<Annie> thank you! Personally, I don't think the segment needs softening. I'll leave it to <Karpova> to decide on that.

<Ohio> I'll just address the last paragraph of your suggestions. First, it's important to read carefully all of the previous posts on this matter, and important to read carefully the sources that <Karpova> already provides for the passage.

In particular, a careful reading of this source will give us the current state of knowledge about the issue. At this point in history these happen to be the contemporaneous facts we deal with: http://www.chesshistory.com/winter/...

<I think it's crucial to have a contemperaneous source for exactly <when> Steinitz first considered that. If we don't have that source, I think the clause should be eliminated.>

That would be great obviously, but we don't have it. The clause should not be eliminated. Steinitz's opinion is a fact that's directly on point regarding the status of this match and the history of "unofficial to official" WCC matches. <Karpova> isn't "immortalizing" anything. She's reporting facts. We can draw our own conclusions from those facts.

<Is there <anyone else> who sides with Steinitz on this matter?>

Yes, there is. You'll see this if you look at the source <Karpova> cites for this passage, the same source I have posted in this kibbutz.

Thanks for your suggestion! It seems that shorter sentences are preferred, that's why I opted for the full stop.

So I would propose these two possibilities:

1) Steinitz considered his world championship tenure to have started with his win over Adolf Anderssen.2 But in these matches the title of world champion was not officially at stake.2

I agree with <Jess>. We are just citing Steinitz's opinion on this matter and we make clear that it is his opinion. I think that this is on topic in the intro of the first official world championship match. The general introduction can be used to delve more deeply into the unofficial world champions (including Morphy).

And we don't let Steinitz decide on when he became world champion. The purpose of the world chess championship sites is to delineate the time course of the official world championship matches, a convention agreed upon for the 1886 match. That's why the 1886 match is the first match in here, while Steinitz's earlier matches (or Morphy, Greco, Philidor, etc.) don't get their own pages and are discussed separatly in the general intro.

What I don't like about the 'two-sentence-But...' version, is that, in a way, the pause seems to imply a ridicule/dismissal of Steinitz's view - sort of like the pause a comedian makes after telling a joke, while they wait for the audience to laugh (or at least for someone to push a laugh-track button)... :s

That's why I think 'although' or 'even though' would make the comment more seamless, and actually more objective - but these terms don't really work as stand-alone sentences in English. <Although> you can start a sentence with either of them, <implied 'but' here>, there ought to be some kind of contradiction later on, otherwise they don't make sense.

This sounds good to me:

Game Collection: WCC : Steinitz-Zukertort 1886

<TARRASCH CANNOT PLAY STEINITZ

He Must Stay at Home and Look After His Sick Clients.

In reply to a cablegram o Dr. Tarrasch asking him whether he would accept the invitation of the Havana Chess Club to play a match with Steinitz in Havana the German expert replied as follows:

"Regards for my professional praxis prevent me from devoting myself exclusively to chess and to undertake to stay away from home for so long a time. I therefore regret very sincerely not being able to accept the invitation, which I consider as honorable as it is generous. Allow me to convey my most hearty thanks, all the same. "Tarrasch">

Source: 'New York Sun', October 6, 1890. In Jacques N. Pope http://www.chessarch.com/excavation...

This is a good resource with links to many newspapers: http://www.chessarch.com/archive/00...

Just two small suggestions: I do not think that so many players Lasker beat in matches need to be mentioned, maybe only Blackburne as he was strong enough a player.

And this sentence

<Steinitz and Lasker would play another match in 1896 under similar terms, but there was no clause in the original agreement giving Steinitz the right of a rematch should he lose.>

can be left out. As there was no rematch clause, the 1896 match is too independent from the 1894 match, as if it needed to be mentioned.

I added your new information to the top of the mirrors here:

Game Collection: WCC: Lasker-Tarrasch 1908

and

Game Collection: WCC: Steinitz-Lasker 1894

and

Game Collection: WCC: Steinitz-Gunsberg 1890

<Siegbert Tarrasch> was born in Breslau, Prussia (now Wrocław, Poland) in 1862. In the late 1880s, he established himself as one of the strongest chessplayers in the world with several tournament successes. [(1)] After Tarrasch's first place in Manchester (1890),[(2)] the Havana Chess Club proposed a match against world champion <Wilhelm Steinitz>.[(3)] Tarrasch declined as he couldn't devote that much time to chess, being a practicing physician.[(3)] Besides his successful chess career, he is also famous for propagating and deepening chess, which earned him the nickname "praeceptor germaniae" (lat. [[teacher of Germany]]).[(4)] In 1906, world champion <Emanuel Lasker> singled out Tarrasch and <Geza Maroczy> as worthy contenders for the world championship, and said "Dr. Tarrasch's strength or weakness, if you will, is his pronounced self-love. Without it, he would have become only a very mediocre chessplayer. But with his particular talent, he grew into a giant."[(5)]

