Talk:Immortal Game
This is arguably the most famous game in history - certainly one of the most famous - so it made sense to add this to the Wikipedia.
However, it turns out that two of my sources had different moves than the rest, and that inconsistency was a problem. To determine what were the "right" moves, I've grabbed as many different sources as I can, ones that hopefully use different background sources, to make sure that I've placed the right moves here. I then used standard textual critism techniques to determine what's correct.
I've looked at 8 different sources. All but 2 of them agree with the moves listed here, including the Chesslive database, "Chess for Dummies", Chernev's "The Chess Companion" (1968), and Kavalek's 2003 chess column in the Washington Post that specifically covered this game. The two dissenting works are Savard's and Burgess' works, which differ in DIFFERENT ways from the moves given here. Savard disagrees at move 3 for a few, and again at move 8 for a few, but then agrees with the majority after that. Burgess agrees with the majority until move 18, at which point it diverges from everyone else. Note that not even the two dissenting works agree with each other!! Burgess doesn't even justify why it should be different from anyone else; Savard claims that at move 3 it's right (and everyone else is wrong), but gives no evidence of this, and then diverges again without explanation at move 8.
Thus, I have strong evidence that the two "dissenting" works are simply in error, and that the majority view is in fact the correct sequence of moves. However, I've documented where the differences are, so that someone else can dissent. -- Dwheeler 22:58, 4 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I beg to move a change from the PGN format to plain algebraic notation, as has been done with the Opera game (chess). -- Lord Emsworth 23:57, Nov 21, 2003 (UTC)
- 'Tis done. At some point, I or somebody else needs to do the same to Evergreen game (chess). --Camembert