the Tamer Karatekin article. DrThneed (talk) 03:25, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

Despite WP:CONCISE I still prefer the former titles Sicilian Defence, Smith–Morra Gambit and King's Gambit, Falkbeer Countergambit to the current titles Smith–Morra Gambit and Falkbeer Countergambit, because when you click on Category:Chess openings lines from the same parent opening are grouped together in the listing.

We either adopt the practice of naming the subline only, in which case we'd have to rename a lot of articles (e.g. Sicilian Defence, Najdorf Variation) or we name the parent opening as well (my preference) which gives us a logical alphabetic category listing. The idea of further subcategorising chess openings is a poor one, by the way, and the attempt to create a subcategory for "gambits" has already been rejected a few years ago. Fortunately Category:Sicilian Defence is up for speedy deletion so we don't have to go through the process. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 05:17, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

Not sure why it's a poor idea, would like to hear more, but if others agree it's a bad idea I don't oppose the deletion. But the idea is that there could be categories like Category:Sicilian Defence, Category:Indian Game, Category:Queen's Gambit, Category:Open Game, and so on. What would be the criteria for when the parent opening is included? E.g. would Two Knights Defense have an Italian Game in front? I don't think it's a big deal to have Smith-Morra Gambit not listed nearside specific Sicilian variations, but can see why non ideal. I do like the conciseness of Falkbeer Countergambit though. Dayshade (talk) 10:46, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

Chess openings is not a huge category to begin with, we can only justify maybe 50-100 dedicated articles on notability grounds. The others are either non-notable or better covered in the "parent" opening article. Creating small subcategories makes articles more difficult, not easier to find. I haven't taken in all of the technical WP:DIFFUSE stuff but it's a complication we don't need.

Anyway the main point of my post was not categories, it was how we should name articles on variations. The distinction between an "opening" and a "variation" is arbitrary and always has been. Currently we have no consistency on whether an article on a variation should include the parent opening name or not. I'm aware of WP:CONCISE, but Wikipedia has no firm rules, and there are advantages to including the parent opening's name in the title. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 10:58, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

Is there an ongoing argument about some particular opening?

I don't think there is a good general rule. It would be good if we could follow sources, or follow popular usage, but neither sources nor popular usage seem to follow a consistent pattern. I like Sicilian Defence, Smith–Morra Gambit, but I also like Slav Defense (we don't even have a redirect for Queen's Gambit, Slav Defense). Bruce leverett (talk) 13:14, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

Not really, but take a look at Talk:Smith–Morra Gambit. Dayshade (talk) 18:01, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

I hear Max as saying that WP:CRITERIA includes both WP:CONSISTENT and WP:CONCISE, among others, and the former should apply over the other criteria. I tend to agree. Every other article on a variation of the Sicilian has "Sicilian Defence" in the title; the Morra should be no different. Four articles on King's Gambit lines have "King's Gambit" in the title; the Falkbeer and the Bishop's Gambit should be no different. On the other hand, no lines of the Queen's Gambit have "Queen's Gambit" in the title, and they should stay that way. The general rule should be that move sequences that are more often characterized as opening variations than as standalone openings should include the name of the parent opening in the title; while move sequences that are more often characterized as opening complexes than as standalone openings should not appear in the names of their component openings. Cobblet (talk) 20:20, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

"Muzio Gambit" is an exception to the generalization about King's Gambit lines.

The Muzio is a variation for White. So is the Bishop's Gambit. Renaming either of them, say to "King's Gambit, Muzio Gambit", looks awkward to me.

Generally, in oral or other colloquial usage, I always do the concise thing. I even say "Muzio" rather than "Muzio Gambit".

The fact that we can create redirects means that there is no urgent need to decide on the "best" choice between names of the same opening. In other words, we could just let this sleeping dog lie. Bruce leverett (talk) 22:53, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

Of course we shorten things in colloquial language, for example we might say the "Ruy" rather than the Ruy Lopez. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 01:41, 13 March 2026 (UTC)