Talk:Chess Opening Theory/Organization

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[edit] URL Naming

Is there a stand way URL's should be added? The majority of URL's so far are in a way that makes added tedious (with a space after white move,with a move number for black, without a space for black and with three dots - any of the above you can miss and you are off to a new incorrect URL, and as you get deeper in move numbers increasing difficult to realise you made an error), it also creates duplicate work for apparently no good reason because each position has a edited line of how the position is reached and a click able URL way. Both of these ways are different. i.e 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 f5 and Opening theory in chess | 1. e4 | 1...e5 | 2. Nf3 | 2...Nc6 | 3. Bc4

Lastly there is a cluttered title Opening theory in chess/1. e4/1...e5/2. Nf3/2...Nc6/3. Bc4/3...f5

Not checked many pages but I noticed there are pages which are not in the same standard as others, this most likely is due to human error. Example errors http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Chess/Opening_Theory/1.e4/1...e5/2.Nf3/2...Nc6/3.Bc4/3...f5 Click the 4. d3 link it's goes to the page \4.d3 , but to be consistent it would be \4._d3 Another example http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Opening_theory_in_chess/ECO_index

Wouldn't it be better if the display and the URL matched the same. Giving less updating of each page, less errors because of missing dots or move numbers(for black moves) and also a shorter url which then becomes easier to check. i.e 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 f5 and Opening theory in chess | 1.e4 | e5 | 2.Nf3 | Nc6 | 3.Bc4

Also neat title would be Opening theory in chess/1.e4/e5/2.Nf3/Nc6/3.Bc4/f5

E5ricky 13:53, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I would prefer using the FEN position string: Opening theory in chess/rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/4P3/8/PPPP1PPP/RNBQKBNR for 1.e4, for example. That way all the transpositions would be handled in the same article. Possible series of moves leading to that position could be listed at the top of the article. What do you think? --ZeroOne 21:52, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
Not really, that would make creation of URL and related links more difficult. E5ricky 19:16, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Why not use something like Opening theory in chess/Two knights defense thats more descriptive instead? Less typing and easier to remember. --darklama 23:03, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Not all lines have names and if they did for each move within the variation/section you'd be back to adding moves for example Opening theory in chess/Two knights defense/Fritz Variation/Berliner line/9...Bb7/10. cxd4/10. O-O-O/11. Be2/11...Nf4 E5ricky 23:44, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
Why not merge the variations, lines, etc. into the page that describes the basic opening? So you would end up with something like:
== Two Knights Defense==
=== Fritz Variation ===
==== Berliner line ====
==== Alternative moves ====
=== Other Variations ===
or include the lines as part of the variation page, as in:
== Fritz Variation==
=== Berliner line ===
=== Alternative moves ===
Either one would eliminate the problem of having moves in the page names by including all the moves on the page, rather than divided into separate pages. Which would make it easier to type and remember, easier to expand, and easier to figure out what is already there or missing. --darklama 15:55, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
That would have some benefits as you point out, however it could become similar to wikipedia's own pages for example Two Knights Defence.
The initial purpose of this book according to what I've read (http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Talk:Opening_theory_in_chess) and else where from ThreeE is "While some sites exist that have "opening explorers," none are wikis. I would hope that at each half move, experienced chess players could annotate the description and provide some insight into the position -- perhaps leading readers to the idea of themes rather than memorization of moves.":: So a half move explorer with annotations.
If many positions are bundled into one as you suggest DarkLama, then you end up with something like wikipedia and unlike the initial idea.
I personally think the explorer idea (see example like http://www.ficgs.com/wikichess.html) is very attractive and different to the existing info at wikipedia, it also deals well with the problem of how to show transpositions, because as you always have a position of each move, then you can just link to the transposing page.
My Current thoughts is to leave the URL's as they are and see if the page can be simplified to avoid duplication and make it easy to create new pages. Seems the main problem is the time taken to create theory tables, or not creating them and leaving the page looking incomplete.
E5ricky 17:07, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
E5ricky 00:05, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
----
  1. White moves are referenced as move number, period, space, move (in short algebraic). The space :prevents an unbroken string of characters in the page title becoming too wide for the page.
  2. Black moves are referenced as move number, 3 periods, move (in short algebraic). No spaces are :used.
----
Why like this above? It would seem suitable for easy of editing and display to have the Black move :just the move without the move number and periods.
"/1. e4/1...e5/2. d4/2...exd4" would then be "/1. e4/e5/2. d4/exd4"
Display would then change from
1. e4|1...e5|2. d4|2...exd4
to
1. e4|e5|2. d4|exd4
Shorter, neater, easier and one step simpler because it would remove the duplication of move list creation.

