Chess article popularity on Wikipedia

[Colin Patterson]

I thought this may be of some interest to forum members. The following are those English language wikipedia articles (judged to have some chess content) that were registering the highest numbers of hits during April this year, number 1 being the most popular. I have just appended the top 200.

A few surprises ... Glenn Flear top English player ... anyone know why?

1, Benjamin Franklin (talk) 2, Stanley Kubrick (talk) 3, Chess (talk) 4, Humphrey Bogart (talk) 5, Magnus Carlsen (talk) 6, Marcel Duchamp (talk) 7, Bobby Fischer (talk) 8, Board game (talk) 9, Vladimir Nabokov (talk) 10, World Chess Championship 2013 (talk) 11, Elo rating system (talk) 12, Viswanathan Anand (talk) 13, Garry Kasparov (talk) 14, Through the Looking-Glass (talk) 15, Rules of chess (talk) 16, Chess piece (talk) 17, The Seventh Seal (talk) 18, List of child prodigies (talk) 19, Checkmate (talk) 20, Round-robin tournament (talk) 21, Stalemate (talk) 22, Kenneth Rogoff (talk) 23, Grandmaster (chess) (talk) 24, Deep Blue (chess computer) (talk) 25, History of chess (talk) 26, Pawn (chess) (talk) 27, Eight queens puzzle (talk) 28, Glenn Flear (talk) 29, World Chess Championship (talk) 30, En passant (talk) 31, Shogi (talk) 32, Chess opening (talk)33, Xiangqi (talk)34, Zugzwang (talk)35, Sicilian Defence (talk)36, Chessboard (talk)37, Chess (musical) (talk)38, Endgame (TV series) (talk)39, Rook (chess) (talk)40, Comparison of top chess players throughout history (talk)41, Castling (talk)42, José Raúl Capablanca (talk)43, Vladimir Kramnik (talk)44, Taxicab geometry (talk)45, Judit Polgár (talk)46, Glossary of chess (talk)47, Beersheba (talk)48, The Turk (talk)49, Samuel Reshevsky (talk)50, Ruy Lopez (talk)51, CJ de Mooi (talk)52, Knight (chess) (talk)53, Computer chess (talk)54, Gambit (talk)55, Anatoly Karpov (talk)56, Chess boxing (talk)57, Deep Blue versus Garry Kasparov (talk)58, John McCarthy (computer scientist) (talk)59, Three-dimensional chess (talk)60, Levon Aronian (talk)61, Knight's tour (talk)62, Fritz (chess) (talk)63, Mikhail Tal (talk)64, Fresh (1994 film) (talk)65, Fool's mate (talk)66, Alexander Alekhine (talk)67, Chess960 (talk)68, Bishop (chess) (talk)69, Bonar Law (talk)70, Queen (chess) (talk)71, Chess strategy (talk)72, List of chess grandmasters (talk)73, World Chess Championship 2012 (talk)74, Chess rating system (talk)75, Serzh Sargsyan (talk)76, Joshua Waitzkin (talk)77, List of chess openings (talk)78, FIDE (talk)79, King (chess) (talk)80, Immortal Game (talk)81, Boris Spassky (talk)82, Swiss-system tournament (talk)83, Chess piece relative value (talk)84, Draw (chess) (talk)85, French Defence (talk)86, Veselin Topalov (talk)87, Queen's Gambit (talk)88, Chess engine (talk)89, Hikaru Nakamura (talk)90, Chess Titans (talk)91, Scholar's mate (talk)92, Searching for Bobby Fischer (talk)93, Geri's Game (talk)94, Chaturanga (talk)95, Vassily Ivanchuk (talk)96, Natan Sharansky (talk)97, Lewis chessmen (talk)98, Fast chess (talk)99, Chess endgame (talk)100, Emanuel Lasker (talk)101, Chess variant (talk)102, Algebraic notation (chess) (talk)103, Peter Svidler (talk)104, Promotion (chess) (talk)105, Chessmaster (talk)106, Sergey Karjakin (talk)107, The Game of the Century (chess) (talk)108, King's Gambit (talk)109, Staunton chess set (talk)110, English Opening (talk)111, Robert Byrne (chess player) (talk)112, First-move advantage in chess (talk)113, Paul Morphy (talk)114, Fabiano Caruana (talk)115, King's Indian Defence (talk)116, Chess notation (talk)117, Battle Chess (talk)118, Encyclopaedia of Chess Openings (talk)119, Chess prodigy (talk)120, FIDE World Rankings (talk)121, Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany (talk)122, World Chess Championship 1972 (talk)123, Chess symbols in Unicode (talk)124, Tigran Petrosian (talk)125, Susan Polgar (talk)126, Mikhail Botvinnik (talk)127, Teimour Radjabov (talk)128, Shatranj (talk)129, Fairy chess piece (talk)130, Anish Giri (talk)131, Boris Gelfand (talk)132, World Youth Chess Championship (talk)133, Queen's Gambit Declined (talk)134, Glicko rating system (talk)135, Game clock (talk)136, Aron Schvartzman (talk)137, Alexander Grischuk (talk)138, Fianchetto (talk)139, Hou Yifan (talk)140, Nigel Short (talk)141, Gata Kamsky (talk)142, Candidates Tournament (talk)143, Checkmate pattern (talk)144, Chess Olympiad (talk)145, Chess tournament (talk)146, List of world records in chess (talk)147, Alexander Roshal (talk)148, Human–computer chess matches (talk)149, FIDE Grand Prix 2012–2013 (talk)150, Chess master (talk)151, Wesley So (talk)152, Houdini (chess) (talk)153, Endgame tablebase (talk)154, List of chess games (talk)155, Rybka (talk)156, Classical World Chess Championship 1995 (talk)157, Portable Game Notation (talk)158, Swindle (chess) (talk)159, Nimzo-Indian Defence (talk)160, List of FIDE chess world number ones (talk)161, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov (talk)162, King's Indian Attack (talk)163, List of female chess players (talk)164, Sicilian Defence, Najdorf Variation (talk)165, Chebyshev distance (talk)166, Wilhelm Steinitz (talk)167, Sicilian Defence, Dragon Variation (talk)168, Three-player chess (talk)169, Thomas Bowdler (talk)170, Fifty-move rule (talk)171, Alexander Morozevich (talk)172, Knights of the South Bronx (talk)173, Caro–Kann Defence (talk)174, Benoni Defense (talk)175, Slav Defense (talk)176, Pawn structure (talk)177, Pirc Defence (talk)178, Open Game (talk)179, Viktor Korchnoi (talk)180, Threefold repetition (talk)181, Kasparov versus the World (talk)182, Check (chess) (talk)183, Ruslan Ponomariov (talk)184, Shannon number (talk)185, Indian Defence (talk)186, Bishop and knight checkmate (talk)187, Richard Farleigh (talk)188, Alekhine's Defence (talk)189, Queen's Gambit Accepted (talk)190, Deep Thought (chess computer) (talk)191, Correspondence chess (talk)192, Blindfold chess (talk)193, Scotch Game (talk)194, Stonewall Attack (talk)195, Frank Marshall (chess player) (talk)196, Chess title (talk)197, Réti Opening (talk)198, Time control (talk)199, King's Pawn Game (talk)200, List of people who have beaten Garry Kasparov in chess (talk)

