29 October 2008

16th World Computer Championship

I added the crosstable and PGN for the 16th WCCC, 2008 Beijing to my page on Computer Chess.

01 October 2008

What's in a Woman's Name?

I added players from the 2008 World Women's Championship to my Index of Women Players. On top of the usual challenges with names, women's surnames present a special problem because they often change when the women marry. The only instance I noted for the 2008 event was to equate Tea Bosboom-Lanchava with Lanchava.

I had a few other small problems to sort out. The PGN file from the event used 'Sachdev, T.', but the official crosstable listed 'Tania, Sachdev'. This is a special problem with Indian names, and I'm not sure which variant to use. Perhaps I should use the full name, as I do for Chinese names. This way the search engines can find both names. In any case, I'm certain that I haven't been consistent with the use of Indian names, both men and women, and I should address this in a separate action.

A similar problem arose with PGN: 'Mona, K.' and XTBL: 'Khaled, Mona'. The FIDE card lists 'Mona, Khaled', so I used Mona as the surname.

While I was working on the 2008 list, I noticed a few possible problems from previous events. I have 'Vasilevich I' in the 2006 championship, but 'Vasilevich T' in the 2000 and 2004 events. Are these two different players or has a mistake been introduced? Ditto for 'Sakhatova E' in the 1995 Interzonal, and 'Sakhatova G' in the 1985 and 1987 Interzonals.