User talk:Krakatoa

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I am the former Frederick R. I merged in my old talk page as Frederick R below.

Contents 1 Chess articles 2 Napoleon Gambit 3 Notability and WP:VFD 4 Polish Immortal 5 Openings 6 Some technical notes 7 Checkmate 8 Légal Trap 9 Blackburne Shilling Gambit vs Giuoco Piano 10 Nimzo-Indian 11 Ugly chess diagrams 12 Schiller and so on 13 Chess Opening Theory Wikibook 14 Ray Nagin article 15 The assault on the List of sexual slang 15.1 The results of the 18 October AfD: 15.2 The anonymous clean-up notice 15.3 The results of the 10 November Afd 15.4 Dishonest report of Afd results 15.5 Non-consensual list move 15.6 The current situation 15.7 To summarize: 16 Game against David Sprenkle 17 reply 18 Promotion (chess) 19 promotions and underpromotions 20 American 21 Category:Chess Players 22 Six-piece DB 23 Fischer article 24 Grandmasters 25 barnstar 26 SP 27 Discussion about links to ChessWorld.net at WikiProject Chess 28 List of Ethnic Chess Openings

[edit] Chess articles

Thanks for your fine work improving articles on chess topics. I'm amazed at how much they've improved in the last few months (particularly the articles on the openings), and I think they will continue to get a lot better. Quale 5 July 2005 02:05 (UTC)

Thanks from me too, your work on these articles is excellent. Sjakkalle (Check!) 6 July 2005 08:54 (UTC)

[edit] Napoleon Gambit

I saw you talk about the Napoleon Opening on Quale's talkpage. THe talk-system on Wikipedia allows easy eavesdropping ;-) Actually it was I who brought nominated that article for deletion (Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Napoleon Gambit). When I nominated it, the article was quite messed up. [1] It appeared that someone had got this mixed up with Fool's Mate and Napoleon Opening, only the title had anything to do with the variation of the Scotch Game (the redirect was made after this was pointed out). You are right that this variation is extremely obscure, and that there is no need to sacrifice a pawn since simply Qxd4 gives White a wonderful game. But the bar for notability of chess openings has been set low, the precedent is the Hippopotamus Defence being kept with a clear consensus. Sjakkalle (Check!) 6 July 2005 12:58 (UTC)

I would actually vote to keep "Hippopotamus Defense," which I think is in fairly common usage (for an obscure line -- although Spassky drew twice with it in one of his world championship matches with Petrosian). But I've never heard of the "Napoleon Opening" and "Napoleon Gambit" except here, so they would definitely get the ax if it were up to me. Frederick R 6 July 2005

Sjakkalle, I was inspired by your article on the Napoleon Opening to write one on the equally ridiculous Parham Attack (2.Qh5). Frederick R 6 July, 2005

Thanks for the Parham Attack article. I didn't know that opening had a name. Oddly, just yesterday I had read an article that Hikaru Nakamura had played it in a GM tournament, but it never occurred to me that it could be made into an article. It's remarkable what googling "2.Qh5" will find. Actually Bernard Parham is an interesting guy. Apparently he won the 1967 Indiana State Championship and has been a fixture of Indiana tournament chess for 30 years or more. He advocates his "Matrix System", which supposedly applies vector analysis and geometry to chess. That's the origin of the crazy early queen moves.

About the hippo: I don't think the wikipedia article describes what GMs call the hippopotamus defense. The wikipedia article is based on a website by Adam Bogon, which applies the name to a Black system featuring ...Nh6, ...g6, and then ...f6 (possibly ...f5) intending ...Nf7. IMO, idiotic. I think GM usage of the hippopotamus refers to a cramped defense that probably usually arises from an English opening. I think I've seen Karpov games with it (on both sides), and other GMs have used it although I don't think it's currently in fashion. If you can improve the Hippopotamus Defence article, that would be great. Quale 7 July 2005 00:15 (UTC)

At the same time you (Quale) were writing the above, I was writing this:

OK, I take back what I said about the Hippopotamus Defence. Wikipedia's definition is completely different from mine. I would vote to delete the goofiness in Wikipedia on the subject. I would define the Hippopotamus as an opening system where Black fianchettoes both bishops, plays e6 and d6, and puts the knights on d7 and e7. I think you're right that the term also refers to an English line. I will try to add something to the Hippopotamus article when I have a chance to do some research. Frederick R 6 July 2005

Thanks. One of the fun things about Wikipedia is that it turns out that you can make decent, and even interesting articles about seemingly trivial things like 2.Qh5?!. Of course I had no idea that you had actually met Bernard Parham. All I know about him is from www.chessdrum.com and I hadn't visited that site before today. I forgot to mention that the easy way to time stamp your comments is to use four tildes instead of three, so when I do ~~~~ I get this: Quale 7 July 2005 02:07 (UTC)

Ah, OK, thanks for the tip. I had read that someplace, then forgot it. Here, let's give it a try: Frederick R 7 July 2005 02:11 (UTC)

[edit] Notability and WP:VFD

Notability is a pretty controversial thing on WP:VFD. I would qualify as what many wikipedians would call a deletionist, since I think that editorial judgement and restraint as to what we choose not to give an article conveys important information that's lost when everything is included regardless of significance. Currently, inclusionists tend to get their way, in part because wikipedia has intentionally made it much easier to create articles than to delete them. I agree with this policy, but I don't agree that everyone and everything deserves an encyclopedia article. I admit that there are some advantages to a simple standard of "if it's verifiable and can be written in an WP:NPOV way, it can get an article". Unfortunately the encyclopedic notability standard I prefer is a lot more subjective, and since it must be applied case by case, it's more work, and people will disagree. Maybe subjective standards can't work in a world-wide collaborative community like wikipedia.

