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In the Age of the Internet, Why Has Interest in Chess Remained So Robust, and Even Risen Sharply? (bloomberg.com)
How and why a 1,500-year-old game has conquered the internet. From a report: Two years ago, the world chess championship match drew about 10 million online viewers, while this year's competition between Magnus Carlsen and Fabio Caruana, currently underway in London, is expected to draw more attention yet. Worldwide, chess claims about 600 million fans, which makes it one of the most popular games or sports.
It is noteworthy that China, one of the two most important countries in the world, has decided to invest heavily in chess. This year Chinese teams won both the men's and women's divisions at the Chess Olympiad, a first. That would not have happened without the active support of the Chinese Communist Party. The U.S. is stepping up too, with the aid of chess patron Rex Sinquefield. In recent times America has placed three players in the world's top 10, including Caruana, currently No. 2.
It turns out that chess is oddly well-suited for a high-tech world. Chess does not make for gripping television, but the option of live viewing online, supplemented by computer analysis or personal commentary, has driven a renaissance of the game. For one thing, computer evaluations have made watching more intelligible. Even if you barely understand chess, you can quickly get a sense of the state of play with the frequently changing numerical evaluations ("+ 2.00," for instance, means white has a decisive advantage, whereas "0.00" signals an even position). You also can see, with each move, whether the player will choose what the computer finds best.
It is noteworthy that China, one of the two most important countries in the world, has decided to invest heavily in chess. This year Chinese teams won both the men's and women's divisions at the Chess Olympiad, a first. That would not have happened without the active support of the Chinese Communist Party. The U.S. is stepping up too, with the aid of chess patron Rex Sinquefield. In recent times America has placed three players in the world's top 10, including Caruana, currently No. 2.
It turns out that chess is oddly well-suited for a high-tech world. Chess does not make for gripping television, but the option of live viewing online, supplemented by computer analysis or personal commentary, has driven a renaissance of the game. For one thing, computer evaluations have made watching more intelligible. Even if you barely understand chess, you can quickly get a sense of the state of play with the frequently changing numerical evaluations ("+ 2.00," for instance, means white has a decisive advantage, whereas "0.00" signals an even position). You also can see, with each move, whether the player will choose what the computer finds best.
Because some people prefer reality. Simple enough?
Recently got back into chess now that my son is interested. Started playing Really Bad Chess on my phone http://reallybadchess.com/ to kill time and hone some skills.
I find it relaxes me and helps me concentrate on other things like tough logic puzzles...keeps me thinking a few steps ahead. Great for work and play.
It's a simple game, with simple rules, that doesn't require a large investment, and can even be played via mail, with pen and paper.
with ranking organizations, finding players of equal/good skill is easy.
I don't need a 8 core machine, with 16gb of ram, and 1tb of disk space.
it also leads to a lot of good algorithm development.
Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens
You are welcome on my lawn.
This reminds me that the radio stations started playing Christmas music today and it just makes me sick that they consider "My Favorite Things" a Christmas song. It's not and I wish they'd knock it the fuck off.
In fact, I wish they'd knock the entire Christmas music thing off until like maybe 2-3 days before Christmas. Don't nobody need to hear those fucking songs again, especially the shitty versions.
But if you absolutely must hear a Xmas song, here's one for you that won't make you puke:
https://youtu.be/UqZ1O0YhY5Q
OK, you guys can go back to talking about Chess or whatever you're on about. I mean, Chess has been around since about the 7th century. Did you really think it was gonna go away all of a sudden just because of the internet? I mean, it outlasted the middle ages and the industrial revolution. It can probably handle the fucking internet.
You are welcome on my lawn.
For Hot Wheels 50th Anniversary, they released a first edition chess set made up of Hot Wheels cars. https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.htm... (Available on Ebay) called Checkmate.
So yeah, Chess is back, cooler than ever, and everyone enjoys it. It sure beats run and gun first person shooters. It's a game where you actually have to think two to three moves ahead... Oh my!
I seem to recall reading that basically Rex Sinquefield threw a bunch of money at 2 of the current USA's top 3 players to get them to change country allegiances to the USA. I think one of the 3 did actually move to the US as a child though. I don't remember his name, but I think it's the guy who was born in Japan.
What just puzzles me, and I have no explanation for it other than the usual "Commies like to win medals in world competitions" explanation, is why China cares so much about chess. They have their own variant, xiang qi, which is extremely popular. Honestly, it's considered a harder game to solve in terms of computational power vs. chess. Because xiang qi is considered a harder game, you could make an argument that China spending so many resources to win chess championships is kind of a case of them slumming and trying to win an "easier" game. Xiang qi strategy is very different from chess strategy and I believe the Chinese did successfully convert one of their best female xiang qi players into a women's chess star, in general I would not expect skills at one to translate well into skills in the other. I suspect once they identify promising chess players, they get them to stop playing xiang qi. To give readers a rough idea of the differences in the games, it's quite common in xiang qi for a knight (they call it "horse") to be moved to the side of the board early in the game whereas in chess that would usually be a bad move and it would be much better placed to be first moved towards the middle.
