Dress codes?

[Vlad Dobrich]

Re: Dress codes?

Jean Hebert you are a rude misinformed hypocrite!

[Hugh Brodie]

Re: Dress codes?

I guess anyone could organize a "dress code" tournament, and have all the players sign an agreement (as part of their entry) saying that they would adhere to whatever dress code rules which would be in effect.

[Jean Hébert]

Re: Dress codes?

I guess anyone could organize a "dress code" tournament, and have all the players sign an agreement (as part of their entry) saying that they would adhere to whatever dress code rules which would be in effect.

I am all for "dressing properly" for important tournaments. It is too bad that at the moment we don't have any of those in Canada since the disappearance of André Langlois' Montreal International. And André had no concern for dress codes and dressed casually himself. I believe that when you have to pay entry fees and other expenses ( best example is the Canadian Closed ) you are entitled to dress pretty much as you wish within accepted social norms. Then one is clearly NOT playing in an "important" tournament that has been set up to attract public attention and please its sponsors (if any).
I am all against "dress codes" when it becomes (as seems to be the case here) a ready made excuse for some small time organizers (which most of the time dress very very casually themselves) to explain why they dont even look for sponsorship. It is then once again just a way to blame players for their shortcomings.

[Jean Hébert]

Re: Dress codes?

Jean Hebert, I am your number 1 fan :)

Jean Hebert you are a rude misinformed hypocrite!

It goes a long way to show that in life one cannot please everybody, however hard one try. :)

[David Ottosen]

Re: Dress codes?

This has come up before. Back in the mid-90s when I worked at the CFC, Troy Vail and I did a lot of work seeking corporate sponsorships for the Canadian Closed. We found more than one company willing to contribute big, $10,000 or more, if the players all wore suits, were clean shaven and so forth. The executive and governors were not interested, arguing that such a code would be too difficult to legislate and enforce.

It's ridiculous that the exec/governors would decide this instead of the players.

[David Ottosen]

Re: Dress codes?

If so it is certainly not from the way they dress. It is simply about poker being a simple game for mass consumption. Nothing much to do with chess players (who also get sponsored when they turned to poker).

Nothing to do with chess players, correct. So why did you bring it up in the first place?

[Jean Hébert]

Re: Dress codes?

This has come up before. Back in the mid-90s when I worked at the CFC, Troy Vail and I did a lot of work seeking corporate sponsorships for the Canadian Closed. We found more than one company willing to contribute big, $10,000 or more, if the players all wore suits, were clean shaven and so forth. The executive and governors were not interested, arguing that such a code would be too difficult to legislate and enforce.

I have a very hard time to believe such a story. But if true I cannot help but think that chess was misrepresented for what it is not. Chess is not about suits and being clean shaven.

[Paul Bonham]

Re: Dress codes?

I am all for "dressing properly" for important tournaments. It is too bad that at the moment we don't have any of those in Canada since the disappearance of André Langlois' Montreal International. And André had no concern for dress codes and dressed casually himself. I believe that when you have to pay entry fees and other expenses ( best example is the Canadian Closed ) you are entitled to dress pretty much as you wish within accepted social norms. Then one is clearly NOT playing in an "important" tournament that has been set up to attract public attention and please its sponsors (if any).
I am all against "dress codes" when it becomes (as seems to be the case here) a ready made excuse for some small time organizers (which most of the time dress very very casually themselves) to explain why they dont even look for sponsorship. It is then once again just a way to blame players for their shortcomings.

Jean, in tournaments you have entered in the past in which all or most of your expenses were covered, did you dress more formally than the norm? Because if there was even one such case where you didn't, you shouldn't be commenting here about any relationship between dress and having expenses covered.

In another post on this same thread, you doubt Brad Thomson's account of past chess sponsors willing to put up large sums if players would dress formally. Yet here in this post, you write that players dressing non-formally means: "Then one is clearly NOT playing in an "important" tournament that has been set up to attract public attention and please its sponsors (if any)."

You can't have it both ways in your pathetic attempts to diss Canadian chess organizers. You twist things around to your viewpoint, and I have to once again expose your logical fallacies and hypocrisies so that at least the thinking reader can see what you are all about. How desperate you are, and how sorry must be your myopic existence trying to establish relevance in a world where you consistently fall short.

You can't seem to grasp that chess has no special relevance or importance other than that of any other casual game activity. You have been hoodwinked by the (now collapsing) Russian / European socialist era in which chess has been raised to a plateau making it like unto some kind of nectar from the gods. Much like others have done with the game of poker which you perhaps appropriately diss as a simple game meant for mass appeal, or other games such as football, soccer, hockey, basketball, the list goes on: any game which has been turned into a professional activity. Despite my mention of the word "socialist", none of this is limited to a particular political ideology nor to a geographical region nor even to a specific time period in human history. It is, unfortunately, an unfortunate byproduct of the wealth that arises in the course of the rise and fall of civilizations.