To be honest, I think most people who are truly notable don't care if they have an article in Wikipedia. They're too busy doing whatever interesting and important things they do that makes them notable to worry about vanity. The ones who want it the most are the ones who shouldn't get it. I figure that if the answer to the question, "Who would be hurt more if this bio article were deleted: wikipedia or the subject of the article?" is the subject would be hurt more, then the article is vanity and it should go. I think Wikipedia also has a problem with too much pseudoscience and crackpottery, and think that WP:NOR should be wielded like a giant hammer to crush that garbage. I also have a fairly low tolerance for fancruft. I enjoy a lot of fannish stuff in my real life, but I really don't think it belongs in WP. Of course I suppose some would consider my interest in chess trivia to be equivalent. Sjakkale (sorry, misspelled his user name and pointed to a Wikipedia:Doppelganger account) Sjakkalle is someone I respect who has a more liberal view of what should be included in Wikipedia (I'd say he's in the middle, not inclusionist or deletionist), and he's contributed a lot to the chess articles and has contributed to wikipedia for a lot longer than I have. Quale 7 July 2005 02:36 (UTC)

All of what you say sounds reasonable to me. I guess that means I fall in the deletionist camp too. Frederick R 7 July 2005 02:46 (UTC)

[edit] Polish Immortal

Thanks for adding the "Polish Immortal" to the Dutch article. I was thinking that maybe this game deserves its own article. If you look at Category:Chess games, we already have articles on a few famous chess games. (Also, regarding your user name change: I'm sure that sort of change is fine. Wikipedia used to move user names for people on request, but apparently it's technically difficult and that service has been suspended for quite a while and is unlikely to return anytime soon. I think you could change your old user and talk pages into redirects to the new pages if you want. Sjakkalle could advise as he is a very proficient wikipedian and an admin.) Quale 7 July 2005 21:15 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice. I had had the same thought about the Polish Immortal when I tacked it onto the Dutch Defense article -- so I have now written an article about it. It's just a stub, but that's a start. I may add annotations (as you might imagine, it's annotated at various sites on the Internet) when I have some time. Krakatoa 8 July 2005 02:08 (UTC)

Very good. Because of WP:NOR, you will want to source provide a reference for any annotation or observation about the game that isn't obvious, even though you're probably a strong enough player to annotate it yourself. (I'm not a strong enough chess player to be tempted to do much original research--I just look up most of this stuff on the web or in books.) In addition to famous games, we also need more articles on famous chess tournaments. If you look at Category:Chess competitions, wikipedia has Hastings 1895 chess tournament but lacks New York 1924 and 1927 and a bunch of others.

I will try to write an article on New York 1924 when I get a chance. I like that tournament because old man Lasker scored 80%, winning IIRC 1.5 points ahead of Capablanca, who had crushed him 3 years earlier in their world championship match. Moscow 1935 was pretty cool, too. Lasker, age 67, was 1/2 point out of first, the only undefeated player, just behind co-winners Botvinnik and Flohr, and ahead of Capablanca, whom he crushed. I like Lasker better than Capablanca -- can you tell? Krakatoa 8 July 2005 20:21 (UTC)

I think the success that Lasker had and Korchnoi continues to have late in their careers is fascinating because it's so rare in chess. (Lasker and Korchnoi aren't directly comparable in all ways of course, since I think Lasker was World Champion around age 25 and Korchnoi didn't develop to World Championship strength until much later in his career. Korchnoi's gradual improvement into his 40s and 50s until he reached the World Championship level seems almost unique in chess.) Now that I'm on the other side of 40 I have more empathy than I would have 20 years ago. I think it's a shame that the current fashion for rapid play puts such a great premium on youth rather than experience.

Last week I was reading a few of Lasker's letters reproduced at chesscafe.com (they're halfway down the pages) and he certainly could be ornery. If you write about New York 1924 you might want to read what Lasker had to say about his experience when he explained why he didn't play in 1927--he wasn't happy at all. Still the life of a chess professional has always been hard, and I think it was even much tougher then. I think I can understand why he felt that tournament organizers showed favoritism toward a charismatic Cuban over him. Apparently Lasker thought that Capablanca had been rude to him during their negotiations for a championship match, and maybe the fact that Capablanca got some financial support from the Cuban government (I don't know if Capa actually worked as a diplomat) was irksome to Lasker too. Quale 9 July 2005 04:34 (UTC)

[edit] Openings

On to a different chess subject. The chess opening article is much improved over what it was a long time ago, but it still has some rough edges. In particular, the very beginning and the first section (Aims of the opening) need work. Those are the only parts of that article that haven't been rewritten in the last few months. (If you look at the article history and go back to say February of this year, you can see how far the chess opening article has come.) In particular, I really dislike this sentence in the intro: "There are a number of openings, some defensive, and some offensive; some are tactical, and some are strategic; some openings focus on the center, and others focus on the flanks; some approaches are direct, and others are indirect." It isn't false, but it doesn't sound encyclopedic. For the chess opening#Aims of the opening section it might be simplest to just paraphrase a list of classical opening principles given by Reinfeld or Fine and credit the original source, and this would also avoid the original research problem. We should mention that classical opening principles are frequently violated today, and current grandmasters have gone beyond even the territory staked out by the hypermodern school.

