Chess on ice

[Duncan Smith]

Re: Chess on ice

Sorry you are dead wrong and your analysis is ridiculous. Your post however would just be another reminder how out of touch many chess players tend to be in Canada. So you get that tiny world that is current day Canadian chess and wonder why there is no money and meager participation. Look at your attitude and its obvious.

Just my club alone has almost as many paid members as the entire CFC has. Annual fees are $400+ and the CFC gets what from chess players ? You've got curling on TV with huge ratings but I guarantee you besides a few individuals like myself nobody from the curling world is watching chess events. I'd be one of the only people who have experienced both.

Neither activity do you necessarily have to be overly intelligent to be decent. Chess players tend to overestimate the intellectual aspect of their game. Curling has its athletic types ( of all backgrounds ) but it also has a current Canadian women's skip that is a lawyer and a Swedish Olympic women's skip that is a medical doctor.

My opinion, if more chess players played curling you'd have a lot of replies to your post. But then again, there aren't many chess players at all are there ? And maybe you should be looking at why.

[Duncan Smith]

Re: Chess on ice

There are more then 8 moves because some strategies reflect on what you or your opponent will do 2-6 ends later. For example, in a ten end game it is advantageous to score in the even ends, so scoring in end #6 or #8 are common goals. You are seeking an end game that is to your liking and more winnable.

Of course, your opponents moves on any given shot are quite varied, much like a chess game. You may expect them to hit a rock but they may choose to guard, draw, freeze, tap, peel and for some of those options there are very distinct placement choices. Tapping a rock an inch can sometimes be quite a different result then freezing on the same rock. Curling has gotten so technical in nature now that the top teams call out exact weights within a foot of intended target.

In some ends, you place a rock in position on lead rocks with the full intention of utilizing it much later in the end ( anywhere from 2-14 shots later ). More experienced skips can utilize strategies such as laying a trap for their less experienced opponent ( eg leaving a rock half open hoping for a takeout attempt, or leaving an opponents rock in the house so they will get far too comfortable with their position ).

ps Maybe we shouldn't discount the difficulty that Ernest Klubis has with checkers.

[Duncan Smith]

Re: Chess on ice

Why don't you ask the hundreds of thousands of Canadians who play the game ?
I expect Canada will win medals this year and there will be some youngsters who take up the game as a result. Curling isn't happily sitting on their current levels there is a constant effort to renew interest and keep curling current. Hell, there are even some issues with the curling federations ( eg the salary the guy running it gets ) and why countries like the US have such poor national teams. The grassroots programs remain quite good in most Canadian centers, and if someone really wanted to they could compete in curling events the whole winter nonstop.

[Ernest Klubis]

Re: Chess on ice

A good team will have a general "plan" of attack or defense for each end. Often a team will deliberatly choose not to score a single point but rather to have a blank end and keep the hammer.

This complexity blows me away. How deep and profound the decision to blank must be. It hurts my head just to think about it. Maybe you should write a book on curling strategy! The whole six pages with move by move diagrams.

Before the start of my next chess game I will ponder should I play English or French, Russian or Dutch........... NO, just blank the end.

[Duncan Smith]

Re: Chess on ice

Well. obviously since you admit you struggle with the complexities of Checkers it is understandable you can't follow the strategy of Curling. How deep and profound it must be for you to decide on whether e4 or d4 is the desired opening move in a chess game.

Seriously it is chess not curling that suffers from a lack of respectability and interest in Canada. Chess is no more then a curiosity to most in Canada. You play the buffoon well trying your hardest to slam an extremely popular sport in Canada ( hockey, curling, and
soccer are the biggest sports in Canada ), but in reality this is the kind of attitude that isolates the tiny chess community from mainstream society. One would expect no more from a mediocre "intellectual elitist" ; the game obviously attracts a number of people with your tendancies.

By the way, if you don't like Curling on TV then switch the channel. It's not hard buddy.
It's on TV for a reason, tons of people watch it.

[Ernest Klubis]

Re: Chess on ice

Well. obviously since you admit you struggle with the complexities of Checkers it is understandable you can't follow the strategy of Curling.

Where did I admit that?

[Dan Scoones]

Re: Chess on ice

That would make you ignorant about curling, because the characterization is accurate. The strategic aspect of curling is very much like chess.

From Wikipedia:

Curling is a team sport in which stones are slid across a sheet of carefully prepared ice towards a target area. It is related to bowls, boule and shuffleboard.

[Ed Seedhouse]

Re: Chess on ice

This complexity blows me away. How deep and profound the decision to blank must be. It hurts my head just to think about it. Maybe you should write a book on curling strategy! The whole six pages with move by move diagrams.

Apparently you think put down and name calling are rational arguments! Well they're not. You are just being verbally abusive here, which suggests that you find something threatening in the idea that Curling might be a decent game with some interesting parallels with chess.

Your post actually makes you look rather silly.

[Ed Seedhouse]

Re: Chess on ice

From Wikipedia:

Curling is a team sport in which stones are slid across a sheet of carefully prepared ice towards a target area. It is related to bowls, boule and shuffleboard.

