Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chess

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)

That's a naturalness argument, which is also one of the WP:CRITERIA, but one of the more subjective ones. Personally, I don't see how "King's Gambit, Muzio Gambit" is any more or less "awkward" than "Sicilian Defence, Smith–Morra Gambit" or "Sicilian Defence, Dragon Variation, Yugoslav Attack". If we agree that the King's Gambit is itself an independent opening rather than a complex of related but independent openings like the Queen's Gambit, I think we should be consistent in how we name its variations. Cobblet (talk) 21:20, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

To be clear, some of the discussion above seems to imply that the articles have always been named, "Foo Defense, Bar Gambit", and that that is their natural and original name. Possibly everyone here knows, but just to be clear, most of the articles started at "Bar Gambit" and were later moved to include the parent opening as a prefix. I didn't agree that renaming effort at the time, but I might not have complained too much because as Bruce noted, it probably isn't that important. I do think that "King's Gambit, Muzio Gambit" sounds rather redundant ("Gambit" is repeated twice in four words) and I don't think anyone would ever say or write that anywhere but in a Wikipedia article title. (That might not matter much because maybe these long "Parent Opening, Child Variation" names make sense as encyclopedia article titles even though they're difficult to use in sentences. Neither "White played the Sicilian Defense, Smith-Mora Gambit" nor "Black played the Sicilian Defense, Smith-Mora Gambit" makes sense.) Also I agree with Bruce's obvservation that both KG and Muzio are White choices of opening which is different than Sicilian Smith-Mora which describes White's response to a Black defense. For the specific example of the Smith Mora, it was created in 2003 as "Smith-Mora Gambit". In 2010 it was moved to "Sicilian Defence, Smith-Mora Gambit". It was moved again in 2012 to use a dash instead of a hyphen. In [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Smith%E2%80%93Morra_Gambit&diff=prev&oldid=1079863311 2022 it was moved back to Smith–Mora Gambit. Quale (talk) 05:08, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

We already have King's Gambit, McDonnell Gambit and King's Gambit, Rice Gambit. I don't see an issue with those, nor any reason from the above discussion why the Morra should be treated differently from the Sicilian Defence, Alapin Variation. Cobblet (talk) 12:58, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

My interest in the chess opening article names was pretty casual, but I agree that this is something that should be done consistently across all chess opening articles. I think that consistency favors the longer constructions because the shorter names won't always work. I was more interested in the name of Fishing Pole (chess), but renaming that article would require an WP:RM process because of WP bureaucratic reasons. Quale (talk) 02:07, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

What do you think of Falkbeer Countergambit and Albin Countergambit? It seems there is a consensus about avoiding using Queen's Gambit before Albin, but not sure about Falkbeer, but I would prefer Falkbeer alone (without "King's Gambit, " before) for consistency with Albin (and conciseness). Dayshade (talk) 14:18, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

I already stated my position: "If we agree that the King's Gambit is itself an independent opening rather than a complex of related but independent openings like the Queen's Gambit, I think we should be consistent in how we name its variations." Cobblet (talk) 01:19, 18 March 2026 (UTC)

Calling the fairly obscure Hungarian Defence an "opening" and calling the very mainstream Najdorf Sicilian a "variation" only goes to show how arbitrary the distinction is. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 03:36, 18 March 2026 (UTC)

One must imagine Sisyphus happy. Cobblet (talk) 05:04, 18 March 2026 (UTC)

Given the idea that the KG is a single opening that should be treated one way and the QG is a complex of related but distinct openings that should be treated differently, I'm not sure how to put down a general rule in a way that would make application to all cases clear. ("Single opening" vs "complex of related openings" might be completely obvious to many when talking about KG vs QG and perhaps plausible but less completely apparent to others, but I'm not sure how to apply that distinction to every other opening.) We've also discussed several somewhat random examples but this hasn't been enough for me to figure out what I think should be done universally.

Perhaps someone might have to examine all article titles in Category:Chess openings and propose better titles for the ones they feel are mistitled. A more complete list of proposed better names might help make it clear what we should do. If we want to name the chess opening articles consistently then I don't see any way to avoid talking about them together as a group. Consideration of each chess opening article individually at separate times is almost certain to lead to a mix of article titles like the ones we have now. Quale (talk) 05:30, 18 March 2026 (UTC)

Providing an exhaustive list is pointless when there are a lot of articles in that category that fail WP:GNG and should be merged or deleted. But I will point out further anomalies like Berlin Defence and Jaenisch Gambit in the Ruy Lopez, Fried Liver Attack in the Two Knights, Evans Gambit in the Giuoco Piano, Halloween Gambit in the Four Knights, Staunton Gambit in the Dutch, Hillbilly Attack and Maróczy Gambit in the Caro-Kann (you see what I mean about failing GNG), etc. Cobblet (talk) 14:49, 18 March 2026 (UTC)

I'm uninterested in doing that work myself so I don't expect anyone else to be willing to do it either. I don't think it's likely that any real change will come without such a concrete proposal about what to do with the articles we have today, but I might be wrong. I'm not sure which articles you think fail GNG (Hillbilly Attack might certainly be in that group), but WP:GNG is a fairly low bar for a chess opening. (It can be a higher bar than might be expected for some other topics.) Basically all that GNG requires is multiple independent reliable sources with nontrivial coverage. "Multiple" is not precisely defined, most people would be satisfied with four or five but other people might find two independent sources to be sufficient. The biggest point of contention is likely to be what constitutes nontrivial coverage, but it is not required that the source be exclusively about or even primarily about the topic. Sicilian Defence is written in WP:SS summary style so in depth exploration of variations properly belongs in child articles. I think it would be sensible to organize Caro-Kann in a similar fashion. Quale (talk) 00:55, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

Hillbilly Attack was only created (from redirect) a couple of weeks ago, interestingly. The problem with Caro-Kann being organized like Sicilian is that the notability level is significantly lower than the Sicilian or Ruy, but indeed if you put it all onto one page, you can easily run into issues with less notable lines being overrepresented, an issue we've discussed on the Ruy talk page before, if I recall correctly. Dayshade (talk) 13:35, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

What makes Berlin, Jaenisch, and Evans anomalies? There are independent books and courses about them. Dayshade (talk) 13:55, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

That has nothing to do with the guideline I proposed. Why would one consider the Berlin and Jaenisch standalone openings, but the Exchange, Marshall and Zaitsev variations of the Ruy Lopez? And using the name "Berlin Defence" without a disambiguator is particularly egregious when another Berlin Defence is a main line of the Bishop's Opening. As for the Evans, even in its heyday, it was considered a "variation", "sub-variation", or "offshoot" of the Giuoco Piano. Is there any evidence the Giuoco Piano is no longer considered a standalone opening today? Cobblet (talk) 15:27, 19 March 2026 (UTC)