Finally the chess opening#Indian systems (1.d4 Nf6) section needs short descriptions of a few openings that I didn't write anything for, including Modern Benoni, Benko Gambit, Knight's Tango, and Bogo-Indian. I tried to describe each opening briefly in 1-4 sentences and keep the amount of discussion roughly proportional to the importance of the opening. Owen's Defense and St. George's Defense got only a single sentence together, and many of the irregular openings listed in the flank section don't get any discussion in the text at all. Looking at this again, the Semi-open section needs more, especially for the Sicilian, French, and Caro-Kann because they're a lot more important than is made apparent by the text of the article. Actually Open games needs work too, because the Ruy needs more discussion and the King's Gambit isn't mentioned in the text at all. Quale 8 July 2005 04:31 (UTC)

Yeah, I noticed that the opening article needed some work. I should be able to do some of that. How do I provide sources -- link to them in the article? Mention them in my description of the edit? Something else? Krakatoa 8 July 2005 05:35 (UTC)

Some people use refs right in the text footnote style, but in general I think this is unnecessarily picky for chess articles unless we need to provide a source for something controversial. Footnotes seem more useful for heavy philosophy and law, and maybe history and science. Also, I think it will be relatively unusual for a chess article to have more than about a half dozen references total, so it shouldn't be too hard for people to figure out. Generally I've just been putting the references I find most useful either in the "References section" or the "External links" section at the bottom of the article. There is a standard Book reference template that can be used in the references section. I find external links harder to deal with because there isn't a set standard way to format them. You can look at Wikipedia:Cite sources for the standard policy on this. It's linked near the bottom of the edit page whenever you do an edit. For the individual chess opening articles we could cite NCO, MCO and BCO for nearly every opening but I haven't been doing that. Usually one or two have more interesting things to say than the others, so I just list the ones that provided info used in the article. Naturally the chess opening article lists them all as references. The Oxford Companion to Chess comes up in a lot of chess articles because it has good historical info with bios and dates, and has a good reputation for scholarship. Quale 8 July 2005 14:11 (UTC)

[edit] Some technical notes

Hi Krakatoa! Sure, it's fine to make a new account as long as you openly declare it like you have done. It is when people create multiple accounts to vote multiple times that policy is breached (this practise is called "sockpuppetry"). Technically it is possible for the developers to merge the history from your old account to your new account, but since that is a time consuming process, that service has regretably been shut down.

I think redirects are what you were looking for. To make a page "point" to another you write:

#Redirect[[Target article]]

After merging two articles together, a redirect should be left behind and there should be no deletion. In part this is because the GFDL license requires the author(s) to be attributed and the easiest way is to preserve the page history in a redirect. Also, redundant redirects may be useless, but they are also quite cheap and harmless. Sjakkalle (Check!) 8 July 2005 08:06 (UTC)

[edit] Checkmate

I saw your good edits to checkmate. I don't like this sentence: "Traditionally, when checkmate occurs (or is thought to be inevitable) one lays one's king down on its side to indicate that the game has ended (by checkmate or resignation of the game)." For one thing, the word "checkmate" is used twice, and it seems to me that should be avoided. Secondly, I've never seen any knoledgable person tip their king in resignation AFTER they've been checkmated.

I don't think that you wrote the original sentence, but I think you would be a good one to revise it. Bubba73 00:17, July 10, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, Bubba73. I don't like that sentence, either. I am actually partly responsible for it -- I added the "by checkmate or" terminology at the end, since the way it was written it read that someone who was checkmated tipped over his king to indicate resignation. Huh? But as you suggest, the whole notion of tipping over one's king after being checkmated is weird: the game is over and the "checkmatee" need not (and in my experience does not) knock over the king to acknowledge that. I would accordingly have been inclined to take out any reference to tipping over one's king after resigning, except that the previous writer actually posted a photograph of a knocked-over checkmated king. I will try rewriting the sentence to say that one normally tips over one's king to indicate resignation, but that one can also do so if checkmated -- although it's really not necessary.

In my opinion, the whole "tipping over the king" discussion probably should be axed altogether, since it's not really directly related to checkmate. First, one does not normally tip over one's king to indicate that one is checkmated, but rather to resign. Second, one resigns when it is apparent that one has no chance of winning or drawing the game -- even though actual checkmate might be many moves away. Krakatoa 00:41, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Légal Trap

Thanks for spotting that we already had an article at Legall's Mate when I created a second article. It is merged now. The score between us now stands at 1-1. :-) Sjakkalle (Check!) 12:58, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Blackburne Shilling Gambit vs Giuoco Piano

It would be fine to say Italian Game instead. At first I didn't put Blackburne Shilling under anything at all, until I remembered that Burgess had called that trap the "Oh my god" trap in his Mammoth Book of Chess. In that book he puts it in the GP section, which is understandable even if not precise. I just followed his lead for convenience. Really all the lines after 3.Bc4 could be considered one opening, and the Evans Gambit, GP, and Two Knights could be considered variations. They're certainly more strongly related than all the lines after Black's second move in the QGD. Quale 19:05, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

Yes, that last is an interesting point. The different "flavors" of the QGD (2...c6, 2...e6, 2...Bf5, 2...Nc6, 2...c5, etc.) are radically different from one another. It's odd that they're all nominally one opening. I took your suggestion about Italian Game, writing a (very un-original) article about it, adding it to the Chess opening article, changing the terminology in the Giuoco Piano article, and recategorizing the Blackburne Shilling Gambit under "Italian Game" in the Category:chess traps article. Krakatoa 23:46, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

I just looked at the Mammoth Book of Chess again and found that I didn't even accurately report what Burgess wrote. He does define the Italian Game just as you did in the new article you wrote. (I think sometimes Italian Game is used only as a synonymn for Giuco Piano, but I think the definition you use is more useful and better.) In the book index, his "Oh my god!" trap shows up under Giuoco Piano, but when you turn to the referenced page you find that Burgess put it in the Italian Game section, just as you proposed. I had only looked in the index when I made my earlier statement. Interestingly Burgess didn't seem to know about the Blackburne Shilling Gambit name for the trap, but I didn't either until I read your excellent article. I also put something on the Hungarian Defense talk page about something I had put in the article originally that was probably just wrong. Take a look and see if you think we should fix up that article, since 5.c3 doesn't seem to be an especially good reply to 4...exd4. Quale 00:13, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Nimzo-Indian

