Talk:Duell (game)

Choice of article name

I encountered this game in the pub last night, hence the minimal content. It was introduced to me under the title Alaya (could've been Allaya, Alayah, or similar sound-alike) and claiming that it was Chinese in origin, though I can find no references with search enging using those permuations. I chose the name "Duell" because that's the name of the edition produced by game manufacturer Parker Brothers / Hasbro [1]. Is it known by other names? mattp 20:15, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

In the UK at least, it was first published as 'Conquest', then - to the bemusement of many - 'The George and Mildred Dice Game' (G&M was a sitcom and the only connection between abstract game and programme was the new photo on the cover) Lovingboth 07:44, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Alea (or tabula is it is sometimes called) was a game played throughout the later Roman Empire. This game is derived from the Roman version but is still known as Alea. --Alexander UK 11:35, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Removing proposal to delete

Just to say - it is an interesting one mathematically. Beasley is an excellent source on board games, written several highly regarded books, including his the "In's and Out's of Peg Solitair" [2]. So, although the article has only WP:RS given I'm inclined to say we should keep this article just because he covered it, which shows it is of interest mathematically. That plus the difficulty of finding reliable sources online in this topic area.

The {{prod}} template can be removed by anyone and once done so can't be added back in, the article then can only be deleted with an AfD discussion.

It is clearly an old game back to 1975 according to this page on Amazon about it by a seller. We have the issue with board games that old ones especially often don't have much available on them in online searchable text in Google and it needs searching in libraries to find out more about them looking at hard copy of old newspapers and such like.

I can't find much about it online. Two user reviews in online forums, I mention them because they may give interesting information to check out further to see if we can find anything more, not as reliable sources to use in the article itself, just as a source for phrases to search for and so on:

• Alwaysboardneverboring
• Review on Boardgame geek
• for sale on retroactive-vintage-games - this is of interest because it has some extra photos of the game and board.

I've decided to remove the prod template just because of the Beasley cite together with the intrinsic difficulty of sourcing in this topic area. There may well be many sources but only available as hard copy from the 1970s to 80s. Also because this article has been here since 2006. If it really needed to be deleted I think someone would have deleted it by now especially in an area that gets so much attention as chess variants. It is also in the Chess variants template. If it does need to be deleted, it deserves an AfD rather than just to be deleted by a template for speedy deletion.

The only thing is - I don't have access to that encyclopedia. Who added it? Do you have access to it and can you quote from it? It would help with this article. Also as an encyclopedia it might well give further cites that would be useful. I am not involved in this in any way - I'm an occasional prod patroller. Robert Walker (talk) 18:49, 5 August 2018 (UTC)

• The final addition of The Encyclopedia of Chess Variants (attributed to David Pritchard , but completed by Beasley after Pritchard's death) can be found, in full, here: [3]. Duell's entry can be found in Chapter 32 [4].

The Encyclopedia is an attempt to catalogue pretty much every chess variant that is played, which means there's something on the order of one or two thousand entries. That's far more than is reasonable for Wikipedia to have. As such simply being catalogued in The Encyclopedia - or listed on The Chess Variant Pages [5] (a web based comprehensive encylopedia) - shouldn't be sufficient to establish notability for Wikipedia purposes.

The three sources listed above are:

a) a blog (not a RS)

b) A forum (not a RS). Regarding BoardGameGeek this lists every published board game, which is beyond Wikipedia's scope

c) a shop listing, again not a RS.

The article existing since 2006, and an assumption that unseen sources may exist is not really sufficient reason to keep. Redirection to a short entry in List of chess variants is the most reasonable option here.--LukeSurl ^{t c} 08:16, 6 August 2018 (UTC)

Okay. If you notice I said myself that they are not RS. not as reliable sources to use in the article itself, just as a source for phrases to search for and so on. I agree on that matter, they are intended as resources to help talk page editors to find out more on the topic, of the game, not sources for the article.

Thanks for sharing the text, so the entry reads

"Duell (Proprietary game, Parker Bros, 1984, first published in U.K. in 1975 as Conquest). Board 9x8; each side has eight dice arranged on rear ranks in addition to a king. Dice are rotated from square to square (and may change direction once during a move) according to number displayed. Win by capturing opponent’s K or occupying its array square. (Spielbox, January 1985)

So it does give a cite, Spielbox - a German magazine about board games. Though it would be in German and I can't find it online - anyone have access to it?