[edit] Opening theory in chess planning/co-ordination.

Seems to be a place to discuss ideas and updates and as the discussion page on the Opening theory in chess main page it's really the correct place, here would seem to be.


Current plan:

Update, Found named openings on Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_chess_openings
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_chess_gambits
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Chess_openings
E5ricky 19:04, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Make sure all names positioned linked from Wikipedia have a presentable page.

E5ricky 18:45, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Useful Links

Stats and explorers. http://www.chesslive.de/ http://www.365chess.com/opening.php http://www.bookup.com/ECO/chess_openings_ECO_-.htm http://www.chessgames.com/perl/explorer


[edit] Page changes with WhiteKnight's bot

How clever is your bot?

Could you for example get it to look at all pages in Opening_theory_in_chess http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Opening_theory_in_chess and get it to amend the URL link according to some pre-defined rules, could it also move all the pages to a new URL along the same lines? I doubt this is possible, but I thought I'd ask! E5ricky 05:58, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

WhiteKnight! Can you do one or many of the following.
  • Can change all occurances of '=Theory Table=' into '==Theory Table=='.
  • Many pages don't have a heading. (example http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Opening_theory_in_chess/1._e4/1...c5/2._Nf3) If a page doesn't have a heading can you use the name that's currently below the diagram? '=Open Sicilian=' on example page.
  • Remove all occurances of '' and '' both of which are unnecessary.
  • Change any occurance of Defense to Defence
E5ricky 22:29, 21 October 2007 (UTC)


I've got the script written up, and the page list assembled. I'm going to run through the first 5 pages or so in the list, and make sure everything is on the up and up. If this test works, I'll set my bot into fifth gear and let it loose. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 23:22, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
Go for it :thumbs_up: E5ricky 23:30, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
Done the first 125. Check the Special:Recentchanges list to see some of my edits. Everything looks like it's going well. I'm going to queue up the remainging 300+ pages now. Double check my edits, make sure the bot is doing what you want it to do. I've also been moving things from Category:Chess to Category:Opening theory in chess. Hope you don't mind this change (it's more fitting with our organizational methods here). --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 23:33, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
Don't really understand the category's yet, but whatever you think is best, go for it. E5ricky 23:37, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
Many pages now have Theory Table twice. eg http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Opening_theory_in_chess/1._e4/1...Nf6/2._e5 E5ricky 23:49, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for that update, I didnt catch it. I've fixed the script now to check for a heading that already exists, so it shouldnt happen anymore. I'll go back after the fact and remove all the doubles. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 23:54, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
Thanks and Goodnight E5ricky 23:57, 21 October 2007 (UTC)


Ran through the entire list. There are a few issues I want to look at later, but Don't have any time this week. Let me know what you need.

--Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 00:47, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

ah, seems your list was quite incomplete as many pages have not been updated. http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Opening_theory_in_chess/1._g4

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Opening_theory_in_chess/1._d4 http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Opening_theory_in_chess/1._e4/1...c5/2._Nc3 etc Can tell which pages you've updated as the category at the bottom of the page is still chess. Most of the pages updated now contain 'Theory Table' Twice, it appears that on none of the pages have the font=2 code been removed.