I agree 100% that the article should be Nimzo-Indian Defence, with a redirect from Nimzo-Indian. We have the same problem with the Bogo-Indian. Since articles already exist at the redirects and they have had edits, we can't do the move ourselves. Probably the best bet is to ask User:Sjakkalle to make the move, as he's an admin. He's also a chess player, so he'll understand why the full names are better. (I wrote Defence above instead of Defense since it looks like that article was originally created using British spelling. The wikipedia practice is to conform to the spelling that was used to create the article. If the article is about a clearly British subject, British spelling should be used, and the reverse if it's a U.S. subject.) Quale 01:20, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

Ah, OK, I didn't realize an admin had to do the moving. I figured it was just another thing that I didn't know how to do. I'd noticed some time ago that someone (maybe Sjakkalle, I dunno) had renamed the Lilienthal article "Andor Lilienthal" (it had been "Andre Lilienthal" or some such) and figured anyone who knew how to do it could rename an article. I'll suggest to Sjakkalle that he rename the Nimzo and Bogo articles. Thanks. Krakatoa 18:07, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

OK, I'll move them. Usually also non-administrators can move these articles using the "move"-tab. The primitive copy-paste moves should be avoided since they don't move the article's history. There are three restrictions on moves:

• Anonymous users (not logged in) cannot move.
• If an article already exists at the target, it cannot be moved there. (The article must first be deleted by an administraor to "make way")
  • Exception: If the only thing at the target is a redirect pointing back to what you are trying to move, and there is no further history, it can be moved there anyway.
• Anybody moving an article to "(article title) on Wheels" or "(article title) is Communism" will be in serious trouble... (For an explanation of this one see this page.)

I see that the redirect at Bogo-Indian Defence has a prior history so I'll need to delete that one first.

Incidentally, I'm not a particularily strong chess player, my national rating is at 1188, and after the last rated tournament I played, it's amazing that I still have rating points left... The contributions I have made to these articles is from knowledge gathered from various books and web-references which I've only been able to apply limitedly in actual games.

By the way thanks for your overhaul of the Ruy Lopez article, it looks much better now! Sjakkalle (Check!) 08:04, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for moving those articles, and for enlightening me on the "move" procedure. I agree that the Ruy Lopez article looks much better, but I'm not the party responsible for that. (I only made some pretty minor edits.) I believe (and my glance at the history appears to confirm) that Quale deserves the credit. Krakatoa 19:21, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Ugly chess diagrams

Do you have any ideas what to do about the ugly chess diagrams (Template:Chess diagram) that are being advocated? I don't want to start a war over this, but they're popping up in chess articles all over and I think they are distinctly worse than the diagrams they are replacing. I dislike the new diagrams for several reasons. Although the green and buff colors of the old diagrams are perhaps not ideal, I think the contrast of the brown on brown proposed replacement is too low. Standardizing the diagram sizes at fixed regular and small sizes is good, but I find the regular size smaller than I like. The coordinates around the board of the new diagrams are rendered as bitmaps rather than actual font characters and aren't very pretty. Coordinates on all 4 sides of the board are redundant when only 2 sides are needed and take extra space. Finally, the biggest complaint I have with the new diagram template is fortunately easily fixed: the use of multiple boxes around the board is ugly, and simply adds unnecessary visual clutter. Zero boxes is the correct number. Over use of boxes is a classic novice's mistake in typography. Unfortunately the low contrast and cluttered appearance were deliberate design decisions, so I fear that it may be difficult to change anyone's mind about these. Quale 22:41, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

I completely agree with you. As you evidently noticed, I reverted the "Blackburne Shilling Gambit" article when someone changed the green-and-white diagram to one of the crappy brown diagrams. I don't know what to do about it, though. I'm not familiar enough with Wikipedia to know how these sorts of issues are resolved. Krakatoa 22:53, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

I think there was a discussion on the meta which led to this, here I think. I agree with you, the green was better, even though I am used to playing all my chess on brown boards. I think green is used in Rogaland, but brown is used nearly everywhere else in Norway. Sjakkalle (Check!) 08:35, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

I didn't know you lived in Norway. Your handle is suggestive, of course, but since you're a native speaker of English, and seem to write in "American English" (no Briticisms, etc. that I've noticed) I figured you lived in the U.S. It seems you, Quale, and I like the green boards; too bad that is apparently the minority view. Actually, I like the black-and-white boards the best (as used at the top of the Stalemate article, for example), but I don't know how to make them. But the brown ones -- yuck! Krakatoa 15:43, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Schiller and so on

Just wanted to say thanks for the support over on Talk:Eric Schiller; it's really much appreciated. I've edited here for more than three years now and seen rather a lot in that time, but I think that's the first time anybody has called for me to be banned. Quite amusing really.

Thanks also for all the good work on other chess articles; I think the stuff on openings in particular has come on tremendously in the last few months. --Camembert 18:11, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

Glad to lend my support. I didn't think there was any great likelihood of you getting banned, of course, but Sloan's vitriol really pissed me off.

I agree that the opening articles have gotten a lot better in the last few months -- not that I'm wholly (or primarily) responsible. Quale and others have put in a lot of work. Krakatoa 19:01, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Chess Opening Theory Wikibook

Would love your help on the Chess Opening Theory Wikibook. We've got a lot of theory in the wikipedia pages, but at some point I think this stuff goes beyond encyclopedia material. Wouldn't it be great to have a wiki version opening theory? Kind of a wiki-Nunn's so to speak.... Anyway, your help is always appreciated....

