Why has the public profile of chess declined?

Does anybody still care about chess?
By David Edmonds
BBC
27 November 2014 Last updated at 20:48 ET

In the summer of 1972, newspaper editors were not short of headlines.

Henry Kissinger was trotting around the globe as the US sought to extricate itself from Vietnam.

The Ugandan Asians were in flight, expelled by the mad, bad President of Uganda, Idi Amin.

Sectarian riots had broken out in Northern Ireland; Chile appeared to be heading towards anarchy.

And there was a burglary at the Watergate complex in Washington DC – the repercussions of which would soon bring down the president.

So there was no dearth of news.

Yet, holding an almost daily place on the front pages was a chess match in the tiny Icelandic capital of Reykjavik.

Never before or since has chess captured the world’s imagination in quite this way.

It became known as “The Game of the Century”.

At stake was the world crown.Mesmerising personality

The two players were the Soviet champion Boris Spassky and the challenger Bobby Fischer.

Fischer’s strident demands nearly torpedoed the contest and the fascination the match aroused owed much to his troubled, mesmerising personality.

Although in 1972 the US and the USSR were in a period of detente, Fischer was able to frame the match as the Cold War in microcosm.

He was a solitary American taking on the previously invincible Soviet chess machine.

Spassky-Fischer matches were followed around the world

The Soviets had dominated chess since World War Two: For them chess was a tool in a wider propaganda war.

Over four decades later, and the world chess championship is again front page news.

At least it is in Norway.

That the Norwegians are gripped by this contest is understandable.

The current world champion is 23-year-old Norwegian Magnus Carlsen.

He has just beaten the previous champion the Indian Vishy Anand – who, at 44, is probably past his peak.

Carlsen captured the crown from Anand only last year.

But while Carlsen’s fortunes are followed in Norway by chess players and non-chess players alike, he is a less familiar figure outside the country.

Coverage of his retention of the world title was scant in the British media, and it hardly helped that the denouement came on the same day that Lewis Hamilton’s secured the Formula One world drivers’ championship.

In a recent episode of a British game show, Pointless, fewer people recognized his name than that of the 1972 champion – Bobby Fischer.

This raises a puzzle. Why has the public profile of chess declined?

Full article here: http://www.bbc.com