If you have the power to enact one thing which could help chess as a sport (to make it more popular or more exciting, etc.), which would it be?
Chess Daily News from Susan Polgar
Improving chess
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Chess should be shown on TV. However. most people do not know how to play chess, or know only the basic moves. So they are not going to watch it because they do not understand what’s happening over the board, they cannot follow it, therefore they feel somehow “offended”, so why watch?
I believe that the broadcast of rapid chess games + SERIOUS AND HIGH QUALITY CHESS COMMENTARY including graphical aids like arrows, etc would be the only way to attract the layperson into this wonderful game.
Draw by repetition and draw by agreement would not be allowed – and stalemate is victory for the stalemating side.
Not that anyone will take these notions seriously, of course, but the result would be that players could not choose to NOT risk a result. Any draw would be much more likely to be the logical outcome of a full-blooded, even struggle.
Just my humble opinion 🙂
Cheers,
zdrakec
I believe that some of the best players in the world are not even known to the chess world yet, there has got to be somebody that is Super Grandmaster material but has not come out. Look at the numbers in the worlds population, the chances are good. I would make a TV show in search of this person or even persons.
No draw offer.
I agree with zdrakec. “Chasing” is not allowed in Chinese Chess (Xiangqi): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiangqi#Ending_the_game
Popularity of a sport in this country is determined by its TV ad revenue earning potential. Chess unfortunatley won’t make the cut along with sports such as tabletennis and badminton to name a few. The people of this country, sadly, are the losers.
1. The younger crop of GM’s moving to Chess960.
2. Reduce the number of drawn games.
3. Promote chess classes in public schools.
Bring more ladies to our sport !!!
There are 10 men playing for each woman. Not the right proportion.
Make chess a part of school curriculum in elementary and high schools.
Yes, more female chess players!
Also, I am getting tired of seeing pretty young things undress while playing strip poker on late-night cable.
There should be pretty young things undressing while playing STRIP CHESS instead!
Whoever said draw by repetition should not be allowed doesn’t understand human psychology or the game properly?
What if repeating the moves is the most logical thing to do in that position? What if that is the best move and any other move would be inferior? So if it’s in the players interests to keep repeating the move, what’s the arbiter going to do? Make them sit there and play all night?
Why can’t people accept that chess was not supposed to be a decisive game. It’s a battle of wits and if both players can play the right moves, then the logical outcome will be a draw. If you want to make it decisive then ban time increments during time controls, even during classical games, and let the victor be decided by either checkmate or the opponent losing on time, but the latter would like kinda cheap.
I remember reading; when Nigel Short played Kasparov, he lost over 28 lbs in
the space of about three weeks. I also remember reading about Karpov losing much weight in his match With Kasparov.
The point is – chess is a sport not a game.
There is a way to make this very important point.
Measure the average weight of human beings.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_weight
Measure the average weight of registered chess players.
How?
Put a special weighing mat at the entrance to the next Olympiad, connect the mat to a PC which will calculate the average weight.
Peter
Chess should mean business, so many sponsors will be interested in.
Recently, a Hypermarket in my country gave registration ticket to a chess tournament (that was sponsored by itself) as a bonus if costumer bought certain products.
It’s not really nice idea, but I admire the effort to link Chess with business.
Give chess event entrance ticket(simul, tournament, or play with GM) as a bonus if a costumer buy a certain product (foods,drinks,cigarrete,etc) for a certain amount is one of other good idea to promote chess among business people.
COCA-COLA are you interested?
As far as the manner of covereage goes, I don’t think much needs to be done to make chess more palatable for TV other than what has already been done in the past. Whenever chess has been on TV (Fischer-Spassky match, Kasparov – X3D Fritz Match, and even the US Vs. Russia match) the ratings have been excellent. People are willing to watch chess if the stakes are high enough. (Man Vs. Machine, US Vs. USSR etc,.)
http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=1142
So the only question is what to do about chess situations in which some great idea like national pride or human supremacy over machine are at stake.
I think people naturally become interested in real people that they see time and time again. I think the sucess of “reality” shows like “Survivor” or “American Idol” and of offbeat sporting shows like “The World Poker Tour” and “World’s Stongest Man” competition demonstrate our willingness to become emotionally connected to total strangers when their story plays out in front of us. No need to play up the story, just let things happen, show us a small bit of who these folks are, and the rest falls into place.
If I were a network programmer wanting to devise a regular chess show, I would model it on the various poker shows that have become popular in recent years. Each show would focus on one event, and center around one or two games. I would hire Yasser Seirawan, Maurice Ashley, Dennnis Monokrussos, Irina Krush, and/or Susan Polgar to provide color commentary for the matches themselves. The tournaments selected would be various high level, or high interest, events (linares/Morelia, Corus, Melody/Amber the US championships, WCC, World Youth, Human vs. Computer) and would be presented as part of a series. At the beginning of each hour long program, there could be a very quick rundown of the competitors- their recent history, their plans, their style, their off the board life- and then plunge right into the action. Complete games would be broadcast, and much color commentary would be given.
It would help the cause if the coverage could focus on a small set of interesting players that we would see time and time again. Over time we would naturally develop a sense of their personalities and their career arcs. It would be especially interesting, I think, to focus on the careers of the astonishing young players, (Negi, Carlsen, Hou, Caruana etc,.) and, to US audiences at least, on the Careers of colorful and sucsessful US players (Nakamura, Shabalov, Kamsky…)
Given a chance, chess will undoubtedly find an audience. It just needs to be placed in front of us with regularity so that the viewing audence can build up an interest in the various players and begin to care about their careers. They don’t even have to understand, completely, what they’re seeing.