I will try to help, although I'm not sure how this will work unless we were to replicate NCO or ECO or MCO (or some combination thereof) online, which would of course be illegal. It's a huge undertaking in any event. Krakatoa 22:31, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

Yes, we would to avoid copying NCO/ECO/MCO analysis -- but the moves are not under copyright and our analysis would be original -- just like the opening sections in wikipedia. Huge undertaking is an understatement, but hopefully the wiki-gods will help... ThreeE 22:37, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

If our analysis is original, doesn't that violate the Wikipedia:No Original Research policy? Krakatoa 00:02, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

It would if it was on Wikipedia, but this would be on Wikibooks where original research is the name of the game.  :) This is another good reason to move the analysis off of Wikipedia opening entries. ThreeE 01:48, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Ah, OK. I didn't know Wikibooks had different policies in that respect than Wikipedia itself. Krakatoa 16:18, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Ray Nagin article

Where did I insert POV quotes, exactly, in the Ray Nagin article? Rather, I remember removing a dearth of information that was unsourced. If I did remove the information about the Posse Comitataus Act, it was completely unintentional. Another user, who you identify by their IP address, was in the midst of editing the article at the same time. I think this information was removed accidentally by me or accidentally/intentionally by this user.--Jentizzle 19:39, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

I did not attribute the addition of POV material to you, but to 209.247.222.81. I was not objecting to deletion of material about the Posse Comitatus Act (which I would welcome, since no one has cited any basis for the claim that Gov. Blanco's extensive 8/28 letter to President Bush requesting assistance was insufficient under that Act). I was complaining about your deletion of the following material, which my comparison of the 18:08 version (the last by me) and the 18:33 version (after four edits by you) indicates that you deleted:

"On Saturday August 27, President Bush "declared an emergency exists in the State of Louisiana and ordered Federal aid to supplement state and local response efforts in the parishes located in the path of Hurricane Katrina beginning on August 26, 2005, and continuing." [2] The president's "action authorize[d] the Department of Homeland Security, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), to coordinate all disaster relief efforts . . . ." The Department of Homeland Security's website states that, "In the event of a terrorist attack, natural disaster or other large-scale emergency, the Department of Homeland Security will assume primary responsibility . . . for ensuring that emergency response professionals are prepared for any situation. This will entail providing a coordinated, comprehensive federal response to any large-scale crisis and mounting a swift and effective recovery effort." [3] Page 43 of the National Response Plan issued by the Department of Homeland Security in December 2004 states, under the "Guiding Principles for Proactive Federal Response," that "Standard procedures regarding requests for assistance may be expedited or, under extreme circumstances, suspended in the immediate aftermath of an event of catastrophic magnitude." [4]"

Accidental, and I apologize. But I have to ask why you refer to Governor Blanco's request as coming on the 28th, when the document is dated and referenced by other newspapers as being sent on the 27th? --Jentizzle 20:21, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Bovineone in his reversion at 19:09 characterized your edits as "unexplained and unsubstantiated mass vandalism by Jentizzle." Krakatoa 19:51, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

If 209 anon keeps it up, I'll get the 3RR posse on him/her or do an Rfc on the issues.--MONGO 19:54, September 5, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, MONGO. Krakatoa 20:07, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Jentizzle, apology accepted, as I said on the article's talk page. But the Blanco letter appears to be dated August 28, as I said. [5] Krakatoa 22:11, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I've seen the .PDF, which I still don't think has any more credibility than the press release with the date heading of August 27. Furthermore, the press release is linked to the public site, not the .PDF. Somehow I'm uneasy about assuming that the whoever is updating the Lousiana state government's site just made a huge mistake. The discrepancy could at least be noted in the Nagin and Blanco articles, meaning adding both links, for the press release and .PDF. Beyond this, it's not as if the .PDF couldn't have been edited. Anyway, I've updated the talk page for Mayor Nagin with a link to a FEMA statement dated August 27 [6] which references a state request for federal assistance --Jentizzle 03:01, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] The assault on the List of sexual slang

Two users in particular The Literate Engineer & Voice of All(MTG) have apparently made it their duty to get rid of the list and they have been using underhanded tactics in an attempt to do so in any way they can.

But word is getting out, and supporters of the list are starting to rally against them and protect the list (via rerverting vandalism, countering their tactics, etc.).

[edit] The results of the 18 October AfD:

• Keep & clean = 3
• Keep, no clean = 11
• Delete = 2

[edit] The anonymous clean-up notice

The following anonymous clean-up notice was posted to the list on November 1st:

23:44, 1 November 2005 68.17.227.41

The notice was placed without group consensus, and there was no edit comment. Pretty sneaky.

This was the user's only edit. Nothing before or after. A sock-puppet.

[edit] The results of the 10 November Afd

• Keep & clean up =3 votes
• Keep, with no mention of clean up =7 votes
• Delete = 4 votes (including the nomination)

That's 10 votes to keep, out of which 3 voted to clean up. Seven out of ten clearly voiced their desire to retain the list without deleting its entries.

[edit] Dishonest report of Afd results

Voice of All(MTG) reported the results as " ", and he and The Literate Engineer used that as the basis to erase the content of the list, which they did in successive edits.

[edit] Non-consensual list move

During the 10 November AfD discussion, Voice of All(MTG) moved the list to the new article name sexual slang, citing the introduction at the top of the list as the basis for the move ("it is more than a list"). Several users then used the article title as an argument against including any list entries.