[Geoff Chandler]

Hi Colin.

If you Google:

greatest-ever chess tournament upsets + Wiki

Glenn's Wiki bit appears near the top of the front page. Maybe that is why.

London 1986 and at the last minute IM Glenn Flear is invited into the tournament
to replace Karpov and make up the numbers.

So it is 13 GM's v 1 IM.

The 13 GM's were:

Murray Chandler, Nigel Short, John Nunn, Zoltán Ribli, Lev Polugaevsky, Lajos Portisch,
Boris Spassky, Jon Speelman, Rafael Vaganian, Bent Larsen, James Plaskett, Maxim Dlugy
and Jonathan Mestel.

Glenn won it with 8½ pts. from 13 games.

Maybe the players, organisers and spectators keeping hitting Glenn's Wiki page
because to this day they still cannot believe what happened.

(Mabe it's Glen hmself as he still cannot believe what happened.)

[Gordon Cadden]

I would have thought that the biggest surprise, was Benjamin Franklin at number one. He played a reasonable game of chess in the 18th. century, and was quite a good President of the United States of America. Can anyone offer an explanation why he is number one ?

[Clive Blackburn]

I would have thought that the biggest surprise, was Benjamin Franklin at number one. He played a reasonable game of chess in the 18th. century, and was quite a good President of the United States of America. Can anyone offer an explanation why he is number one ?

