Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chess

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)

Someone tried by creating this redirect: Queen's Gambit Declined Slav. --IHTS (talk) 01:16, 20 April 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)

I agree with you about the potential undue weight issues, and in fact WP:SPINOFF says "The main situation where spinoff articles become necessary is when the expansion of a section creates an undue weight problem for the article". That's a more concise statement of the concern I raised at Talk:Ruy Lopez. This is an issue that arises with some regularity in chess opening articles when an editor wants to explore a minor line or even a major line in greater detail than the treatment of other more important variations in the article. Increasing the level of detail of coverage of all important lines in an article like Ruy Lopez is infeasible. In WP, the answer to this issue is spinout. Quale (talk) 04:20, 20 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)

I misread your original comment. Never mind lol. I just got confused by the combination with the ones that might fail GNG. Would you like me to go ahead and perform a move for Berlin, per your argument about its egregiousness, assuming no one else objects (the main counterargument is that Berlin is used casually for 3.Bb5 Nf6 a lot and is a clearly recognizable name, right? Though idk, this is a pretty compelling argument too)? And, is the Berlin name for the Bishop's Opening ever used to refer to the non-transposing 3...c6 line in your experience at all, or does it always imply all possible continuations after 2...Nf6? I know I've heard the 3...c6 line just get called the Bishop's Opening too. Dayshade (talk) 18:13, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

Never assume that people are ok with your creating new spinoff articles. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 23:06, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

For the millionth time, please stop with the unconstructive negative comments. Regardless, Ruy Lopez is our longest opening article, splits have been requested before, Erukx supported the split, and I hardly ever split articles; I'm more into merging. I'm not sure I've even split any besides Zaitsev and Sveshnikov which both had long walls of unsourced text that were excessive for a single section. And stop acting like I'm not allowed to perform merges/splits even if literally no one objects. Dayshade (talk) 23:29, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

Right, when considering chess opening article titles, the question is whether the article title should always indicate the parent opening or not. Cobblet proposes that it should, up to the natural top level of openings described as being independent. (Roughly the openings that get chapters in MCO, I suppose. No one wants Double King's Pawn Opening, Ruy Lopez.) I think that would make the article titles more consistent which would be good, and the proposed guideline is simple to state. I think it's also true that "Giuoco Piano, Evans Gambit" is odd looking and not something I recall ever seeing in print. Many sources will say that Fischer played the Evans Gambit, but I don't think I've ever seen a source that says Fischer played the GP. But someone could probably find such a source, and the article title isn't so important since WP has redirects and the article text itself would simply use "Evans Gambit". There are a very small number of cases such as Max Lange Attack that are difficult to categorize. Ironically this increases the importance of a standalone Max Lange article so the coverage doesn't need to be triplicated in Two Knights Defense, Scotch Game, and Bishop's Opening. But a single digit number of cases that don't fit neatly into the guideline aren't really an argument against it. Quale (talk) 04:20, 20 March 2026 (UTC)

If it's not straightforward to figure out what the "best" parent opening is for something like the Max Lange, I'm fine with not naming one in the title.

MCO-11 and MCO-12 have "Giuoco Piano—Evans Gambit" in the relevant page headers, so even for that particular edge case, there's still some precedent for this form of nomenclature in a mainstream opening encyclopedia.

Like the Morra, Jerome Gambit is another name that has been moved to Giuoco Piano, Jerome Gambit and back. I've noticed people tend to prefer gambit names to stand on their own. I suppose some gambit names can be very recognizable, like the Evans. On the other hand, I wouldn't say the Jerome Gambit is an easily recognizable name. And even something relatively established like the Kieseritzky Gambit can still be confused for the Boden–Kieseritzky Gambit. Cobblet (talk) 07:37, 20 March 2026 (UTC)

Yeah, I wish the latter was just called the Boden Gambit, since it seems Boden played it much more and the name is way too long. What has been your experience with hearing about Berlin used for Bishop's Opening lines in real life, as I asked above? Dayshade (talk) 13:42, 20 March 2026 (UTC)