When an article is moved, the change history is moved with it, and a redirect is placed under the original article's title. If the redirect is edited, then the article cannot be moved back. That is exactly what has happened to the list. See Wikipedia:Merging and moving pages for more information.

[edit] The current situation

The change history of the list is currently stranded as the change history of Sexual slang.

The content of the list itself has been restored to List of sexual slang, where it was originally. This preserves the spirit of the results of the two AfD discussions mentioned above.

[edit] To summarize:

1. On Oct 18 the list was nominated for AfD (article for deletion), but this attempt to delete failed, and the vote was overwhelmingly to Keep.
2. An anonymous sock-puppet placed a clean-up notice on the list. It has been used as a justification to delete entries.
3. On Nov 10, The Literate Engineer made an AfD attempt against the list and it failed too.
4. Voice of All (MTG) underhandedly moved the list to the non-list name sexual slang, while the AfD was still underway.
5. Voice of All(MTG)reported false results for the 10 November AfD vote, and he and The Literate Engineer edited out the entire list.
6. I posted a rebuttal to the above antics on the talk page for sexual slang, and reverted the sexual slang article to the November 15 version in the article's change history (the complete list). My username ("Bend over") was banned as inappropriate or offensive.
7. Some editors stated that an article is not the place for a list, and used that as a justification to keep list entries.
8. So I replaced the redirect at List of sexual slang with the actual content of the entire list. Unfortunately, the change history for the list is still part of the change history for the article sexual slang.
9. An attempt is being made to protect the list against vandalism at its original location: List of sexual slang.

Remember, the three reversion limit does not apply when reverting vandalism. Only if enough concerned users participate will this be successful.

Thank you for taking the time to read this letter. Red Rover 22:10, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Game against David Sprenkle

David Sprenkle was at the University of Illinois in 1982 (at least part of it) while I was there. Were you there too? Bubba73 (talk), 04:26, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Hi, Bubba73! No, I attended Illinois Institute of Technology and Columbia Law School, not the U of I. I played the game against Sprenkle at the "Master Challenge" tournament in one of the Chicago suburbs. Krakatoa 04:29, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] reply

"I never knew it was possible to add all that stuff about playing chess, liking chocolate, ,,,"

Those are userboxes that I originally got from other user pages, and then from Wikipedia:Userboxes.

" Not with you on the Country/Western thing, but your line made me chuckle. A friend of mine who moved from Chicago to Texas had used that line with me ("We've got all kinds of music here. Country AND Western."). I gather that neither he nor you originated that line."

The C&W thing is actually a joke. I like some C&W, but it isn't my favorite. I got the line about both kinds of music - country and western from the Blues Brothers movie.

"Keep up your good work on the chess articles."

Thank you, and you too. I'm the one that misspelled "desperado". I put in a link to it at the terminology, but at the time I suspected that you might be making an article about it, and you did. Those stalemate lines in Keres-Fischer are remarkable, aren't they? Bubba73 (talk), 17:28, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. Actually, now that you remind me, I think that my friend had mentioned that he got the line from the Blues Brothers. Yes, Keres-Fischer is unbelievable. I see why Fischer was so shocked to realize that he had no win after Qe5! simply allowing him to queen. Perpetual check I can believe, but having stalemates in three different lines is incredible. Maybe the most problem-like position I've ever seen in an actual game. Krakatoa 17:35, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Promotion (chess)

Promotion (chess): my contribution wasn't vandalism (rv), I just try to directly point promotion. Sorry for thr word. --AndrejJ 18:00, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

No problem. As you may have noticed, I deleted my earlier discussion that double promotion could happen if White played e5xNf6xg7xRh8 and Black played bxNc3xb2xRal, which is now redundant since it's shown by the illustrative game. Krakatoa 18:09, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] promotions and underpromotions

I just added a breakdown of promotions and underpromotions to these two articles.

The 2006 ChessBase database of 3,200,000 games, the breakdown of promotions is approximately:

• queen - 96.8%
• knight - 1.8%
• rook - 1.1%
• bishop - 0.2%

I suspect that most of the promotions to a rook were not necessary to win the game (or not to avoid stalemate), but to give enough power to win, and give a hint that it is time to resign. But I certainly have no reference to that. Do you know of anything along those lines, or a way to mention it in the articles without being an opinion? Bubba73 (talk), 00:39, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Also, only about 1.5% of the games have a promotion. I think it is much higher than that at the amateur level. Bubba73 (talk), 00:41, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Huh, that is all very interesting -- and largely counterintuitive, at least to me. I would've thought that promotions to queen were well over 99%. I agree that the percentage of games with promotions has to be much higher at the amateur level. Sorry, I don't know of anything discussing why people chose to underpromote. Krakatoa 13:42, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

There is a way that those statistics can be biased. Chessbase only counts the number of games with each of those types of promotions. So if a game has two or more promotions to a queen, it will only be counted as one. It may be that a lot of those promotions to a rook are cases when it is going to be immediately captured anyway, so for fun they promote to a rook instead of a queen. I can sook at some of the games to check, but I haven't done that. Also, there are probably a lot more promotions to a queen in amateur play, since masters will probably resign before a pawn is queened. Bubba73 (talk), 15:52, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