I think the answer is contained in the first post:-

I thought this may be of some interest to forum members. The following are those English language wikipedia articles (judged to have some chess content)....

Although the Benjamin Franklin article would have some chess content, that is probably not the reason that most people accessed it.

[Colin Patterson]

Thanks Geoff - I was familiar with Glenn Flear's extraordinary success in 1986, but when I interrogated the hits more closely, his intense wiki article popularity was confined to April only, so I was wondering if he was involved in something high profile back then. But yes, I suppose even a smallish rise in exposure may generate an avalanche effect, as people learn, or are reminded of his stellar achievement.

Gordon - Clive is correct. These articles fall within the chess project on Wikipedia, because they have some chess content, and hence they unavoidably show up in these data analyses even though they are largely read for reasons other than chess.

I was amused to see Nigel Short and Gata Kamsky rubbing shoulders at 140 and 141. Awkward!

[JustinHorton]

Where's Ray then?

[John Foley]

I would have thought that the biggest surprise, was Benjamin Franklin at number one. He played a reasonable game of chess in the 18th. century, and was quite a good President of the United States of America. Can anyone offer an explanation why he is number one ?

Benjamin Franklin wrote a thoughtful essay entitled "On the Morals of Chess" which is still pertinent today.
By the way, he was a Founding Father of the US, not president, although he did become president of Pennsylvania.

[Colin Patterson]

To answer Justin's question ... I have culled the next few 'English' entries ...

237 M Adams, 265 Simpson's In The Strand, 293 A Miles, 323 J Nunn, 441 Danny King, 523 R Keene, 540 D Janowski, 541 J Blackburne, 547 Jim Slater, 559 J Speelman, 561 L McShane, 582 London Chess Classic, 586 J Zukertort, 616 David Howell, 655 J Plaskett, 745 J Mieses, 754 S Milner-Barry, 761 Simon Williams, 879 M Stean, 880 Chess Magazine, 881 J Gallagher, 884 H Bird, 910 L Barden, 965 Gawain Jones ...

I'm sure Ray will be delighted that both Simpson's and Tony Miles are well ahead of him in the popularity stakes.

[Colin Patterson]

Correction - Not sure why I put Janowski in that last post - I believe he settled in France, not England.

[JustinHorton]

I'm sure Ray will be delighted that both Simpson's and Tony Miles are well ahead of him in the popularity stakes.

Arf

[Gordon Cadden]

I would have thought that the biggest surprise, was Benjamin Franklin at number one. He played a reasonable game of chess in the 18th. century, and was quite a good President of the United States of America. Can anyone offer an explanation why he is number one ?

Benjamin Franklin wrote a thoughtful essay entitled "On the Morals of Chess" which is still pertinent today.
By the way, he was a Founding Father of the US, not president, although he did become president of Pennsylvania.

Yes, of course, President of Pennsylvania. His "Morals of Chess", was first published in Paris, 1789, when he was the American Ambassador. Have never been able to find a copy of that edition.

[Joey Stewart]

Arf

?

[Matt Mackenzie]

You are presumably unaware of the past "history" between Miles and Keene, then??

[Dan O'Dowd]

I would have thought that the biggest surprise, was Benjamin Franklin at number one. He played a reasonable game of chess in the 18th. century, and was quite a good President of the United States of America. Can anyone offer an explanation why he is number one ?

I would say that since he has such a position in US history he is wiki'd a lot for research projects of young people or out of pseudocivic curiousity over there to the point where because he has the chess connection he leapfrogs more conventional or connected chessers.

[Geoff Chandler]

I saw 'Taxicab geometry' listed as number 44 squeezed in between Kramnik and Judit Polgar.

Curiosity got me so I gave it a hit. The Chess bit reads:

In chess, the distance between squares on the chessboard for rooks is measured in
Manhattan distance; kings and queens use Chebyshev distance, and bishops use the
Manhattan distance (between squares of the same color) on the chessboard rotated 45
degrees, i.e., with its diagonals as coordinate axes. To reach from one square to another,
only kings require the number of moves equal to the distance; rooks, queens and bishops
require one or two moves (on an empty board, and assuming that the move is possible at
all in the bishop's case).

So Rooks are measured in 'The Manhattan Distance.' (I knew that.)

And next time you are teaching a class of students how to mate with a King & Queen
use and explain in great detail the Chebyshev distance manouver. It works everytime.

(so Benny Franklin gets the top hit...........what's his grade?)