According to The Oxford Chess Companion, there are Berlin Defence variations in the Bishop's Opening, Vienna Game, King's Gambit, and of course the Ruy. (Most of these variations have alternate names so they aren't known exclusively as the Berlin, if at all.) I don't think I've seen Berlin D. used anywhere else to refer to anything but the well known line of the Ruy. For me the question is whether it is worthwhile or wise to litigate this or similar questions for every chess opening article or if it would be better to use the uniform rule Cobblet proposes. His rule can be applied almost mechanically to give consistent naming for almost all chess openings and it doesn't require a lot of discussion for every individual case. Quale (talk) 05:15, 25 March 2026 (UTC)

FYI, I've started a discussion on moving Berlin Defence to Ruy Lopez, Berlin Defence. Cobblet (talk) 19:11, 19 April 2026 (UTC)

I wasn't sure how important this naming issue was, but now we have recent article renames going in both directions (April 11 to Traxler Counterattack and April 18 to Ruy Lopez, Jaenisch Gambit) so it seems we should try to resolve this. The discussion Cobblet started at Talk:Berlin Defence#Requested move 18 April 2026 seems the best place. Quale (talk) 00:12, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

Hi. i want to write an article on how to play chess but im not sure HOW to make an article? Can someone help me?? thanks in advance ~2026-19693-86 (talk) 22:12, 30 March 2026 (UTC)

Help: your first article has advice for beginning article writers. It links to an Article Wizard that will walk you through the steps. You probably can't make an article about how to play chess, though, because Wikipedia is not for how-to articles (WP:NOTHOWTO). If you want to learn to make articles, the WikiProject Chess page has a list of articles that are needed; you could pick one of those. I just had my first article accepted, so a beginner can definitely do this. However, it took about 5 hours of work spread over several days, so be aware that it's a fairly big effort. M kuhner (talk) 14:52, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

USCF has just changed its player lookup and there is a notice that the old system is deprecated and won't be updated. However, the USCF template for use in External Links to link to a player's rating and tournament record uses the old system. Can we update this? Otherwise there is going to be massive linkrot. I am a newbie editor and unfortunately don't have the technical skills to help with this, but I hope someone else can. M kuhner (talk) 14:57, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

@M kuhner: - Thanks for bringing this to our attention. I looked at this a few weeks ago but I didn't make any changes at that time because I was traveling and template editing is not my forte. I think I have {{USCF}} fixed up now. I checked a few player bios and the US Chess ratings links seem to work. Please take a look and let us know if you find any issues. Quale (talk) 06:02, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

I checked the article where I first spotted the problem and the USCF rating links to the correct page now. Thank you for fixing this! M kuhner (talk) 04:06, 12 June 2026 (UTC)

Please see talk:Greg Hjorth#Short description. --Trovatore (talk) 23:45, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

For those who have not seen, there is renewed discussion going on at Talk:Zukertort Opening, following the rejected merger request (filed as AfD due to a policy change) at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Zukertort Opening. The idea of renaming Zukertort Opening, a very rare name for 1.Nf3, to simply 1.Nf3, has come up. I think this could apply to every first move except non-obscure ones like the four listed (and maybe 1.g4, which I feel like arguably has a clearly dominant and recognizable name? Or it could be applied to all 20 moves, moving King's Pawn Game to 1.e4, but idk about that) and could be an elegant solution to the problems surrounding 1.Nf3's page while observing WP:COMMONNAME at least to some extent, as most/all of the names for moves outside of c4/d4/e4/f4 are obscure at best; "1.Nf3" is much more common than "Zukertort Opening", and although "Réti Opening" is a common name, it's ambiguous with 1.Nf3 d5 2.c4. Thoughts? Dayshade (talk) 01:54, 10 June 2026 (UTC)

I think it's arguable whether 1.f4 or 1. f4 is actually the "name" of an opening. It is notation for an opening, but I wouldn't consider it to be a name for the Bird. As a practical matter there is no difficulty in finding the 20 opening moves using chess notation as wikipedia has redirects for all of them. 1.f4 and 1. f4 are blue links and you can use 1.f4 or 1. f4 in the search box. Some things are obscure but still need wikipedia articles, those articles must have titles, and we have WP:RS sources for the titles. Using chess notation as article titles would require that we choose between notation with or without a space after the move number. If we don't make that change (and I think we should not change) then we can avoid that question entirely. (If we were to rename the articles to chess notation I think we would use the space because this is overwhelmingly the practice outside of WP. Our WP chess project house style omits the space only because 20 years ago I thought it looked much better without. Yes, that's my fault.)