Brad Hoehne
Hello dirtygarry:
I have no problem with a draw being the logical outcome of a game.
But the draw by repetition occurs only because at least one of the players is avoiding a decision. There is no fundamental reason to allow the players to repeat a given position on the board. Many board games do not allow this: Go, for example, and in certain other forms of chess (Xiangqi, for example), perpetual check is not permitted.
My suggestions are aimed at not permitting the players to avoid playing to win – my suggestions are not intended to do away with draws.
Understand me: it is not draws I want to eliminate, because a draw is a perfectly legitimate result of an evenly played game; it is the refusal to play to win that I want to do away with.
Regards,
zdrakec
Almost all comments deal with the draws. Indeed, the very large number of draws scare away the main stream media to deal with chess. Viewing audience like winning. One side, or the other, but somebody winning.
Soccer fought with similar problems at one point, losing some popularity. The solution was simple and powerful:
the tie (draw) is not worth as much as half of the victory. In soccer the winning used to be 2 point, the tie game 1-1. They changed it to 3 points for victory, 1-1 for tie. And that is exactly what the chess world should do. This would NOT interfere with the game itself, all rules would remain the same, players could offer draw to each other without the interference by a third person, only the draw would worth less than half of the victory. Simple, powerful solution. And why not?
It would, without question, decrease the mind-numbing number of draws in all round robin type tournaments.
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A bit more interference with the game itself:
Victory: 3 points
Draw:0.5 point for white, 1 point for black.
That would encourage avoiding draws even in one-on-one matches.
It would be fair, since both players play black and white the same amount of times. Furthermore, it would mildly equalize the advantage of playing with white pieces.
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Bottom line: if the scoring somehow is not modified and draws remain as high as they are, it is not likely that the media would ever pick up chess (on TV, on cable, etc.).
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Chess Channel on cable:
How come the tennis sport could afford a Tennis Channel?
Of course, in order to have an audience, more people out there would have to have some affinity toward chess.
My recommendation: USCF should hire a programmer, who would write a computer chess program, similar to Chess Master series, with child-friendly features, full chess course and give it away for free in the schools of the country. The program’s playing part should have a feature which can automatically adjust to the level of the player. It should link to the internet and allow chess games with others, with live video and chat more present. There should be nationwide competitions via this program.
Find one billionaire who is known to be an avid chess player to finance the above. It really can’t cost that much. Let’s not forget that the engine wouldn’t have to be one of the superstar chess engines.
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More rapid competitions among famous chess players. The regular 2h-1h-30m style games will never make it to TV. One game can be 5-6-7 hours. No such TV time will ever given to one chess game.
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The glory of Bobby Fischer should be restored somehow (to the general population).
Gabor
I think that the main problem is with the fact that the game is dominated by players:
1. Don´t participate in a tournament if it is split in two cities (morelia/linares)
2. Don’t participate if the prize or conditions are not suited to me (grand prix)
3. I prefer classical time because I can have enough time to think for wounderful moves (7 hours games)
4. I don´t play in opens because I can damage my rating.
Etc.
FIDE should be professional (not a bunch of corrupt long life people), change forcely every four years, no reelection, rotating through the best 3 countries of each continent of at least 2500 average country rating. And to define rules mandatory to all players or banned even of private tournaments.
No sport can have fans with more than two hours duration. I organized a tournament with classical times and a lot of people were at the beginning and after some time everybody left. I organized another with two rounds per day of one hour each, with white and black and all the public remained at the playing hall. Two hours is the most time you can really have public, most sports are around that time. Players must learn to produce quality games (for them or the computer fan-freaks), because every one else understand that (as in most sports) errors (blunders) are part of the emotion.
I also would change the rating formula so draws after different amount number of plays would always be a negative rating points (less moves more negative points and viceversa).
The base prize would be the classification, and the bonus prize about winning games, more with black than white.
I know I am dreaming!
You see!!!
4. Has Our Nigel gone too far? The ECF seem to be backing his critique of FIDE, and a natural question is if he actually has gone far enough? Do you have opinions about the continued and more than somewhat fractured nature of chess-at-the-top, or are you apolitical in this respect, not involving yourself in chess politics? If you were ever to become President of Fide, what would be the three big things you would like to achieve during your tenure?
From my point of view the big problem with FIDE over the last 10 years has been their handling of the World Championship cycle. Far too many changes of system and alterations to rules mid-stream. Hopefully, there will be a more consistent cycle with clear rules that are actually applied in the future. There has also been too much messing around with the time control, and even now different limits are used in different events within the cycle which doesn’t make any sense. I don’t see any reason not to have a seven hour time limit for classical chess.
Publicity through TV chess programs is an option. I agree also with the persons who has said that we should give chess event entrance ticket (simul, tournament, or play with GM) as a bonus if a costumer buy a certain product (foods, drinks, ,etc) for a certain amount is one of other good idea to promote chess among business people. I have sended a message to Carrefour, in order to confirm their interest?
But there are others policies:
1) Lower prices to pay to the Federation or discount for the second member of the family federated.
2) Non virtual distribution of classes (Federation should make Masters to visit small clubs or even cities without chess club)
3) Product or service: I do not know ?! Can you guess something?