Few personal notes about Canadian Closed

[Zeljko Kitich]

Re: Few personal notes about Canadian Closed

How about a show called So You Think You Can Dance and Play Chess at the Same Time? or Chess Idol? (you have to kibitz and sing at the same time)

[Craig Sadler]

Re: Few personal notes about Canadian Closed

In that post, here is what I wrote about what I personally think is needed to get something RESEMBLING chess on TV (the purists will flame all this, but none of it is meant to take the game of classical chess away from them):

1. Change the game to have some element of luck. This allows Joe Woodpusher to enter with at least a glimmer of winning something.

2. Change the game to contain multiple games within a game. Poker has hands, baseball has innings, hockey, basketball, football all have stoppages of play, golf has holes, tennis has games and sets, bowling has frames. My suggestion for chess is to do away completely with the opening, which is a sore spot anyway, and have a match be a series of middlegame positions (determined perhaps by some other skill of each player, and containing no more than 8 pieces / pawns per side including the King, making each position more understandable by a chess newbie spectator) which all contribute to a total match score.

3. Allow the players to talk to each other during the game. Encourage it, in fact. In poker, it's part of the game, because the players try and influence each other's decisions. This influencing of decisions could also happen in a modified chess that didn't have perfect information.

4. Create a more dynamic scoring / rating system. This really goes hand-in-hand with point 2.

blitz matches would cover most of these...you could have it split screen (or picture in picture) of the electronic board with camera angles on the players. they can talk back and forth or there could be play by play. in any case, on a 3-minute blitz game it would last about 5 minutes, they could do a little replay of the "losing/winning move" with quick alternatives and maybe post a little thicker analysis in a sound byte on a website. you would need some chess players who weren't introverted, but that would show more of the sporting side of chess than the technical side. you could do thematic, fischer random, middlegame positions, etc. based on this theme. the personalities help t.v. poker as much as being able to have more information than the players.

[Carl Bilodeau]

Re: Few personal notes about Canadian Closed

You bring up excellent points, and thanks for the Carlin quote, I'd forgotten that one!

First: "dummying-down chess is going to alienate chessplayers".

Yes, it is, BUT.... once they see poker-like prize funds materializing because the dummying-down (I like to think of it as "luck enhancing") is bringing in flocks of entrants who believe they have enough skill that just a little luck could see them win it all, do you think the chessplayers will be so alienated as to not participate? We are talking about life-changing amounts of money. Additionally, possible international stardom beyond what any current GM is used to.

Next: "Trying to attract the average person to chess is just a losing proposition."

Yes, if you are meaning attracting them to spectating of chess (I'm assuming that's your meaning). That's why the luck-enhancing is necessary. Nothing else will bring in - repeatedly - the average non-chess-playing person to spectate chess. Well, maybe free beer, but even if someone offered that as an incentive, thinking they could make a profit, they'd end up finding out that getting juiced only makes the public LESS interested in chess. Still, it would have made a great Seinfeld story line, Kramer and Newman trying it out... the spectators getting rowdier and rowdier, the GMs glaring at them for making noise, an eventual melee....

Next: "Yet these are the people you hope will be interested in chess? Seriously? Chess is an elitist game played by elitist people"

I didn't actually write that I hope anything, but yes, I do hope that something resembling chess, in which chess moves must be made to win, but in which luck plays a significant part as well, can become very popular and result in poker-like prize funds and international competitions broadcast on TV. The elitist aspect is the inertia that has to be overcome, but enough money can overcome anything.

I could just be satisfied with poker, but I find that poker is too much on the opposite end of the skill vs luck spectrum as chess. There can't be a Tiger Woods of poker, the luck gets in the way. There needs to be a game that is somewhere in the middle of the skill vs. luck spectrum and in which the skill part is the kind of thinking that is embodied in chess.