That is all true, although I would think that if people wanted to underpromote a pawn that's going to be captured anyway, there'd be more bishop promotions, since they're so unusual normally. I saw a game of Keene's where he did that; he said he wanted to see how careful the chess magazines were. (A guy once played a8(N)! in that situation in a tournament game against me, just to amuse his friends who were spectating.) I think some of the rook promotions might be in (decisive) K and P vs. K situations. If someone played out an ending with a lone king against me, I'd probably promote to a rook, just to underscore how ridiculous it was for the guy to play on. Once in a tournament game against a complete fish, I promoted five pawns to knight (I also had one of my original knights), and then mated with just the six knights, not using my king, rook, or bishop. Not all of the games in ChessBase are master games, by the way: some are from the "Girls Under-12 Championship" and such, and those kind of games doubtless contribute a disproportionate share of the promotions. I was very surprised by the percentage of knight promotions in the ChessBase database; it amazes me that almost 1 out of 50 games has a knight promotion. Krakatoa 17:48, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, a promotion to a queen or rook might be immediately captured by a minor piece, and the side tht just did the promotion captures the minor piece. Therefore a promotion to a rook or queen might result in winning a minor piece. A player likely wouldn't sacfifice a minor piece for a promotion to a minor piece. ... You are right about not all of the games being at a high level.... Still there were only about 880 promotions to knights out of the 3.2 million games. (and about 96 to bishop, 528 to rook, 46,100 games with a queen.) The fact that most of the games are at a high level skews the stats compared to amateur games, since there are relatively so few promotions at all. Masters know when they're beat. Bubba73 (talk), 18:38, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Something is a little funky about the ChessBase statistics: they add up to 99.9%, but I would think that there's a non-trivial number of games featuring two different kinds of promotions (the Irish championship game I cite, for example, has promotions to queen and rook). Those ought to be counted twice, which would bring the total over 100% -- but it's not. Maybe ChessBase only counts the first promotion?! I've now put into the "promotion (chess)" article examples of rook and bishop underpromotion. If you can find a nice example of a game with a knight underpromotion, you might want to throw that in. Krakatoa 19:36, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

It is 99.9% because I rounded off the percentages to one digit after the decimal. There should be some games with more than one type of promotion. I noticed the stull you did about underpromotion in the promotion (chess) article. Some of that might be better in the underpromotion article, with a link to it from Promotion as the main article about underpromotion. Bubba73 (talk), 19:41, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

(uninent) There are between 47,500 and 47,600 games with promotions, which is about 100 fewer than the sum of the individual ones. So using that figure puts Q: 97.1%, R 1.1%, B 0.2%, N 1.9%, qhich adds to 100.3%, after rounding. So maybe it should be stated that way. Bubba73 (talk), 19:48, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

OK, yes I think that is probably better. I will change the article to that.

You may well be right about the underpromotion article being more appropriate for my illustrative positions (except the part about mutual promotions to queen in the opening, of course). I have to go do some work, but if you want to move it, feel free. Krakatoa 19:55, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

There are 46,100+ games with at least one promotion to queen. However, there are 28,100+ with white and 19,000+ with black, total of 47,100 to 47,300. So that will change the stats slightly. I need to run each piece seperately for white and for black. Bubba73 (talk), 19:58, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Huh, that is a funny statistic too. I wouldn't have guessed that White promotes about 1 1/2 times as often as Black does. Krakatoa 20:03, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, that's the way it is across the board. Running the stats the better way, Q 96.9%, N 1.8%, R 1.1%, B 0.2%. This is ignoring cases where one side has more than one promotion of the same type, and I think that is the only flaw. That might make Queen promos slightly higher. Bubba73 (talk), 20:09, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

But those statistics are only counting once games with two or more kinds of promotions, right -- since now they add up to 100.0%, rather than 100.3%? Krakatoa 20:23, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

I had the database count each of the promotions to Q/R/B/N for both white and black. It gives the number of games of each. So the only promotions that are missed by this method are where the same player promotes two or more times to the same piece.

Here is a position like I talked about: 1k6/6PB/p7/1p1b4/2pp3P/8/PPP2rr1/1K2R1R1 w - - 0 32 white promoted the g pawn to a rook, and black saced a B for it. A Q promotion would have been the same, but a minor piece probably not. I think many of the rook promotions are like this, and not ones that the position required it. Bubba73 (talk), 20:38, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, Tim Krabbe talks about that (not sure if you're the one who put the link to his stuff in the "underpromotion" article) phenomenon -- he says that most underpromotions are not "true" (necessary) underpromotions. Krakatoa 21:13, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

I ran the search on my own database of my 163 tournament games. It found 5 promotions, all to queen. But off the top of my head I remembered one game that it overlooked. Happens that the promotion was the last move of the game, which may be why it overlooked it. So that may affect the stats. I've written to ChessBase about it. Bubba73 (talk), 02:20, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] American

I noticed that you recently added a link to American here. American is a disambiguation page as the phrase has many uses including a person from the Americas or the United States. In the future, could you link the term to one of the articles listed on the American disambiguation term, that would be great. As an example, if you're linking to something related to the United States, you would input [[United States|American]]. Thanks! --Bobblehead 07:14, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Category:Chess Players

I noticed you added you-know-who: I had to laugh! Seems the article has gotten the attention of antisemites...at the same time, it would be nice to foreground the chess content and not the poor fellow's recent history. It's as if John Nash were only remembered for his nuttiness. Billbrock 02:47, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

True. A third or so of the article is about what a nut case Fischer is. Ty Cobb was a loathsome human being, but the article about him concentrates primarily on his baseball. Odd that in all that time no one had noticed that Fischer really ought to be on the list of chessplayers. Krakatoa 05:00, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

I think the section 1967-72 is weak, particularly 1970-71. How to fix? Billbrock 05:54, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