Before he won the title from Steinitz, Lasker had already approached Tarrasch for a match in 1892. Tarrasch declined, leaving Lasker with the impression that he didn't consider him good enough yet.[(6)] In 1903, Tarrasch challenged Lasker for a world championship match [(5)] to take place in autumn 1904.[(7)] The conditions were published at the end of 1903.[(8)] After Tarrasch suffered an ice-skating accident, the match was postponed indefinitely.[(7)]

Meanwhile, Lasker negotiated for a world championship match with Maroczy in 1906 without success.[(9)] When Lasker defended his title in <Lasker – Marshall world championship match (1907)> by the score (+8 -0 =7), comparisons were drawn to Tarrasch's previous victory (+8 -1 =8) against the same opponent in 1905,[(10)] as if the title match had only been a substitute for a match between the two German chessmasters.

Finally, the long-anticipated match was brought about after lengthy negotiations in 1908. The chairmen of the German (Gebhardt) and Bavarian (Schenzel) Chess Federations persuaded Lasker to accept a lower honorarium of 7,500 Mark (instead of originally demanded 15,000 Mark), while Tarrasch even agreed to forego an honorarium. The winner was the first to win eight games with draws not counting and received 4,000 Mark, while the loser got 2,500 Marks.[(11)] [(12)] The time control was 1 h for 15 moves.[(13)]

[(2)] Rod Edwards, http://www.edochess.ca/tournaments/...

[(3)] "New York Sun", October 6, 1890. In Jacques N. Pope http://www.chessarch.com/excavation...

[(4)] Wiener Schachzeitung, February 1934, pp. 49-50

[(5)] Wiener Schachzeitung, March-April 1907, pp. 95-96 (originally from Lasker's Chess Magazine 1906)

[(6)] Emanuel Lasker, London Chess Fortnightly, Issue 2, September 1, 1892, p. 15

[(7)] Wiener Schachzeitung, December 1904, p. 364

[(8)] Wiener Schachzeitung, December 1903, pp. 291-292

[(9)] PLACEHOLDER LASKER-MAROCZY MATCH

[(10)] Wiener Schachzeitung, May-July 1907, pp. 163-164

[(11)] Wiener Schachzeitung, May-June 1908, pp. 176-177

[(12)] Wiener Schachzeitung, September-October 1908, p. 263

[(13)] Wiener Schachzeitung, September-October 1908, p. 265

[(14)] Wiener Schachzeitung, July-August 1908, p. 193

[(15)] Emanuel Lasker, Wiener Schachzeitung, Supplementheft 1908, pp. 381-416 (originally from Pester Lloyd 1908)

[(16)] Wiener Schachzeitung, September-October 1908, pp. 323-328

"After Tarrasch's first place in Manchester (1890),[(2)] the Havana Chess Club proposed a match against world champion <Wilhelm Steinitz>.[(3)] Tarrasch declined as he couldn't devote that much time to chess, being a practicing physician.[(3)] Besides his successful chess career, he is also famous for propagating and deepening chess, which earned him the nickname "praeceptor germaniae" (lat. [[teacher of Germany]]).[(4)]"

This led also to some small changes in the rest, as now Steinitz had been introduced so his name doesn't need to be hyperlinked later.

The footnotes have changed dramatically as I also introduced a placeholder for the Lasker-Maroczy match. As the sources are not listed in Game Collection: WCC: Lasker-Marshall 1907 I was only able to put in a placeholder. On a sidenote, as Maroczy's name was hyperlinked in the first paragraph we can simply write Maroczy here and do not need his full name.

I was surprised to find this change "When Lasker defended his title against Frank James Marshall in January-April 1907 by the score (+8 -0 =7), comparisons were drawn to Tarrasch's previous victory (+8 -1 =8) against the same opponent in 1905, (7) as if the title match had only been a substitute for a match between the two German chessmasters." as I remember objecting to the change. In my original draft, there is the possibility to directly link to the Lasker-Marshall world championship page, which makes more sense to me.

Excellent!

I have put your updated draft and notes into the mirror- Game Collection: WCC: Lasker-Tarrasch 1908

Two points to clear up:

I emailed the author to get the notes for <Lasker-Marshall>, so we'll get that PLACEHOLDER info for you shortly.

Also, sorry about that surprising change. It's good you found that and brought it up because it was an "unfinished" change on my part.