I have devised such a game, with a complete set of rules and a computer program that generates the chess portion of the game, and I am beginning to plan for a round of testing, probably in the spring of 2010. I will recruit, likely through Craig's List, both regular poker and regular chess players in my local area, because one of the eventual selling points to TV networks is that pitting pro poker players vs. GM-level chess players would be a major attraction to the general public. There's a huge TV audience for poker, and poker does require thought and analysis (calculation of probabilities). But what adds interest to it is the psychological element: the fact that the players talk to and cajole each other, and no one but the TV audience knows the entire truth. That element is something I listed as necessary for TV success, IMO.

BTW, if you read this Gary Ruben, this is NOT the chess variant I was asking if you and your CC friends would want to try out. That was a completely different thing, one of my many ideas for chess variants.

THE RULES:

When it is my turn to play I roll the dices and this tells me which of my pawns or the king I can move (no knight, no queens, no bisshops and no rooks as you said). If I am a GM I will try to find the less worst move possible wearing sun glasses. Then I move the pawn or the king and I have to pick a card for the square where my piece go. I take this card and have to play a poker hand againts my oponent. If I lose then the piece has to go back where it was if my opponent ask me to do so (if my opponent is no good at chess I should pretend the move is either bad of good and hide my emotions).

It would for sure be very appreciated in Schools all over the world. It could even become more popular than Chess-boxing.

Carl

[Paul Bonham]

Re: Few personal notes about Canadian Closed

I don't know if your suggestions will get chess on TV on a regular basis or not. However, I am sure that dummying-down chess is going to alienate chessplayers.

Trying to attract the average person to chess is just a losing proposition.

Really, do you think a land with an almost uncountable number of chowderheads is ever going to be interested in anything more taxing to their brains than "Deal or No Deal"? Gee, should I pick box 3 or 17? What a mental challenge!

Yet these are the people you hope will be interested in chess? Seriously? Chess is an elitist game played by elitist people - people who find thinking interesting. What percentage of the population does anything requiring thought (as opposed to impulse) for the fun of it?

George Carlin summed it up best: “Just think of how stupid the average person is, and then realize half of them are even stupider.”

You bring up excellent points, and thanks for the Carlin quote, I'd forgotten that one!

First: "dummying-down chess is going to alienate chessplayers".

Yes, it is, BUT.... once they see poker-like prize funds materializing because the dummying-down (I like to think of it as "luck enhancing") is bringing in flocks of entrants who believe they have enough skill that just a little luck could see them win it all, do you think the chessplayers will be so alienated as to not participate? We are talking about life-changing amounts of money. Additionally, possible international stardom beyond what any current GM is used to.

Next: "Trying to attract the average person to chess is just a losing proposition."

Yes, if you are meaning attracting them to spectating of chess (I'm assuming that's your meaning). That's why the luck-enhancing is necessary. Nothing else will bring in - repeatedly - the average non-chess-playing person to spectate chess. Well, maybe free beer, but even if someone offered that as an incentive, thinking they could make a profit, they'd end up finding out that getting juiced only makes the public LESS interested in chess. Still, it would have made a great Seinfeld story line, Kramer and Newman trying it out... the spectators getting rowdier and rowdier, the GMs glaring at them for making noise, an eventual melee....

Next: "Yet these are the people you hope will be interested in chess? Seriously? Chess is an elitist game played by elitist people"

I didn't actually write that I hope anything, but yes, I do hope that something resembling chess, in which chess moves must be made to win, but in which luck plays a significant part as well, can become very popular and result in poker-like prize funds and international competitions broadcast on TV. The elitist aspect is the inertia that has to be overcome, but enough money can overcome anything.

I could just be satisfied with poker, but I find that poker is too much on the opposite end of the skill vs luck spectrum as chess. There can't be a Tiger Woods of poker, the luck gets in the way. There needs to be a game that is somewhere in the middle of the skill vs. luck spectrum and in which the skill part is the kind of thinking that is embodied in chess.

I have devised such a game, with a complete set of rules and a computer program that generates the chess portion of the game, and I am beginning to plan for a round of testing, probably in the spring of 2010. I will recruit, likely through Craig's List, both regular poker and regular chess players in my local area, because one of the eventual selling points to TV networks is that pitting pro poker players vs. GM-level chess players would be a major attraction to the general public. There's a huge TV audience for poker, and poker does require thought and analysis (calculation of probabilities). But what adds interest to it is the psychological element: the fact that the players talk to and cajole each other, and no one but the TV audience knows the entire truth. That element is something I listed as necessary for TV success, IMO.

