Talk:Efim Geller

WikiProject class rating

This article was automatically assessed because at least one article was rated and this bot brought all the other ratings up to at least that level. BetacommandBot 11:25, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Origins

It seemed unnecessary to leave the reference to Geller's Jewish origin as part of this; it has nothing to do with any of his considerable accomplishents.Hushpuckena (talk) 10:47, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

I would love to know why this user felt this way. Virtually every chess biography, when mentioning a player's nationality, will include a one word of mention of "Jewish" if applicable. (Or "African-American" or whatever else) In fact, forget chess; this is true of virtually all biographies on Wikipedia, period. Added this one word back. ChessPlayerLev (talk) 04:10, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Lifetime scores

It would be good if we could get a reliable source for these. Using http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessplayer?pid=15712 is not guaranteed to be accurate, and we have several discrepancies between the "Beating the best" and the "Lifetime scores" sections. Quale (talk) 21:18, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Agreed; chessgames.com cannot be relied upon implicitly, as they don't always make the distinction between blitz games and the longer formats, despite their claim to do so. One example of this is Korchnoi vs Balashov, with the only win for the latter being in blitz. Hushpuckena (talk) 01:07, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

One thing I have noticed is a significant discrepancy in life-time scores. When mentioning his record against Botvinnik, his score includes 5 draws, but in "Lifetime score against Top Grandmasters", it's changed to 7 draws! First source states he has 22 draws against Tal, the second 23 draws. At first, his record against Tigran Petrosian has 2 losses and 33 draws, while the second says 3 losses and 34 draws. Against Spassky, he is originally claimed to have 6 wins and 9 losses, and then, 8 wins and 10 losses. I am going to try to work on fixing this by consulting various sources. Anyone else who wants to, feel free to post your findings.ChessPlayerLev (talk) 01:58, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

I've made some changes, per stats at Chessgames.com and eliminated some draws in Geller's numbers as doubles, which became obvious upon reviewing the games in question. Hushpuckena (talk) 04:47, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

Table for Record Discrepancies

After doing some preliminary research on records, here is what I found;

Geller's Record Against World Champions

Player	Chessgames	365chess
Mikhail Botvinnik*	+4-1=8	+4-1=3
Bobby Fischer*	+5-3=2	+5-3=2
Tigran Petrosian*	+5-3=33	+5-3=33
Vasily Smyslov*	+11-8=37	+8-8=36
Boris Spassky*	+6-10=23	+5-11=22
Mikhail Tal*	+6-6=24	+6-6=22

Overall, it's a mess, and in some cases, different than either score cited in the article. Things I'm sure of:

1. Everyone at least agrees on his Fischer record. Thank God for small favors!
2. A rare agreement from both sources on Petrosian. It's different than the present ones, but that likely resulted from confusing Tigran Petrosian with another Soviet Armenian GM, the later A Petrosian, who Geller did beat once, on top of his victories over Tigran Petrosian.
3. Geller didn't beat Spassky more than 6 times, and Spassky didn't beat him more than 10 times. Other than that, more research is needed.
4. Geller definitely beat Botvinnik 4 times, and definitely lost to him 1 time. The number of draws is highly variable, though.
5. Geller definitely beat Tal 6 times and lost to him 6 times, as presently stated in the article. Unfortunately, it's not clear exactly how many draws he had with him.
6. The Smyslov section is a complete mess! At least we know Smyslov beat him 8 times... ChessPlayerLev (talk) 03:32, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

As you'll see, I've updated things a little. The source 365chess.com is most useful, but in my experience these DBs copy mistakes from one source to another, so long as the game score is legal. There's a game of mine on CG.com that was listed with the wrong Ivanov as my opponent until I finally got them to put it right, and the site chesstempo.com has several games credited to me that I didn't even play! Hushpuckena (talk) 04:54, 27 May 2012 (UTC)