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The page now has the sidebar on top of the diagrams. It didn't before. Can you fix it? -phma

I don't understand. Do you mean that the large bold "Castling (chess)" is above the diagrams? But I think it was above before I reformatted the table. Looking at previous versions shows it in the same position. --Fritzlein

Is the OOO notation the same in both types of chess notation?

Basically, yes, although in some very old game scores you find it spelled out in words ("Castles Q-Side"). --Camembert

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In the line about it being allowed to castle if the rook is under attack, should the second part be "or move through an attacked square"? Rmhermen 17:07 8 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Yes. --Fritzlein 19:23 8 Jul 2003 (UTC)

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Nunh-huh informs me that I am wrong to judge that "castle" is an incorrect term to use to refer to the rook. Therefore, I am putting his conclusion to the test -- if, as he claims, "castle" is no more incorrect or unacceptable than "rook", then replacing all the occurrences of "rook" with "castle" in this article should meet with no objections. Since I've changed all the terms at once, the terminology remains consistent throughout the article. It's no different than if I changed all occurences of the word "color" to "colour", or "quarter-note" to "crotchet". Anyone who objects to these changes has no right to change back, and if you think so, register your complaints elsewhere. Revolver 04:33, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Of course your little "experiment" will be reverted. I have never suggested that you replace anything: what I suggested (at Rook (chess)) is that you not label the use of "castle" as incorrect, since this use is found in every reasonably complete English language dictionary. You would be similarly taken to task, one hopes, if you were to opine that either "color" or "colour" is incorrect. You may find some thoughts of interest at Wikipedia:Don't disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point. - Nunh-huh

Yes, but an "experiment" that changed every instance of "color" to "colour" would NOT be reverted, and in fact, this has been done! (I.e., people have found it "necessary" to change "colour" to "color" or vice versa, and nothing was done to revert it.) The fact that my "experiment" WILL be reverted (by myself, incidentally), only DOES prove my point. (Namely, that this isn't the same thing as the color/colour debate, and that the dictionaries ARE wrong.) But, whatever. 128.111.88.244 06:23, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I seriously question the usefulness of including the part detailing castling-related mishaps while explaining the rules.

Firstly, in many of the examples, it seems like the mishap was not even caused by a misunderstanding of the rules of castling; overlooking or forgetting certain aspects of the current position (which some of the examples explicitly state is what happened) is not the same thing as not knowing the rules.

Now, for some of them, that might not apply. For example, for all I know, Nigel Short legitimately didn't know that castling through check is forbidden. But even in that case, hasn't the article already established by this point that you can't castle through check? It's been explained in the main text and in the caption of a diagram; we probably don't need to repeat it a third time. As for the mention of Alexander Beliavsky and Viktor Korchnoi, it is completely useless; there is no context whatsoever.

As far as I can tell, the only example that's relevant to the subsequent list of clarifications is the Yuri Averbakh incident, but I still don't think it accomplishes very much. The only takeaway for the reader is, "Oh, sometimes people think that you're prevented from castling if your rook would pass through a square attacked by your opponent, but that's not true." But if a list of clarifications were to tell you that your rook is allowed to pass through an opponent-controlled square during castling, then wouldn't you infer the previous statement anyway? This reminds me of how it works in the article "List of common misconceptions": there's no need to mention what the incorrect statement is, because the reader can figure it out by just taking the reverse of the correct statement.

When I first saw that this castling confusion part had been added to the article, I thought that it was added for comedic value, allowing the reader to have a laugh at the silliness and be comforted by the reminder that nobody's perfect. Based on the edit summaries provided by the person who wrote this part, it seems that I was correct. Of course, on its own, I take no issue with such an addition; it seems like the kind of thing that someone reading this article might find value in. However, I believe that it is completely out of place in its current location. If a reader is reading the "Rules" section in the "Castling" article just to learn the rules of castling, then the entire paragraph means absolutely nothing to them.

I propose that we simply move the information to a new section. ISaveNewspapers (talk) 07:02, 28 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Disagree. First, you state the part is included "while explaining the rules". That's not correct; the part is included after explaining the rules. (As examples and explanations that clarify some common misunderstandings of the castling rule. Useful and logically placed text.) Second, your proposal to move to "a new section" is non-specific, so how can anyone fairly evaluate yes or no on that?! --IHTS (talk) 11:30, 28 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• I don't agree with having a separate section on misunderstandings of the castling rules, we can cover that in the rules section. Giving examples of high level players misunderstanding or temporarily forgetting the castling rules seems valid too. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 11:43, 28 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• I admit that I partly added these mishaps because they were funny (especially the Seirawan and Alekhine examples), but I also did it because I thought they made good illustrations of what the rules allow and do not allow. I agree with IHTS that it makes sense to put these clarifying examples immediately after the rules are stated. I admit that the weakest examples are those two funniest ones at the end, because I have to admit that I don't see how one could ever conclude from the rules that you can castle your queen or castle queenside with your rook on b1. But in spite of that, I've actually personally seen an attempted castling of the queen, so it seems worth explicitly noting it anyway. And my source (Robert Timmer's Startling Castling) astonishingly enough includes three games with a queenside castle with a rook on QN1, so clearly this problem is more widespread than I'd have imagined (though probably it stems from inaccurate piece placement on the board).

Incidentally, in one case (though not one that I mentioned), the illegal castling when the rook has moved and come back was done quite deliberately, by Alexey Dreev in a game against Kasparov (Startling Castling, p. 45) when he couldn't see any other way out of his bad position. And it went unpunished. But that was a blitz game, in which other curiosities often happen. As for other examples where it was probably done by accident: sure, but it seems to me that that's probably how most illegal castlings happen, isn't it?

