The drawn game is killing spectator interest in high level chess

[Paul Bonham]

....Is the drawn game killing spectators of top level chess? Ridiculous. Based on what? People who just want blood and war all the time, with high-scoring systems, are probably more blood-and-war fans than they are chess fans. I could be wrong but I personally feel top world chess is going through a Golden Age, and I am afraid to miss this a decade or two from now.


Alex F.

Again, the word "killing" is not appropriate. But the word "restraining" is.

Based on what? Based on 600 million people worldwide who know and like chess, and only 600 thousand (and that is a generous and probably over the top figure) who play competively. If you ran a business and could only sell to 1 in 1,000 people who liked your product, do you call that success?

With all due respect, Alex, you are a chess purist, you probably enjoyed every minute of those 12 draws, and you may have spent considerable time watching them when you could have been doing much more productive things. There's an opportunity cost to being a chess fan at that level. You may be willing to pay that cost, the vast majority of people aren't.

As I wrote to Larry, that chess purist niche is just enough to keep things going, but not enough to grow. People watch online because it's free for 99.9% of them, so those figures don't impress. Most of them don't come close to watching the whole event the way the chess purists do. It's pretty much a revolving door of people taking a peek, with only a few watching the whole thing. Not a way to grow a business.

[Alex Ferreira]

Hi Paul,


I will take the "chess purist" comment as a compliment, as I did enjoy the World Championship match.
As you said... there are many more productive things that people could be doing than watching chess, yet more and more people seem to watch top level chess on different platforms online, because as you mention, it's available for free.

It seems to me the '600 million people who play chess vs the 600 thousand who play competitive chess' thing is not really related to top chess events viewership, or draws at that level. I don't see that top level chess viewership is suffering because of it. To me this seems like a different thing altogether. Increased participation from chess players into chess tournaments will come from other initiatives. As you mention, Larry's programs, other primarily scholastic programs introducing kids to tournament chess, the involvement of federations, potential sponsorships, etc...
Of course tournament chess can increase dramatically. But if that does happen, lets say to 6 million playing competitive (tournament) chess, then the number of chess players will increase to much more than 6 million. There will always be many people who are only interested in playing chess as a hobby. As one of many games they occasionally play with friends or at a family gathering. Or on the Internet from the comfort of their home. I would imagine the percentage of people who just play chess vs those who play in tournaments might remain the same, irrespective of the numbers.

Call me crazy but I don't think the current system of top level chess is broken at all. I actually think it's doing very well, but of course this is just my opinion. And I would hate to see us force drastic changes for the sake of gaining junkie viewership. For example I wouldn't want to see classical chess collapse in favour of all Fischer Random, or all blitz events, in order to increase interest, because the 2018 society has the attention span of a goldfish. Or because there must be hot exciting action ALL the time. I think this would be detrimental to the game of chess, and this spontaneous combustion of interest in chess by the masses would soon evaporate. When we force the interest of a crowd who is perhaps not so keen on the intricacies of the game itself, and just want blood blood blood, we will have to be able to keep up or surpass it further. People who like this kind of thing, are always interested in ramping it up more, and can only be satisfied with constant change, and surpassing the previous attempt, otherwise it is no longer interesting. I am not against the evolution of the game, far from it, but I am wary of the speed or sacrifices the chess world is willing to make just to get more exposure. I don't think it should be done at any cost. But ... I may be thinking in a naive manner, with my own limitations.


Alex F.

[Egidijus Zeromskis]

there are many more productive things that people could be doing than watching chess, yet more and more people seem to watch top level chess on different platforms online, because as you mention, it's available for free.

I'm still scratching my head where people get so much time to watch so much high level tournaments. Is it a new way to study chess?

As a naturalist told: for one visible rat (turtle) there are ten invisible ones. Same in chess for one tournament player there are ten who only plays online, with kids or friends. Only online transmission (sites) will not attract players to OTB tournaments - there must be OTB tournaments close by and all kind of levels to try, and often.