BTW, if you read this Gary Ruben, this is NOT the chess variant I was asking if you and your CC friends would want to try out. That was a completely different thing, one of my many ideas for chess variants.

[Kerry Liles]

Re: Few personal notes about Canadian Closed

Really, do you think a land with an almost uncountable number of chowderheads is ever going to be interested in anything more taxing to their brains than "Deal or No Deal"? Gee, should I pick box 3 or 17? What a mental challenge!

Hey, don't slag Deal or No Deal quite so readily... clearly, picking which case is purely a question of which model you want to see up close (not a bad thing) BUT that show appeals to the mathematically-challenged... a HUGE section of the population. The same crowd that plays Lotto 649 and correctly observe that they double their chance of winning by having two tickets...

One observation though: it is usually a chowderhead that walks away with a suitcase of money or wins the lottery... I haven't noticed Stephen Hawking winning either lately. At least on 'Jeopardy' or 'Who wants to be a millionaire?' you likely have to know something - or do you?

[Carl Bilodeau]

Re: Few personal notes about Canadian Closed

I don't know if your suggestions will get chess on TV on a regular basis or not. However, I am sure that dummying-down chess is going to alienate chessplayers.

Trying to attract the average person to chess is just a losing proposition.

Really, do you think a land with an almost uncountable number of chowderheads is ever going to be interested in anything more taxing to their brains than "Deal or No Deal"? Gee, should I pick box 3 or 17? What a mental challenge!

Yet these are the people you hope will be interested in chess? Seriously? Chess is an elitist game played by elitist people - people who find thinking interesting. What percentage of the population does anything requiring thought (as opposed to impulse) for the fun of it?

George Carlin summed it up best: “Just think of how stupid the average person is, and then realize half of them are even stupider.”

You make my day with this message. :)

[Tom O'Donnell]

Re: Few personal notes about Canadian Closed

I don't know if your suggestions will get chess on TV on a regular basis or not. However, I am sure that dummying-down chess is going to alienate chessplayers.

Trying to attract the average person to chess is just a losing proposition.

Really, do you think a land with an almost uncountable number of chowderheads is ever going to be interested in anything more taxing to their brains than "Deal or No Deal"? Gee, should I pick box 3 or 17? What a mental challenge!

Yet these are the people you hope will be interested in chess? Seriously? Chess is an elitist game played by elitist people - people who find thinking interesting. What percentage of the population does anything requiring thought (as opposed to impulse) for the fun of it?

George Carlin summed it up best: “Just think of how stupid the average person is, and then realize half of them are even stupider.”

[Paul Bonham]

Re: Few personal notes about Canadian Closed

That's got to be the stupidest thing I've ever read on ChessTalk.

Oh, of course, I forgot the most critical part:

"what I personally think is needed to get something RESEMBLING chess on TV on a regular basis

Without that added part (in bold), it IS stupid. Anyone can get chess on TV.... ONCE.

[Peter McKillop]

Re: Few personal notes about Canadian Closed

Yes, that's the thread I was looking for. I read all of Jean Hebert's posts and as many of the others as I had time to get through. That thread and this one are two big threads but, frankly, I was left with one very clear impression from all of this, viz.: Jean Hebert generally made his points logically and effectively. I think that you and a lot of others need to listen more carefully to what Jean is saying.

[Peter McKillop]

Re: Few personal notes about Canadian Closed

Captain Succinct strikes again!! :D Did you ever get your book from you-know-who?

[Garvin Nunes]

Re: Few personal notes about Canadian Closed

...There really isn't anything wrong with wanting a bigger prize fund and better playing conditions for a national championship...

This part of what Jean is saying does make total sense.

I'm still wondering if anyone here cares to convert words into action.