I updated about 500 pages, from the list Special:Prefixindex/Opening theory in chess. I didn't realize you wanted the "<font>" tags removed. When you wrote it on my talk page, it looked like you wanted me to remove the apostrophies (which I did). Many of the early pages I updated do have "Theory Table" twice. It was only later that I realized the mistake and corrected the algorithm. Let's take some time, figure out exactly what we want changed now, and I'll run my bot through it again. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 12:06, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Ah, I see my font edit is not reading as I wrote it. Do an edit and you can see the code.
Is there a way to display a code block? E5ricky
Typically you can write something like: 
<font size=2>
(do an edit to see the code). --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 13:54, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
Okay, so this is what I was trying to say above.
Remove all occurances of 
<font size="2">
and 
</font>
Okay, i'll get onto that as soon as I can. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 19:08, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
The font removal would be the best thing you can do, as manually editing it takes ages.
(The fonts setting are used in the theory table and I'm consider whether some of the Theory Tables should go because most positions won't have a table - although that would be a manual edit to remove them. In Chess Books you normally get theory tables Once every three or four moves, not every position.)
If you do get the bot going, can you include more pages, I reckon you did less then 50% in the last run. E5ricky 00:15, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Worth considering

A link on each page to Algebraic notation
A link to the http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Opening_theory_in_chess/Organization page (maybe with wording to encourage people to contribute).
Some pages have 10+ links to wikipedia pages, you click them by mistake, done it all to often so far, does there really need to be so many links. Example of someone adding lots of links (10 in this example) to wikipedia. http://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=Opening_theory_in_chess/1._Nf3&diff=874708&oldid=816171 E5ricky 01:15, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Just thought of something about this. We could have our own named opening pages that redirect to the start of the opening so http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Opening_theory_in_chess/sicilian re-directs to the -> http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Opening_theory_in_chess/1._e4/1...c5 etc.
It seems therefore an idea to gather a list of opening names. E5ricky 01:57, 23 October 2007 (UTC)


Maybe you should create a template that could go onto all pages. Once the template is there, we can put anything into the template that we want (including links to various pages, etc). --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 01:29, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
Ah, yea, a template to add to all pages would be cool. :) E5ricky 01:57, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia chess links to wikibooks

Found that the links over at wikipedia don't always work. Click the option bottom right for wikibook. On wiki pages, for exmample http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evans_Gambit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Knights_Defence It says the link is not found to http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki//Opening_theory_in_chess Note the double slash, not sure why that occurs. E5ricky 02:13, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Fixed. The Template {{Wikibookspar}} that they were using is obsolete. It should be {{wikibooks}} instead. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 15:23, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
Not sure it's fixed, I checked some more and same problem each time.
E5ricky 16:18, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
wikibookspar is not obsolete, so much as being used incorrectly. They should be using {{wikibooks|bookname}} for links to just books and {{wikibookspar|bookname|pagename}}} for linking to a page inside a book (or in case of a different namespace, a page within a specific namespace, but that doesn't mater for these cases). --darklama 17:26, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Copyright

Quote "Do not copy analysis from copyrighted works. The moves themselves are not subject to copyright, but the analysis is."

It's somewhat unclear where copyright begins and ends, where analysis is not moves. Is not analysis just multiple moves, and therefore no different then individual moves. Are these moves from ECO copyright? http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Opening_theory_in_chess/ECO_index Can original analysis be submitted (sometimes required to make the tables look nice!), if not ehy not.