[Ed Seedhouse]

Where is the evidence that "draws are killing chess"? Chess is more popular than ever with more people playing than ever, particularly on line. More people followed the latest match than ever before. For something being "killed" it is looking pretty robust to me!

[Paul Bonham]

Hi Paul,


I will take the "chess purist" comment as a compliment, as I did enjoy the World Championship match.
As you said... there are many more productive things that people could be doing than watching chess, yet more and more people seem to watch top level chess on different platforms online, because as you mention, it's available for free.

It seems to me the '600 million people who play chess vs the 600 thousand who play competitive chess' thing is not really related to top chess events viewership, or draws at that level. I don't see that top level chess viewership is suffering because of it. To me this seems like a different thing altogether. Increased participation from chess players into chess tournaments will come from other initiatives. As you mention, Larry's programs, other primarily scholastic programs introducing kids to tournament chess, the involvement of federations, potential sponsorships, etc...
Of course tournament chess can increase dramatically. But if that does happen, lets say to 6 million playing competitive (tournament) chess, then the number of chess players will increase to much more than 6 million. There will always be many people who are only interested in playing chess as a hobby. As one of many games they occasionally play with friends or at a family gathering. Or on the Internet from the comfort of their home. I would imagine the percentage of people who just play chess vs those who play in tournaments might remain the same, irrespective of the numbers.

Call me crazy but I don't think the current system of top level chess is broken at all. I actually think it's doing very well, but of course this is just my opinion. And I would hate to see us force drastic changes for the sake of gaining junkie viewership. For example I wouldn't want to see classical chess collapse in favour of all Fischer Random, or all blitz events, in order to increase interest, because the 2018 society has the attention span of a goldfish. Or because there must be hot exciting action ALL the time. I think this would be detrimental to the game of chess, and this spontaneous combustion of interest in chess by the masses would soon evaporate. When we force the interest of a crowd who is perhaps not so keen on the intricacies of the game itself, and just want blood blood blood, we will have to be able to keep up or surpass it further. People who like this kind of thing, are always interested in ramping it up more, and can only be satisfied with constant change, and surpassing the previous attempt, otherwise it is no longer interesting. I am not against the evolution of the game, far from it, but I am wary of the speed or sacrifices the chess world is willing to make just to get more exposure. I don't think it should be done at any cost. But ... I may be thinking in a naive manner, with my own limitations.


Alex F.

Hi Alex,

I did not intend the term "chess purist" to be taken as any kind of insult or condescending in any way, so you are fine to take it as a compliment. There is nothing wrong with being a chess purist. The only thing wrong (which as far as I can tell you are not doing) would be to be a chess purist AND to expect everyone else involved with chess to also be a chess purist -- in other words, to hold standard chess in very high regard and to think that all chess variants are useless or vastly inferior. To be honest, I don't know how you personally view chess variants, but you do voice a strong opinion in favor of standard chess and the overall health of top level organized chess, so maybe you are just a "semi-purist"?

Yes, I agree that more and more people are watching top level chess online, BUT I believe that a major segment of that viewership is "revolving door" viewership. People are just coming in, looking around, and they don't stay long. Yet it may be that even the number of viewers who do stay on and view the entire game(s) may also be increasing. Afaik, no one is keeping any kind of stats on that, or at least not publishing them.

What I'm saying (in respect of Larry's original post) is that one can view the situation as the glass being 0.1% full or one can view it as being 99.9% empty. That was why I mentioned the 1 in 1000 success rate of FIDE and all its subsidiary federations getting chess enthusiasts into actually competing.

And that meager success rate DOES relate to top level chess viewership, because if one is committed enough to play actual weekend tournament events, one is much more likely to want to watch top level chess online... even for hours on end.

True, organized chess (which is more and more becoming a synonym for FIDE) will never capture anywhere near 100% of the chess enthusiast market. But 2% would be DOUBLE what it has captured right now. That's a mere 2 out of every 100 enthusiasts (sorry, I'm sure you know the math, just wrote that for emphasis). Is that too much to shoot for for our national and regional chess organizations? It shouldn't be. In fact, 10% or more should be viewed as attainable.