[Ben Daswani]

Re: Few personal notes about Canadian Closed

David, part of the question revolves around chess itself. I personally agree that classical chess as we all know it cannot appeal to the masses on TV, even for casual (non-club-member) players. However, if you take chess and make a few tweaks, you could have something that would make it on TV. Earlier in this thread, I responded to Garvin Nunes, who was asking what it would take to get a Canadian Closed to happen next year, complete with sponsor(s). I mentioned that if Garvin is a chess purist, as many regular chess players are, then he can at best hope for a break-even event with very few frills.

In that post, here is what I wrote about what I personally think is needed to get something RESEMBLING chess on TV (the purists will flame all this, but none of it is meant to take the game of classical chess away from them):

1. Change the game to have some element of luck. This allows Joe Woodpusher to enter with at least a glimmer of winning something.

2. Change the game to contain multiple games within a game. Poker has hands, baseball has innings, hockey, basketball, football all have stoppages of play, golf has holes, tennis has games and sets, bowling has frames. My suggestion for chess is to do away completely with the opening, which is a sore spot anyway, and have a match be a series of middlegame positions (determined perhaps by some other skill of each player, and containing no more than 8 pieces / pawns per side including the King, making each position more understandable by a chess newbie spectator) which all contribute to a total match score.

3. Allow the players to talk to each other during the game. Encourage it, in fact. In poker, it's part of the game, because the players try and influence each other's decisions. This influencing of decisions could also happen in a modified chess that didn't have perfect information.

4. Create a more dynamic scoring / rating system. This really goes hand-in-hand with point 2.

That's got to be the stupidest thing I've ever read on ChessTalk.

[Paul Bonham]

Re: Few personal notes about Canadian Closed

Paul, I'm getting confused. Where are the original comments from Jean Hebert that have upset you so much?

Peter, are you referring to Jean's comments condemning Hal Bond? If so, they were contained in this thread (warning, it's a biggie):

http://www.chesstalk.info/forum/showthread.php?t=1894

If that's not what you are meaning, I'm not sure what original comments from Jean Hebert you are referring to.

[Paul Bonham]

Re: Few personal notes about Canadian Closed

Ask her best friend.

Seriously, the question is open - could a professional marketing firm make the Canadian champion a "celebrity" in the mold of a Tiger Woods? I doubt it. There's just not enough identification ("Hey I could do that") or inspiration ("Hey I can't do that, but I understand why it's so impressive") derived from chess, because laypeople simply don't understand the game well enough. When people feel that identification or inspiration watching someone, that person can become an icon.

David, part of the question revolves around chess itself. I personally agree that classical chess as we all know it cannot appeal to the masses on TV, even for casual (non-club-member) players. However, if you take chess and make a few tweaks, you could have something that would make it on TV. Earlier in this thread, I responded to Garvin Nunes, who was asking what it would take to get a Canadian Closed to happen next year, complete with sponsor(s). I mentioned that if Garvin is a chess purist, as many regular chess players are, then he can at best hope for a break-even event with very few frills.

In that post, here is what I wrote about what I personally think is needed to get something RESEMBLING chess on TV (the purists will flame all this, but none of it is meant to take the game of classical chess away from them):

1. Change the game to have some element of luck. This allows Joe Woodpusher to enter with at least a glimmer of winning something.

2. Change the game to contain multiple games within a game. Poker has hands, baseball has innings, hockey, basketball, football all have stoppages of play, golf has holes, tennis has games and sets, bowling has frames. My suggestion for chess is to do away completely with the opening, which is a sore spot anyway, and have a match be a series of middlegame positions (determined perhaps by some other skill of each player, and containing no more than 8 pieces / pawns per side including the King, making each position more understandable by a chess newbie spectator) which all contribute to a total match score.

3. Allow the players to talk to each other during the game. Encourage it, in fact. In poker, it's part of the game, because the players try and influence each other's decisions. This influencing of decisions could also happen in a modified chess that didn't have perfect information.

4. Create a more dynamic scoring / rating system. This really goes hand-in-hand with point 2.

[Paul Bonham]

Re: Few personal notes about Canadian Closed

Why are chess players taking all their problems out on veggie dogs today? Leave the veggie dogs alone!