By analysis I believe what is meant is stuff like "white moving their pawn to e4 was a poor move, a better would of been f5 which would of lead to a win in 3 moves instead." In other words any discussion or opinions concerning the moves are subjected to copyright, but the moves like e2 to e4 are not copyrighted. --darklama 20:52, 24 October 2007 (UTC)
Okay, I understand the words are copyright, but are just the moves. Take a look at this http://www.jimloy.com/chess/greco.htm Now the first sentence is copyright because it's words, but then it's less clear. Move "(Nxe5 loses)" so the 'loses bit is copyright?, then also simply suggested moves in brackets on the rest of the page? E5ricky 22:06, 24 October 2007 (UTC)
Is it okay in principle to use the moves(not the words) contains in this page? http://www.chessville.com/instruction/Openings/LatvianGambitRevisited.htm#Leonhardt E5ricky 02:32, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
I don't think the moves are copyrighted. "Nxe5" isn't copyrighted and in this particular case I think "loses" isn't either, because it consists of a single word, and single words can't be copyrighted. I think in principle you can use all of the moves on that page, but do not use any of the words to describe the moves. You should also be able to use the alternative moves as well, but you will have to come up with your own descriptions and reasonings for the alternative moves. --darklama 19:43, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Quick way to see Edits

This link shows recent edits to all pages in the Opening theory in chess category

New pages added can slip through the net, but you can identify those pages here. Find Uncategorised pages - look for anything beginning 'Opening theory in chess' in list.

[edit] Fabulous job guys

I'm fixing to spend a couple months solely devoted to openings in my study of chess. I have 8 books, plus have premium access to the opening-explorer at chessgames.com, and I"m going to read their kibitzing areas under each eco-code that I plan to study. I am going to study 1. d4 and 1. e4 c5 the sicilian, and I have read the talk pages and I have read the organization stuff, and I like how this layout plans to go one step further, and have one thing I've never seen...

... step by step explanation (aka a WALKTHROUGH) of the good choices you have. For instance, why 2. Nc3 in the closed sicilian vs 2. Nf3. I like how as you go 1 ply at a time, you get to COMPARE the alternatives. The only thing I've seen so far on the internet, beside each choice is the win/draw/loss percentages, not an explanation. Also, if the move you want to investigate doesn't have its own ECO code, you can't "look for it" because it doesn't have a designation. One simple example is that I'm clueless for black as to why he should play 2...Nc6 instead of 2...g6 in the closed sicilian, I love the idea of having a "1 paragraph explanation" for each, beside the link, instead of useless win/draw/loss statistics.

Also, I have roman's lab on dvd. I will not create any original research, but also I won't cite EVERYTHING either. Can I get some comments before I go on? I don't want to get frustrated and quit if my stuff gets reverted or deleted because "rule 72, paragraph II states blah blah blah". Am I on the right track? Is everything a go-ahead? Comments please, as I don't have much history with wikis (because I am afraid of my contributions getting deleted or reverted due to technicalities like me not being high enough of a rated player or whatever). 70.220.238.126 (talk) 00:19, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Hi, your on the right track. wikibooks does allow original research but Wikipedia does NOT so being here on wikibooks is fine. I would source things if you can even if in general terms, it looks better and makes it more likely to stay if someone else disputes it.
Would recommend you get yourself registered as that looks better also. I rarely play the Sicilian as either white or Black but if you have questions about specific moves or lines then there is a good chance that I can work out why some moves are sensible and others not. BTW for 1. e4 c5 2. Nc3 g6 is not often played as according to BCO2 3. d4 cxd4 4. Qxd4 Nf6 5. Bb5! a6 6. e5 is better for White. ChessCreator (talk) 23:30, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
And just to add more then the moves. 4. Qxd4 threatens the rook on h8 so Nf6 is more or less forced and then 5. Bb5 pins the pawn on d6 and Black wants to move the d-pawn as say instead e6 would leave the Black squares on Black's Kingside terribly weak and hence he can't really castle there to well with e6 and g6 being played. So Bb5 does indeed deserve an exclamation mark. While after 5...a6 a good reply for White is to play 6. Qa4 pinning Black down, e5 is still threatened and can be played as a follow up. In short White has a positional advantage and so 2...g6 is a poor move. ChessCreator (talk) 23:39, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Links in tables

Just a thought guys, but I think it would be really helpful. Could we get added to the main Organization page that links in tables are to be hyperlinked the whole way through, rather than just the first move? I don't expect the creators of the tables to do this, as it will take a long time, but I personally often want to navigate multiple moves at a time, and at present can't do so easily.

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