I was thinking that it might be better to have the match linked as words in the actual text, since the sentence doesn't look right to me here:

<When Lasker defended his title in Lasker-Marshall World Championship Match (1907) by the score (+8 -0 =7), comparisons were drawn to Tarrasch's previous victory (+8 -1 =8) against the same opponent in 1905,[(10)] as if the title match had only been a substitute for a match between the two German chessmasters.>

I was thinking that if we made the phrase <defended his title> as the hyperlink to the match it would look better, similar to the way we decided to link to actual games. I had not decided on which phrase or word to hyperlink yet, which is why I hadn't put <> signs around anything.

However, looking at this again now, I think you are right. Similar to the way we link tournaments, we should also link the matches. That does make more sense to me.

The passage still needs fixing though. There are two problems. First, a grammatical error that can easily be fixed. It needs "the" added before the match hyperlink.

Second, a style issue- I think the repetition of "Lasker" should be avoided if there is a way to to it-

"When Lasker defended his title in <Lasker-Marshall World Championship Match (1907)>"

If you can find a way to rewrite this sentence, or one of our colleagues can make a suggestion, I think we should try to get rid of the repetition.

Anyways great work on the additional information.

Now I'm a bit confused. Do you want (a) one of the word or a string of words to become a hyperlink to the match or (b) do you want the official hyperlink Lasker-Marshall World Championship Match (1907) to be inserted? In the previous version, there was only a hyperlink to Frank James Marshall and this is what I object to.

In case of (a), the whole sentence can be reformulated at will. In case of (b), what about

Yes, it's much better with the actual <Match link> the way you originally had it.

Your sentence reformulation isn't right yet, but we will figure something out.

If it turns out it works best with the repetition of "Lasker" then we can keep the sentence as it is now.

I'll add the "the" in the mirror.

Ok I added "the" to the sentence.

Game Collection: WCC: Lasker-Tarrasch 1908

Ok I have added the <PLACEHOLDER NOTE> now.

Please don't worry about the <1/8/1905> dating format. We haven't decided on the final format yet.

New draft- any suggestions welcome.

Game Collection: WCC: FIDE WCC Tournament 1948.

World chess champion Alexander Alekhine died on 23 March 1946. At the July 1946 Winterhur congress, FIDE* proposed the vacant title be contested in June 1947 in the Netherlands. They planned a quadruple round robin tournament featuring the day's top contenders, including Max Euwe, Samuel Reshevsky, Reuben Fine, Mikhail Botvinnik, Paul Keres, Vasily Smyslov, and one of the winners of the upcoming Groningen and Prague tournaments.<1,2> The tournament was delayed, partly because the USSR was not yet a FIDE member.<3> On 15 Sept 1946 the proposed contestants (except Fine) met in Moscow to iron out the details. This meeting occurred a day after the USSR-USA match ended, and did not involve FIDE.<4> According to a "Chess" (Dec 1946) article, Botvinnik announced to the others that he would not play in the Netherlands. He was angry about a Dutch news report that suggested his fellow Russians might collude to help him win the title.<3> The five contestants then compromised with a plan to divide the event between the Netherlands and Moscow, but the Soviet Sports Committee refused this idea outright.<5> Meanwhile, FIDE president Alexander Rueb withdrew FIDE's claim to organize the tournament.<3>

Nothing concrete was decided until the next FIDE congress in The Hague on 30 July-2 Aug 1947. The Russians were now members,** and under official FIDE aegis all parties agreed to the same player lineup and conditions proposed at Winterhur 1946, except now the tournament would be split between The Hague and Moscow and begin in spring 1948.<6> In addition, no extra player would be added. In 1946 Botvinnik had won at Groningen and Miguel Najdorf at Prague, but because of the new agreement, Najdorf was not invited to join the championship.<6,7> Shortly before the tournament, Fine dropped out due to scholastic commitments.<8,9>

By the 10th round Botvinnik led the field by a point and faced Keres. Due to a scheduling vagary, Keres was playing after an unusually long layoff. Botvinnik later recalled, "After six days' rest, Keres sat across from me, pale as death."<16> Before the tournament, Botvinnik had noticed this odd scheduling possibility and warned his countrymen that "when we get to the Hague, one of you will get six days of rest, and lose like a child on the seventh day."<16> Keres indeed lost <the game>- Botvinnik vs Keres, 1948, allowing Botvinnik to carry a 1.5 point tournament lead into the Moscow leg. In Moscow the masters played in the magnificent Salle Des Collones in front of 2000 spectators, with 3000 more in the streets outside following the action on a giant demonstration board.<17> Botvinnik never relinquished his lead, clinching the title by round 22 to become the fifth world chess champion.