It would be more interesting if they "enhanced" the matches for viewers - more like Battle Chess (or Wizard Chess from HP for you youngsters.) A little 5-second animation for pieces moving and being taken would spice it up a little.
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== WolfriderV6 == I'm willing to admit that *I just might* be wrong... Are you??
... don't rat out the fucking players?
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
no let's play global thermonuclear war
Russians love chess and bots love chess. Therefore, chess is the #1 pastime of Russian bots. With all the free time between elections, they need something to do.
PlanetVulkan.com
> I will get out and pull on my best frilly womens underware
Methinks you been listening too much to Bob Rivers' Walking Round In Womens Underwear =P
Because some people prefer reality. Simple enough?
I don't think real bishops just move diagonally.
Easy to play pick up games with anyone around the world.
The rules of chess are relatively straight forward, yet the opportunity for strategy and necessity to think ahead make the game engaging and fun. It also feels like a true clash on intellects, as opposed to many games that involve rolls of the dice or better understanding of the rules.
Chess also seems to have an infectious quality. I've seen chess tournaments spontaneously erupt at summer camps and fraternities. People who you never thought would play chess can get the bug; and maybe this makes it more fun.
A hot young stud oozing sex appeal
My daughter thinks Fabiano Caruana is sexier. But she said she will take either.
They have one game to go, and if it another draw, then Fabiano is in trouble. It will go to a speed chess tie-breaker, and Magnus is one of the best blitz chess players in the world. Magnus won the blitz world championship in 2017.
1) Fabiano Caruana - Italian-American chess prodigy who once played for Italy
2) Wesley So - chess prodigy born and raised in the Philippines; So transferred to the US 4 years ago as his country's federation could not adequately support him
3) Hikaru Nakamura - Japanese-American chess prodigy who was born in Japan but moved to the US at age 2, his Sri Lankan stepfather taught him how to play
Immigration is a key factor in the recent rise of US chess.
It's compact. Low cost compared to other sports and hobbies.
It has set rules that a smart person can understand. That a really, really smart person can study and master.
Books exist on the topic. Web sites exist on the topic. The skill set is not kept hidden.
The ability to win at a city, state and national level with something fun thats almost free.
Winning is clear and not based on the artistic feeling of a set of judges.
Its not weather and climate related like some sports.
For nations that still study math its an easy tool to offer.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
It's a good game.
Exactly.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
If you're lucky then the god a she.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Chess is in a sweet spot where a chess board plus pieces is cheap, the rules are reasonably simple (only castling and capturing en passant are a little bit tougher to understand), but the game play is very deep. Players to whom skills based games appeal get a lot out of a relatively small initial investment of money and time.
The internet actually helps chess because chess can be played online, players can improve their game by watching videos and reading articles about chess, while OTOH unlike the entertainment industry there is no big company behind chess that would have their profits threatened by anything chess related being available online.
Seriously, chess played on a computer needs fog of war!
It's a game where you actually have to think two to three moves ahead... Oh my!
Like Fortnite? /ducks
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Read this about computer chess a few years ago, "If you beat the machine, it let you"
Passionately Indifferent
And there are many web/internet sites where you can play chess internationally, mostly for free. That means regardless where you are and who you are, you can play. You get matched with similar rated players and can climb the ladder, can play simultaneously ... can play even by email aka one draw per day or similar.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Serious chess is psychic murder. It is a knife fight in a phone booth.. The two current contenders for the World Championship are flying Aces in combat, intent on killing each other - cold blooded killers at the top of the pile of chess bodies. The American champion, Robert Fischer, made it very clear that he was out to destroy his opponents not just defeat them in a genteel game. He was not unique. He just stripped away the lie that it is anything else. People seem to crave more and more violence in their entertainment today. But there has always been a part of the population that enjoys watching a fight. Sports. Also, chess is used by humans to indicate superiority. You win, you are better. China is the Russia of the past, using chess to prove its superiority. Thus the state funding and attention. But that is an indication of a lack of self-confidence. The bragging of a bully who feels inferior.
E Proelio Veritas.
I used to have a CD called "A Medieval Christmas" or something like that. The beauty of it was that unless you a) knew Latin and b) listened carefully enough to pick out the words you didn't know it was Christmas music.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I guess folks get tired of being passive content consumers like in other spectator sports (football/soccer/cricket/basket ball/tennis...); in chess you can study and work out logically for yourself. So in some sense it's more healthy and I guess people like that. It's like eating a healthy meal of veges than say gulping down a factory made sugary drink. You know one is good for you in the long run; another gives a temporary short spike in feeling-good.
What a stupid article! What in God's name does the internet have to do with people playing chess?