Ironically, yesterday I watched a YouTube video reviewing chess in a television episode that referenced the Bird by name. (As the YouTuber pointed out, the opening shown was actually a Dutch Defense....) Quale (talk) 05:06, 10 June 2026 (UTC)

Well, at least I think looks better without the space too, and there's another subtle benefit in that when you're searching a massive file of pgn or something, putting a space before a possible move would limit it to Black's moves, while putting a period would limit it to White's moves, but with the space between the period and White's move styling, this doesn't occur. Regardless, leaving out the space could be compared to our practice of e.g. using "Basman Defence" instead of "Basman's Defence" if the latter were to appear in a source. I don't mind going with 1.Nf3 or 1. Nf3 myself. Both would lead to the removal of the problematic Zukertort Opening name. And regarding the coincidence, that is really cool. Dayshade (talk) 05:16, 10 June 2026 (UTC)

Also would say that your argument raises questions about allowing headers to contain only notation with no words. I still think WP:COMMONNAME creates serious issues for obscure names like at 1.Nc3, and as for the other WP:CRITERIA, recognizability could be an issue for those not fluent with pgn, though it's still an issue for the current titles, naturalness could go either way, and using notation is better for precision and concision. Dayshade (talk) 05:26, 10 June 2026 (UTC)

I disagree entirely with your second paragraph. I suspect a large number of readers of chess articles (possibly even the majority) are not fluent with chess notation. And as I described earlier, I don't think 1.f4 is a common name for the Bird. Quale (talk) 01:00, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

Wait, you even disagreed with the precision and concision part? I thought those at least those two were undeniable, plus naturalness mentions "likeliness to be linked to", which is true for chess editors, as opposed to readers, which it also mentions, though readers are more likely to readily understand pgn for the first move (or two moves, like 1.e4 e5) than e.g. 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4, which seems absurd. And regardless, as I mentioned in my originally comment, keeping some articles with their dominant non-notation names (probably 1.e4, 1.d4, 1.c4, 1.f4, and maybe 1.g4), while other like 1.Nf3 use the notation name, is fine too. Dayshade (talk) 01:15, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

Now, this is my first time asking something like this, so apologies if there's something I'm missing.

I recently added some new icons for pieces into the SVG piece table which you can view here (I specifically added the nightrider, ferz, wazir, dabbaba and short rook icons), and I want to ask if people would be in support of incorporating these images into article in place of the usual upside-down pieces. Not only would this increase the diversity of piece images, it would also allow for, say, both the camel and nightrider to be used in a single diagram, and would bring the articles into alignment with other chess variant websites that already use icons like mine for these pieces. Plus the ferz's icon specifically was recently incorporated into Unicode, so there's precedent for using that icon for the ferz specifically. Sammy2012 (talk) 06:02, 18 June 2026 (UTC)

Are any of these symbols (or similar) commonly used in literature on fairy chess or chess variants? By the way User:Ihardlythinkso is our expert on this topic. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 06:36, 18 June 2026 (UTC)

I see, but I honestly don't want to have to deal with them because they were rude to me last time I interacted with them. Sammy2012 (talk) 14:28, 18 June 2026 (UTC)

So I see, I think he's a bit fed up and disillusioned with Wikipedia. Well, I share JBL's skepticism about the quality of the chess variants web page as a source. The problem is that fairy chess and chess variants are such a specialized topic, a niche within a niche, and it is very difficult to find good sources on them. I don't know very much about it myself. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 15:21, 18 June 2026 (UTC)

Can someone else take a look at the current issue at Sokolsky Opening? Dayshade (talk) 18:27, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