Homer Simpson:
"Mmmmm, veggie dogs. Tastes just like chic.... Hey, wait a minute! That's what the Ho Lee Chow Chinese food place said about their Meow Gai Pan, and they got shut down for using cats! Darn veggie dogs aren't veggie dogs at all, they're veggie CATS!"

Well I guess its true the biggest chess boom in North America was because there was a chess star, namely Bobby Fischer.

Do you think someone like that can be created?

It's a crap shoot, but Carl Bilodeau has bought 5 tickets so far.

The timing of Fisher's rise was part of what made him a star. The Americans needed a chess star to puncture the Soviet chess balloon right at the height of the Cold War. On top of that, Fisher was young and attractive to women. In the long run, however, Fisher was a nightmare from a chess sponsorship point of view.

Another nightmare for chess sponsorship has always been the "GM Draw" problem, here's a link describing it back in 2007:

http://susanpolgar.blogspot.com/2007...-scenario.html

Note how in the very first paragraph, it is mentioned that the sponsor's Marketing VP is in attendance to make sure his company is getting good ROI for their scarce promotional funds -- more proof for Jean Hebert to ignore that sponsors do indeed seek tangible returns for their money (as opposed to donors, who don't care).

Garvin, I don't know what level of sponsorship you would be seeking, but you do specify it's for the Closed, so you're talking about paying entry fees and expenses for all participants as well as location rental. It's a tough proposition mainly because of the fact that it's chess. Chess does not and will not sell to the masses. Here's another link from back in 2006, someone's idea for "Rapid Transit Chess" to win TV audiences:

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=3252

It hasn't happened yet. Notice how it is mentioned that getting chess on TV is a hard sell even in Russia. Notice also that Rapid and Blitz don't have significantly more mass appeal than slow chess.

Also in 2006, Clint Ballard held a GM-level event in the Seattle area that was rated by the USCF in which the games were scored using his BAP3 scoring system, which he championed as the ultimate anti-GM Draw mechanism. It apparently was a great success, draws were way down and they were described as fighting draws. However, Clint Ballard disappeared almost immediately afterwards (probably in debt to his eyeballs) and no one has bothered to take up the mantle. Despite the success, there was a huge backlash against the BAP3 system.

The game of chess itself is the problem. Chess clubs and weekend Swiss tournaments can continue ad nauseum into the future because there will always be lovers of the game, and that is a good thing. Super-GM level events, sponsored because of their heavyweight status, can also continue into the future ad nauseum, with little to no growth in interest from the non-chess-playing public. That too is fine.

However, especially now in the new stagnant economy that will become the norm for many years to come (assuming we survive Dec 21 2012, and further assuming China continues to purchase U.S. Treasuries to keep even the stagnant economy alive), classical chess simply cannot grow to have mass appeal even to 1/10th the level that a simple card game called Texas Hold-Em has already achieved.

Garvin, if you consider yourself a chess purist and only chess as it is now will do for you, the best thing you can hope for IMO is to hold a Closed that might break even and won't have many frills and won't have TV coverage.

Here is my personal list of what is needed to put something RESEMBLING chess on the mass media map:

1. Change the game to have some element of luck. This allows Joe Woodpusher to enter with at least a glimmer of winning something.

2. Change the game to contain multiple games within a game. Poker has hands, baseball has innings, hockey, basketball, football all have stoppages of play, golf has holes, tennis has games and sets, bowling has frames. My suggestion for chess is to do away completely with the opening, which is a sore spot anyway, and have a match be a series of middlegame positions (determined perhaps by some other skill of each player, and containing no more than 8 pieces / pawns per side including the King, making each position more understandable by a chess newbie spectator) which all contribute to a total match score.

3. Allow the players to talk to each other during the game. Encourage it, in fact. In poker, it's part of the game, because the players try and influence each other's decisions. This could also happen in a modified chess that didn't have perfect information.

4. Create a more dynamic scoring / rating system. I can't elaborate on that because I'm developing a new rating system for classical chess itself.

Homer Simpson:
"Ooooooh, a new chess rating system. I wonder if it will put me up to 1000. If it doesn't put me at least to 1000, I won't use it! I'll just be unrated and everyone will have to deal with it!"