That like saying, "in the age of drones, why are people still drinking cola?"
They have nothing to do with one another.
I presume you are referring to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Have you been diagnosed?
We can't make it a 'problem' if you have not been diagnosed.
How can we bill you for treatment if it has not been diagnosed?
Some of the anti-semites claim that Christians are the real jews and that modern Jews are the people who couldn't cope.
There's always a weird twist when it comes to festering underground hate groups. Did you know that the main minority group attacked and repressed at the height of the Ku Klux Klan's popularity was Roman Catholics? That branch of the KKK didn't really ever go away. It just morphed into things like Pentacostals.
There's been this big interest in boardgames recently, and the state-of-the-art as it is has actually moved forward quite a bit from what it used to be. We used to be restricted to two general types: roll-and-move games where individual skill was mostly non-existent or fixed-position games like chess and checkers where in general, the person who had memorized the right patterns would usually win.
So the question I heard was, "How would you sell chess today if no one had heard of it, and you wanted to sell it via a kickstarter?"
There were a bunch of amused suggestions on how to alter the game to make it appeal; variable start positions, variable player powers, a combat system, concepts like flanking, environmental hazards, etc. But let's focus not on the suggestions, but the problems that these suggestions reveal.
The primary one is it's replayability. Listen, games are meant to be entertainment, and your time is not free. You're spending valuable time effectively playing and replaying the same game over and over. It's always starting the same. The pieces are always the same. The board is always the same. The pieces always move the same. You always win the same way. If you've played it once, you've played it every other time.
So it's boring.
The next is player agency. See, chess is not a strategy game any more than the triangular peg jumping game is. It's a pattern recognition game. You know what you can do, and you know what your (1) opponent can do, every play of the game. There are no surprises, no choices other than piece position. There's also no other grand goals than "win". There's no need for a generalized policy to guide your moves. They're all mechanical, foreseeable, and given enough exposure to the game, you can recognize patterns and find the nearest-optimal play, and there's no reason you'd do anything but that. Though people are not quite at the level of computers, it's still pretty dull. I mean, they had to add timers in at some point.
So it doesn't involve much thought, just recollection.
Last, it's repulsive to new players. See, it's one of those games where new players don't have a chance. It's based on pattern recognition, allowing you to skip the actual simulation of moves ahead to a more general awareness of where 'ahead' is given a specific setup. So, the player with the most play time has a massive advantage over the other player that's hard to handicap. It's not like their opponent can do anything unexpected. So the new players are probably going to lose. A lot. Like a real lot. 2-3 hours per game potentially. After 40 hours of loses, you might just have enough to start recognizing enough patterns to help you win by anything other than opponent mistakes, but that's a pretty optimistic view.
So it's unapologetically harsh to any newcomer.
Chess is the ultimate retrogame
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
So why, in the age of drones are you still drinking Cola?
Same here, I did not even know the correct rules until my son got interested in chess. Does everyone know what an en-passant capture is ?
I tried to learn alongside my son, but at my age the right structures do not form in the brain. However, it was fascinating to see how one goes about learning chess, and what mental exercises you have to do to help you visualize the board. For example is F6 a light or a dark square ?
What I did learn is how to code up a chess engine, starting out with Sunfish : https://github.com/thomasahle/... and then writing my own. I also learned quite a bit about chess history, and books like "Mortal Games" about Garry Kasparov, "The Inner Game" about Nigel Short, or Kasparov's own "How life immitates chess" hwere really great reads.
At work I keep a browser window of chess24.com open at some live game, and I glance over the computer analysis which indicates possible continuations from the given position.
Overall, a much better pastime than idly watching TV or reading tne (usually gloomy) news.
Morse code is more popular than ever in amateur radio even though the ITU and most countries dropped the requirement years ago. Sure, many/most CW operators are using computers but they also pick up enough to copy it by ear. And just the thing for mountaintop operating with lots of different CW paddle manufacturers.
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
The reason, in a word? Agadmator. A channel just 18 months old and today it is just a few weeks away from being the largest chess channel on YouTube.
I grew up with an older brother who was rated at the master level while still in high school. He once spotted me a queen and rook, and still won. Easily. That sucked.
My father would spot me a rook, and win. That sucked.
In short, I never liked chess. And most YouTube chess channels did nothing to change that. Most analysts feel like Noam Chomsky.
Then along comes Agadmator. His rise in popularity is as deserved as anyone's. He is loved throughout the world and has helped me to love chess. Finally. After the age of 60.
I would have thought it was impossible.
Today, in our living room, sits a large 4-tall-stool table & chairs thingy...with a chess board built into it.
That is the answer to the submitter's question.
I come here for the love
My theory is that chess seems intellectual, people appear smart by playing it. To play it well, I think you have to be. I hope Starcraft has the same staying power and becomes the game we play and watch for centuries :)