The selection criteria for the book are explained in the intro - I saw your note pinging me on your talk page - the rest of that para reads:

David’s basic criterion in 1994, a few light-hearted entries apart, was that a game must have been published in some form, or at least have been played by a significant number of people outside the inventor’s circle of family and friends. The advent of the Internet has meant that ‘publication’ can now be achieved by making a few strokes on a computer keyboard and posting the result on a web site, so the first condition is no longer a constraint, and for this edition David felt obliged to be rather more selective. ...In the new edition, therefore, David added or intended to add a game only if there was evidence that significant numbers of people were playing it, or if it appeared to offer something genuinely new rather than mere complication or superficial novelty.

The article existing since 2006 is not an argument for keeping it as such, I agreee, it is a suggestion though that it requires more than just a {{prod}} especially since it is also in the chess variants template. And there is no urgency to do something about it - it's not like an article someone just added with a biography of their mother, it's borderline rather than something that immediately obviously should be excluded, seems to me, so I don't think the rationale of a prod template really applies in this case, IMHO. A redirect to a short entry on the chess variants page may be okay but there already is a short entry there and the authors of that article may not be too keen on expanding it to give details of the game. The existing summary "Dice are used instead of pieces." really gives almost no information about it, you can't tell from that what kind of a game it is, it needs more than that if we are going to mention it.

This is a perennial debate on Wikipedia on borderline articles like this - like the argument on stars - just about all stars you can see in a telescope, not just naked eye ones - have cites to papers that in turn examine properties of multiple stars with that one as an example - so what counts as sufficiently noteworthy to have a separate wikipedia entry about an individual star. It reminds me of that, it's a grey area. In these grey area discussions I tend towards the more inclusionist end of the spectrum. Anyway let's continue this discussion a little further, and see if either of us have any further thoughts on the matter. And - what about adding a mention of it to the chess variants page? We could do a formal merge discussion if needed if it is still not obvious what the answer is after talking it over a little amongst ourselves. Robert Walker (talk) 13:40, 6 August 2018 (UTC)

• Hi Robert. You raise some good points, and I agree there is no urgency here so there's plenty of space for discussion. It's probably better that we have one central community discussion about chess variants, rather than many disparate ones at each article. Would you be interesting in sharing your thoughts at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Chess#Regarding_the_notability_of_chess_variants? --LukeSurl ^{t c} 14:25, 6 August 2018 (UTC)

Hi Luke, fine yes. I see from that page that several other chess variation pages have been redirected away. The good thing about a redirect rather than a delete is that the old text is still there in the history and you don't need to ask an admin to access it. Perhaps an RfC might be useful at some stage. I'll be arguing for keep for all of them myself, and for treating inclusion in the encyclopedia as sufficient notability pending further investigation - anyway busy just now I'll compose a comment there soon. I have a special interest in board games, I actually invented one that was accepted for publication by Gibson's Games, a big games manufacturer in the UK :). Sadly, it was never published, because of technical manufacturing difficulties. Did a lot of research into old and obscure games at the time when I was trying to invent new games of my own as they often had interesting ideas in them. So - I suppose that's my perspective, that it's hard to find information about these old and often very interesting games and this one, however playable or not it might be, is definitely intriguingly different, never come across a game with these rules or anything like them that I've heard of. That's not a reason to keep them! Just that my personal inclination is more towards the inclusivity thinking about future researchers like myself looking for this material, so long as it fits the notability criteria which of course is the point at question here. Robert Walker (talk) 15:15, 6 August 2018 (UTC)

Have answered there - and my main suggestion there as you'll see is to add a {{Notability}} template and leave the article "as is" with this alert which may lead to people adding sources to help establish notability. And then leave it for a year or two, and personally I see no harm in just leaving them in indefinitely -with their status clearly given. Anyway I have added a notability template to this article as per the suggestion :). Robert Walker (talk) 20:26, 6 August 2018 (UTC)