FYI, the article Chess has been scheduled for improvement by the Article for Improvement project. There is a related RfC. Andrew🐉(talk) 19:38, 3 July 2026 (UTC)

Hello, Please note that Chess, which is within this project's scope, has been selected as one of the Articles for improvement. The article is scheduled to appear on Wikipedia's Community portal in the "Articles for improvement" section for one week, beginning today. Everyone is encouraged to collaborate to improve the article. Thanks, and happy editing! Delivered by — MusikBot talk 00:05, 6 July 2026 (UTC) on behalf of the AFI team

I look forward to many low quality edits by inexperienced editors. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 02:19, 6 July 2026 (UTC)

No shit. (A user with 60 edits. Account created on March 17, 2026.) "All hat [reorgs, renames]; no cattle [content adds/mods/fixes]." --IHTS (talk) 18:44, 6 July 2026 (UTC)

Should we have an article about this? Balogh Defense and Wade Defence (of note: Talk:Wade Defence has some interesting discussion; "Rat Defense" is a misnomer that according to Harper/Seirawan is an abbreviation of Robatsch Defense that properly refers to 1...g6, not 1...d6) could then be merged. It could be called Pillsbury Defense after Hooper and Whyld's name for 1.d4 d6; this name is not common, but we title lots of opening articles based on names that are rarely or never repeated outside of H&W, most notably Zukertort Opening for 1.Nf3; such an article on 1.d4 d6 would be able to discuss lines after 2.c4 e5 (covered in various repertoire books based on 1...d6), the Wade, the Pribyl System (3...c6), other transpositions, and so on.

Relatedly, should Pirc Defence be restored to be limited to only 1.e4 d6 2.d4 Nf6 3.Nc3 g6 along with some discussion of White's third move alternatives? Or should there be no discussion of third move alternatives? If there should be discussion of third move alternatives, should there be any discussion of second move alternatives for White? Mihal Marin's 2017 book on the Pirc (Grandmaster Repertoire: The Pirc Defence) includes these as "Anti-Pirc Systems". Dayshade (talk) 23:25, 8 July 2026 (UTC)

See the intro to An Explosive Chess Opening Repertoire for Black (see any free sample of the book) for what real chess players think of naming 1.d4 d6 after Pillsbury. Just cover it under Queen's Pawn Game. Pirc Defence can continue to cover both 1.e4 d6 and 1.e4 d6 2.d4 Nf6 3.Nc3 g6; the term can mean either depending on context. This is a common situation with many opening names. Cobblet (talk) 00:28, 9 July 2026 (UTC)

I actually saw that earlier today! But I don't think there's any better option, and we're already putting up with lots of weird Hooper & Whyld names for White's first moves. Dayshade (talk) 00:31, 9 July 2026 (UTC)

Two wrongs don't make a right, especially when one of the most reliable sources on the subject is explicitly calling out said wrong. And nobody is insisting we need a separate article for this. Your habit of demanding others solve problems only you perceive is immature and tiresome. Cobblet (talk) 00:41, 9 July 2026 (UTC)

What "habit of demanding others solve problems only you perceive"? I would be solving this. Besides, Max demands I talk to the community more before making changes, so I can't satisfy both of you. Dayshade (talk) 07:23, 9 July 2026 (UTC)

So many solutions in search of a problem. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 10:51, 9 July 2026 (UTC)

Typical incivility from both of you. Dayshade (talk) 16:36, 9 July 2026 (UTC)

It does seem the narrower meaning is dominant for Pirc and that the broader meaning has been amplified by e.g. chess.com, but there are still enough RSes using the broader meaning. I also have seen authors complaining about the artificial distinction between d6 and g6. Dayshade (talk) 00:34, 9 July 2026 (UTC)

Is it viable to broaden Pirc to also cover 1...d6 in response to moves other than 1.e4? Dayshade (talk) 00:35, 9 July 2026 (UTC)

No. While I might think to look under English Opening for coverage of 1.d4 d6 2.c4 e5, I certainly wouldn't think to look under the Pirc. Cobblet (talk) 00:41, 9 July 2026 (UTC)