My chess library is mostly in boxes at the moment (because of remodeling of our house), or I would try to fix it. There definitely should be more on what Fischer was doing before the 1971 candidates matches. He beat Petrosian 3-1 (+2=2) in the USSR vs. the Rest of the World in 1970. [7] It should be mentioned that Board 1 for the ROW was Larsen, whom Fischer demolished 6-0 the following year. Fischer also played in some tournaments in this time period, with crushing results. Krakatoa 04:43, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Nice start! I think it's hard to make a case for Fischer = #1 earlier than 1967 (Monaco/Sousse, e.g.); the amazing thing about his career is his withdrawal from active play & his reemergence in 1970--and his incredibly rapid demostration of being CLEAR & DOMINANT #1--this needs to be played up. (I think of Sandy Koufax, who didn't get good till year 5 in majors.) He was obviously something special, but he wasn't a true prodigy in the sense of (say) Reshevsky or Spassky (both considerably stronger at age 12)....so how did he get so good so fast? WP:NOR of course, but I think it's useful to think of this as a frame for the narrative. Billbrock 06:56, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. Yes, it always struck me how Fischer stopped playing, then came back stronger than ever -- no longer just one of the leading players, but as you say, clearly the strongest player in the world. Any normal human becomes rusty (as Fischer himself did in 1972-92). By the way, someone should write an article on Chess Informant already. Krakatoa 07:06, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

A good night's work! Article still sucks, but it sucks LESS. Billbrock 09:37, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Six-piece DB

Confirms the soundness of your study! 2K1b3/8/1R1k4/2n5/2n5/8/8/8 b - - 0 1 is a draw , as you assumed. Billbrock 21:41, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Billbrock 21:41, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! After playing over Karpov-Kasparov, I was pretty sure R v. BNN was a draw. (As I recall, Kasparov said he was surprised how few winning chances there were.) The defender constantly harasses the other side with checks and threats of RxB. (Another way to look at it is that KNN v. K is a draw and KBN v. K is just barely a win, so it's not surprising that if you give the attacker an extra minor piece over those endings, but give the defender a better piece (a rook), the defender can draw.) But it's good to have confirmation: I would have bet heavily that RN v. BB was normally a draw, but the computers say the RN side wins. BBN v. R is a win, which doesn't surprise me: it's much harder for the defender, since exchange sacrifices don't work, and the attacker thus can interpose a bishop to a check. Krakatoa 22:29, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Do you know of a page that summarizes the normal result of the six-piece endgames? Bubba73 (talk), 00:00, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

RN vs. BB - the R&N usually win for same-colored bishops, but draw for opposite-colored bishops. Secrets of Pawnless Endings, page 341, says it offers few winning chances unless the attacker starts with a very favorable position. Bubba73 (talk), 00:16, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

I think I may have been confused. I was under the impression that RN beat BB generally, according to the computers -- as I said above, a result I found very surprising. RN beating same-colored bishops makes a lot more sense. Throwing a few positions with RR v. opposite-colored BB into the Shredder six-piece database seems to confirm that a draw is indeed the normal result. Yay! Sorry, I don't know of a page summarizing the normal results of 6-piece endgames. Krakatoa 06:43, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Secrets of Pawnless endings' has a table of the ones w/o pawns that were finished at that time, including those two endings. Somewhere I've seen the complete list, but I can't find it. Bubba73 (talk), 20:41, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Fischer article

Hi, I don't wish to be critical of effort being put into improving articles, but see my comments on overlinking at Talk:Bobby Fischer. Rocksong 05:55, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Grandmasters

I believe it is a mistake to retrospectively call the likes of Morphy and Philidor grandmasters. They are not conventionally called that. I believe the term should be reserved for those who actually got called GMs: the original 5 GMs, plus those awarded the title by FIDE. (See International Grandmaster). Rocksong 04:54, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

OK, I agree. I thought there was some sort of consensus that people of obvious GM strength deserved to be on the list, since I saw that it contained a number of people whom FIDE had not awarded that title. Now I see that most of those were the five original grandmasters. I removed Morphy and Teichmann, whom I had added, and also Nimzowitsch, whom someone else had added. Someone (maybe you?) already removed Philidor. I'm going to remove Blackburne (added by someone else), too, for the same reason. Krakatoa 05:12, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I removed Philidor. Then thought I'd better discuss it before we started a revert war. As for Blackburne, someone called Mibelz added him on 23-Aug, dunno why. I don't think there's any official definition of who does or doesn't go on the list, I think it's just a result of different editors to different article. But I think we should go with the "conventional" definition of grandmaster, which as far as I know is what I said above. I don't hold any strong opinion on this, I just think it's nice for Wikipedia to be consistent. Rocksong 05:25, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] barnstar

		The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
		For many fine contributions to chess topics. Bubba73 (talk), 23:26, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! I'm touched. Krakatoa 06:43, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] SP

grammer → grammar Hey, in the same paragraph I said that I can't spell! If I do editing off-line I run it through a spell checker. If I edit on line, I make a lot of errors! :-) Bubba73 (talk), 03:30, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

I know! I've fixed your spelling before! :-) Krakatoa 03:35, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Feel free to correct that or any of my other errors. Bubba73 (talk), 17:55, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Even when I run it through a spell checker (ad I did with the new material in "two knights ending"), I STILL make errors.! Bubba73 (talk), 23:09, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

That's the problem with spell checkers: if you type a known word, but it happens to be the wrong word, the spell checker won't flag it. Krakatoa 23:19, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion about links to ChessWorld.net at WikiProject Chess

Hi, I started a discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chess#Links to chessworld.net - you are welcomed to contribute. Greetings, --Ioannes Pragensis 17:10, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] List of Ethnic Chess Openings

Hi... Umm... I er... nominated this list which you created for deletion, and you may review the AFD entry at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Ethnic Chess Openings and you are of course free to disagree with me. I sincerely hope that you are not too offended by the AFD, because in general, I hold your contributions to our chess articles in very high regard. Sjakkalle (Check!) 12:28, 18 January 2007 (UTC)