I added the context for Beliavsky and Korchnoi (Beliavsky asked whether 0-0-0 was legal when b1 was attacked; Korchnoi whether 0-0 was legal when h1 was attacked). Double sharp (talk) 14:32, 28 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I do not take it for granted that the anecdotes in Timmer's book are accurately reported, nor that they even happened at all. In other words, how reliable is this reliable source? Unlike the Averbakh-Purdy incident, which has been making the rounds for decades, these new incidents are things I had never heard of before. I would be a lot more comfortable presenting these anecdotes, if they were "chess canon", rather than just some juicy stories. Bruce leverett (talk) 15:44, 28 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I see that the Kasparov-Dreev example is from chessgames.com, which would not by itself be a reliable source, but is OK as a backup for Timmer. What about the others? Bruce leverett (talk) 15:50, 28 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Timmer provides the information for all of them. Korchnoi asking the arbiter is even in the article. I'll post the chessgames.com links later. Double sharp (talk) 20:26, 28 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Bruce leverett: Here are all but one of the games:

• Beliavsky vs. Timman 1986 (where Beliavsky had to check if 16.0-0-0 was legal)
• Korchnoi vs. Karpov 1984 (where Korchnoi had to check if 18.0-0 was legal)
• Averbakh vs. Purdy 1960 (where Averbakh didn't believe that 14...0-0-0 was legal, and had to be convinced)
• Watson vs. Short 1983 (where Short played 24...0-0-0, which was pointed out to be illegal; he resigned instead, since the only legal king move 24...Kd7 loses)
• Illescas vs. Kamsky 1990 (where Kamsky tried to play 19...0-0-0, which was pointed out to be illegal, so 19...Kd8 was substituted)
• Kindermann vs. Korchnoi 1995 (where Korchnoi played 26...0-0 illegally, which was overlooked because of mutual time trouble; the game ended at move 47 when both flags fell; the arbiter, trying to reconstruct the game, noticed that 26...0-0 was illegal; technically they should've replayed the time scramble, but neither player wanted to, so they agreed to a draw)
• Torre vs. Réti 1925 (where Réti played 22...0-0-0, but found out that it was illegal, so 22...Kf8 was substituted)
• Alekhine vs. de Unamuno 1944 (where Alekhine "castled the queen" on move 11; since he moved the rook first, the move that stood was 11.Rc1)

Unfortunately, I cannot find the Seirawan game at chessgames.com. However, Timmer provides a partial game score and claims that he received the information from Seirawan himself: During the Interzonal tournament in Biel 1993 I casually told Yasser Seirawan that I was working on a book about castling. He remembered very well that as a sixteen-year-old boy he accidentally had tried to castle in precisely the same way!. It is Seirawan vs. Fullbrook, Oregon op Ch (Portland), 1976: 1.c4 e5 2.Nc3 f5 3.g3 Nf6 4.Bg2 c6 5.d4 e4 6.Bg5 Be7 7.e3 d6 8.h4 Be6 9.Bf1 Nbd7 10.Nh3 Bf7 11.Be2 Qb6 12.Rb1 h6 13.Bxf6 Bxf6 14.h5 c5 15.dxc5 dxc5 16.Qb3 Qxb3 17.axb3 Be5 18.Nf4 Nf6 and here White tried to play 19.0-0-0, only to be informed by his opponent that it was illegal. So instead followed 19.Kd2 0-0-0+ 20.Kc2 Rd7 21.Rbd1 Rhd8 22.Rxd7 Rxd7 23.Ng2 with a sort of artificial queenside castling. Timmer breaks the game off here, but remarks that White won after 27 more moves.

Incidentally, it seems to me that Korchnoi vs. Karpov 1984 is also a well-known incident. Double sharp (talk) 22:25, 28 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This is good, I am happy with using Timmer as the reliable source here.

The implications are interesting. My whole view of bogus-castling attempts has to shift. I do not remember ever seeing one in my whole long amateur career (well below grandmaster level). So I thought that Averbakh-Purdy was one of a kind; but obviously it isn't. Wiki is now no longer dependent on one 70-year-old incident for the statement that "even grandmasters make this error".

This is somewhat orthogonal to the original question, of where to put these incidents, and what subsections and sections to create. Perhaps some of the incidents are only good for "comedic value", while others might even be helpful for explaining the nuances of the rules. Bruce leverett (talk) 01:48, 29 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

In view of all these examples, a section on "misunderstandings of castling rules" under "examples" may be justified. But the rules section should just explain the rules and clarify common misunderstandings. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 02:46, 29 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Seconded. ISaveNewspapers (talk) 21:13, 10 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This article references the 5th edition of the USCF rule book, this is out dated, as rule 10I2 was added in the 7th edition.

10I2. Rook touched first. If a player intending to castle touches the rook first, castling is not allowed and the player must move the rook as required by rule 10B.

Though it also allows for a TD to implement a variation where the rook can be touched first.

https://new.uschess.org/sites/default/files/media/documents/us-chess-rule-book-online-only-edition-chapters-1-2-9-10-11-2024.pdf ExpletiveDeleted617 (talk) 03:06, 9 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the tip. Bruce leverett (talk) 14:06, 9 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I feel like this is a massive omission. Readers don't get any indication of how often castling occurs, and on which side. Kaotao (talk) 15:16, 18 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]