But that would require these organizations to really be in the "chess business". A notion that is totally foreign to them. FIDE itself cannot be said to be a true business. It is largely secretive, it doesn't answer to any shareholders, and it is horribly static. It doesn't do any true marketing. It doesn't do any data analysis in order to increase business. And most of all, it only considers one variant of chess to be valid, although it is giving some token acknowledgement to chess960. Ditto CFC for all those points except the acknowledgement of chess960.

A true "chess business" would consider any and all chess variants, and investigate them all for potential new business.

By comparison, poker has no central monopolistic organization, nothing akin to FIDE, and in poker all variants are accommodated. The annual WSOP in Las Vegas is a virtual cornucopia of poker variants. Now, Alex, consider this: in poker, the equivalent to standard chess might be Limit Texas Hold 'Em, and that is because that game is considered the most demanding of poker skills. Whereas No-Limit Texas Hold 'Em is much more "wild west" in that at any time a player can make an all-in bet or raise whether it makes any sense or not, and in doing so, can discombobulate any notion of skillful play. Now, guess which one is far more popular? No-Limit. So No-Limit is the poker equivalent to what you consider as "hot exciting action all the time". Does that mean that No-Limit Texas Hold 'Em is inferior to Limit Texas Hold 'Em? NOT FROM A BUSINESS PERSPECTIVE. From a business perspective, No Limit has a very valuable place in the poker business world, and takes up the bulk of the (very substantial) television market for poker.

So the problem for organized chess is that it truly has no one operating as a business. On top that that, organized chess has gained a reputation as a "breeding ground" for psychopaths and thugs. Fischer was and still is today largely responsible for that, but having this Kirsan character who claims to have been abducted by aliens and who has ties to the Russian mafia as the long time president of FIDE is another big driver of that perception. So guess what, business investors stay away generally from anything chess-related.

Alex, you are not crazy but top level chess is MOST DEFINITELY broken. You see the glass as 0.1% full and that is good to you. The glass is 99.9% empty and you being a chess purist don't even care about that. Everything is fine for you because from a purist point of view, from a purely standard chess point of view, everything is "ok".

I don't know your profession Alex, but if you are in any way involved in business, you aren't applying business intelligence to chess. If chess worldwide truly became a business, you'd be amazed at what could happen. The change would be greater than going from 1950's black-and-white television to 2018 8K 3D virtual reality.

But you are very correct to say that we should not "force drastic changes for the sake of gaining junkie viewership". You are critical of 2018 attention spans in general, and have valid reasons for that. The key point is that we don't "force" such changes, and for anyone who wants to remain a chess purist and remain solely in the world of standard chess at slow time controls, that world should remain. BUT WE SHOULD LET THE MARKETS DECIDE. If the "junkie viewership" gravitates towards blitz chess or some form of chess with random chance to add excitement, so be it, you can critique them all you want, but respect the fact that that is what THEY enjoy. Live and let live....

[Erik Malmsten]

I attended Harbord Collegiate 66-71,
and recall that Northern Secondary (and maybe Malvern) was quite strong, our school's best result was a 2nd place in the 70-71 school yr,

there were never any individual high school tournaments that I can recall (I don't think that any of the supervising teachers knew much about chess, never mind Swiss pairings and arbitrating and such!)

I can't find my crosstable from the 1970 Toronto High School Chess Championship and unfortunately the school archives were passed on until some parent threw them out. The league was run by students like Mohan Rajagopal who were active in CFC-rated tournaments, so schools with unrated supervising teachers may not have known about it. Malvern had 3 CFC-rated teachers but was never at the top, Lloyd MaciIquam (sp) was the best Malvern player in 1969. The best teams in 1970 were from Forest Hill (Harry Kaminker) and Victoria Park (Peter Matsi), followed by North Toronto (Stephen Boyd, Mike Williams).