Talk:Sokolsky Opening

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I found the old image unattractive, so have replaced it by a Arvindn diagram. Samboy 00:50, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Is this the same as the Polish opening?--Sonjaaa 20:16, Sep 5, 2004 (UTC)

Yes, they're different names for the same thing. --Camembert

Merge from A00 Sokolsky Opening 1.b4 e5

In the VfD on A00 Sokolsky Opening 1.b4 e5, it was decided to merge anything useful here. I don't see anything useful; there's no actual explanation, and no citation. But you're invited to check out this old version to see for yourself. dbenbenn | talk 14:19, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

"Sokolsky Opening" versus "Sokolsky opening"

Dbenbenn recently moved this article from Sokolsky Opening (capital O) to Sokolsky opening (lower case O). I don't agree with this. I think it's quite normal in chess literature to treat names of openings as proper nouns and capitalise each word, not just when it's referred to in the titles of books and in game headers, but also within prose. To give a couple of examples from books I have to hand: John Nunn's Best Games, page 41: "This is a good way for Black to avoid the complexities of the Velimirovic Attack" (capital A); Botvinnik's Best Games 1947-1970, page 76: "White's opening formation is justified only if Black plays both P-Q4 and P-QB4, thus producing a reversed King's Indian Defence..." (capital K, I, D). This is a practice we've followed at the Wikipedia with several other articles on openings: Bird's Opening (capital O), Grünfeld Defence (capital D), Benko Gambit (capital G) and so on. Would anybody object if I moved this back to Sokolsky Opening? --Camembert 14:20, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Sorry about that. It might be good for this issue to be mentioned at Wikipedia:Naming conventions. dbenbenn | talk 05:13, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Hm, perhaps, though it already says "Do not capitalize second and subsequent words unless the title is a proper noun (such as a name) or is otherwise almost always capitalized"--it would probably be a bit long-winded to list everything which, contrary to expectation, was "almost always capitalized" (surely chess openings aren't the only thing). Of course, if you think it's best, add it. --Camembert

Popularity ranking

We have this in the article:

Of the twenty possible first moves from White, 1.b4 ranks ninth in popularity.

We really ought to give a source for this (and if it is determined from a database, we need to state which database), since I would expect the popularity to vary quite a bit according to what game-set you looked at (only GM games, only postal games, a general database including everything, or whatever). For example, looking at games played this year and published in The Week in Chess, I find 1.b4 is indeed the 9th most popular move, but for games dated 1990 in Tim Harding's MegaCorr database, it is 5th. So where does this info come from? (If nobody can say, I can analyse games in a Chessbase Mega database or something, but I'd rather not because 1) I'm lazy, and 2) it would tie up my computer for some time.) --Camembert

Good points. In addition to seeing differences in over-the-board and correspondence, the age of the games will make a difference in the popularity of the openings. Sometimes it can make a huge difference, as some openings have brief revivals (usually because they are used a few times by a well-known GM like Kasparov) and then slip back into disuse. Depending on whether these brief periods of popularity are included or not can skew the numbers. Actually it would be interesting to see opening popularity numbers broken down by era: Romantic, Classical, Hypermodern, and current (which might be Postmodern, I guess). This would be too much to put into every article on an individual opening, but it would make an interesting chess history article on its own. Raymond Keene recently published a book on chess opening history, but I have not seen it.

The sources I have used are www.chesslive.de and www.chessgames.com which both place 1.b4 in ninth place. The first of the databases has master games overrepresented, but there are quite a few amateur games among them. (When I started seeing some of my games in the database I was conviced that this is not an all master database.) The second databse has fewer games, and presents games among stronger players. On some of the first move articles, I have mentioned that the popularity ranking is according to ChessBase (the first database), so I can add that source to some of these articles. Sjakkalle 06:14, 9 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

It might make sense to link to the opening known as "Spike": 1. P-KN4 rather than 1. P-QN4