Er, so?

If you are implying that a game related to other particular games cannot therefore be a lot more interesting than any of them, it seems to me that this does not in any way follow.

Chess is probably related to Parcheesi, too, as they both originated in India, and both originally used dice to determine the move. But, so what?

[Duncan Smith]

Re: Chess on ice

I don't know what is funnier, the use of Wikipadia as a reference point or the idea that the statement has any relevance to the value of each activity. For example, how much do those shuffleboard rocks weigh ? Curling rocks weigh around 42-44 pounds each and feel that heavy to inexperienced players.

CTV ran a clip of some members of the old Calgary Flames Stanley Cup winner learning Curling from Cheryl Bernard's team. The results are predictable most of the players thought it would be easy but struggled to execute even simple shots.

Ten pin bowling is fairly close in some aspects but very different in others ( strategy and teamwork for example ).

It would be interesting to see you join a curling team for a year, find out how difficult a game it is to master, and how lack of experience would certainly drop you into the lower divisions of most house leagues. Unless you find an extremely experienced skip who knows proper strategy and approach to the games, and can teach you how to contribute to the cause fairly rapidly. This is of course assuming you have some athletic capability anf don't tire easily.

[Tom O'Donnell]

Re: Chess on ice

It amazes me how polarizing curling seems to be. Just this week I have listened to an online financial show and an online poker show both of which in passing made mention of curling. The financial show host led off the show with commenting on the Olympics and in particular that watching curling was incredibly boring. On the poker show, the hosts thought curling was lame, but their guest thought it was fascinating, though he admitted that he didn't understand all the strategic intricacies of the sport.

I suspect watching curling will probably appeal to people who have some patience. There doesn't seem to be an immediate payoff, unlike say basketball where scoring is quick and the action fast-paced. It's strange to me that some chess players would dis curling considering that the sort of people who might find it interesting are exactly the sort of people who also might find "serious" (i.e. club or tournament) chess interesting. Perhaps we should ask ourselves how something so "boring" can keep so many people interested, and borrow from that. ;-)

[Ernest Klubis]

Re: Chess on ice

Tom, I'm not dissing curling. I'm taking offence when people incorrectly compare curling strategy to chess strategy and claim there is some sort of parallels. Almost every game has a strategy but it's VERY wrong to say " like in chess" because it's NOT. It's like shuffleboard.

[Kevin Pacey]

Re: Chess on ice

Most of my family finds curling boring to watch, and some of them are even disturbed by all the shouting involved between skips and sweepers.

Curling at least involves physical exercise, unlike chess. Plus chess usually doesn't involve teams. Also, when you 'make a move' by throwing a rock in curling, you often change the positions of more than one piece (rock) as a result.

I find the situations in curling that arise, and the discussions of strategy, very interesting. Maybe its because I'm a chess player. The dynamic element, the throwing of the rocks, can be more dramatic than chess' dynamic element, and maybe this at least in part makes curling more popular than chess will ever be. In curling, studying the static position, like in chess, is what goes on most of the time. Btw curling actually 'borrowed' chess clocks for its own use a few decades ago.

Besides curling, I also like history to some extent. The analysis of what could have been, and projections about what might happen. Chess and curling have that in common too: they're at least partly about trying to predict the consequences of choices.

[Ernest Klubis]

Re: Chess on ice

Besides curling, I also like history to some extent. The analysis of what could have been, and projections about what might happen. Chess and curling have that in common too: they're at least partly about trying to predict the consequences of choices.

Kevin, every game has analysis of what could have been and projections about what might happen. If Niedermayer passed to Crosby then he could have scored. Now hockey and chess have that in common too. And when in baseball, manager ask a player to pinch hit then opposing manager considers playing a relief pitcher and this "strategy" they compare to chess! Now you see resemblance between baseball and chess. Fortunately, chess is not that simple as general population seems to assume or portray.

[Kevin Pacey]

Re: Chess on ice

Kevin, every game has analysis of what could have been and projections about what might happen. If Niedermayer passed to Crosby then he could have scored. Now hockey and chess have that in common too. And when in baseball, manager ask a player to pinch hit then opposing manager considers playing a relief pitcher and this "strategy" they compare to chess! Now you see resemblance between baseball and chess. Fortunately, chess is not that simple as general population seems to assume or portray.

All true, except for the last sentence perhaps (I often think the general population is mysified by chess to some extent, especially if they've played a half-decent opponent).

In curling and chess there is more emphasis on strategy as opposed to physical dynamics, say in hockey or baseball. Chess has some hope of competing equally effectively with curling in the eyes of those who might take up either game. For example, chess has the selling point of 'how far can you see ahead'?, which pertains to strategy as well as tactics and calculation. In curling one doesn't look too many moves ahead, but decisions can be as tricky as in chess.

Chess could try to have more team events, to compete with curling that way (it might even be nice if a mixed men/women's team league arose). One thing chess can't compete with is the pleasure of having a hot chocolate drink after being in a cold arena dressed in a sweater, I imagine. Don't ask me why, but I think lots of people enjoy the relief from getting out of a not completely comfortable playing environment.