What needs to be realized is that all such games are, to quote Shakespeare: "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing". The idea of a dress code for chess, or for poker, is simply another attempt to make these games something they are not. As amateur, casual activities, they are worthy of some investment, in terms of investigation and documentation and analysis. They are not worthy of full-fledged professional investment, meaning that countless lives be devoted to their pursuit at the expense of all else, which results in the abysmal distortions we have had in recent times, typified by Tiger Woods making more money at golf than any scientist could dream of making in pursuit of much more lasting and worthy goals of a society, such as renewable energy or disease cure or prevention.

As a chess teacher, Jean, I can only hope that when you teach a youngster any aspect of chess, you do so in a way that doesn't encourage that youngster to think of chess as a potential profession to be pursued. I would instead hope that you teach them to use chess as a tool to think logically, and maybe even encourage the more talented of them to use what they learn from chess in more worthy pursuits. But given your attitudes against chess organizers, and your burning desire for more rewarding chess sponsorship so that chess could indeed become a lucrative profession rather than a casual activity, I don't think you ever give a thought to the idea of "more worthy pursuits".

As fatalistic as all that sounds, I was highly encouraged by this news item from yesterday pertaining to online gamers:

Online Gamers Crack Enzyme Puzzle
AFP – Sun, Sep 18, 2011

Online gamers have achieved a feat beyond the realm of Second Life or Dungeons and Dragons: they have deciphered the structure of an enzyme of an AIDS-like virus that had thwarted scientists for a decade.
The exploit is published on Sunday in the journal Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, where -- exceptionally in scientific publishing -- both gamers and researchers are honoured as co-authors.
Their target was a monomeric protease enzyme, a cutting agent in the complex molecular tailoring of retroviruses, a family that includes HIV.
Figuring out the structure of proteins is vital for understanding the causes of many diseases and developing drugs to block them.
But a microscope gives only a flat image of what to the outsider looks like a plate of one-dimensional scrunched-up spaghetti. Pharmacologists, though, need a 3-D picture that "unfolds" the molecule and rotates it in order to reveal potential targets for drugs.
This is where Foldit comes in.
Developed in 2008 by the University of Washington, it is a fun-for-purpose video game in which gamers, divided into competing groups, compete to unfold chains of amino acids -- the building blocks of proteins -- using a set of online tools.
To the astonishment of the scientists, the gamers produced an accurate model of the enzyme in just three weeks.
Cracking the enzyme "provides new insights for the design of antiretroviral drugs," says the study, referring to the lifeline medication against the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).
It is believed to be the first time that gamers have resolved a long-standing scientific problem.
"We wanted to see if human intuition could succeed where automated methods had failed," FirasKhatib of the university's biochemistry lab said in a press release.
"The ingenuity of game players is a formidable force that, if properly directed, can be used to solve a wide range of scientific problems."
One of Foldit's creators, Seth Cooper, explained why gamers had succeeded where computers had failed.
"People have spatial reasoning skills, something computers are not yet good at," he said.
"Games provide a framework for bringing together the strengths of computers and humans. The results in this week's paper show that gaming, science and computation can be combined to make advances that were not possible before."

[Brad Thomson]

Re: Dress codes?

I have a very hard time to believe such a story. But if true I cannot help but think that chess was misrepresented for what it is not. Chess is not about suits and being clean shaven.

Corel was a sponsor of children's chess back in those days. In association with Chess 'n Math, the CFC ran a national championship tournament in Ottawa with lots of Corel help. The cartoonist Ben Wicks was one of the advocates and helped a great deal, as did Jeff Coakley. This tournament included Pascal Charbonneau, Andrew Ho, Steve Glinert and Igor Zugic, among others. It was a great success and I immediately enter into discussions with Corel about having them sponsor our national Closed. They were very interested. It was a known fact at the time that Michael Cowpland liked the idea of sponsoring chess. Lots of companies like the idea, chess has an intellectual image (rightly or wrongly). It is amazing how often you see people playing chess, or chess sets in advertizing of all kinds.

I do not believe that chess was being misrepresented at all. The people at Corel were willing to put their name on our national championship, and put up at least $10,000, if the players suited the image they wanted to convey. It was one of the first questions they asked, how will the players dress and conduct themselves? Once I explained the truth of the matter, it was suggested that if I could have some code put in place then there would be no problem with the sponsorship.

I am certain that I spoke to the executive at the time, and seem to recall writing something about it in the Governor's Letter, though I may be wrong. But no actions were taken, and no corporate sponsorships acquired.

CIBC was also very interested in sponsoring the Closed, AND the Olympiad team. But again, they asked what chess tournaments looked like, who the players were, how they dressed and so on.

In the end I thanked these companies for their interest and time, and told them that I was not able to convince the powers that be to have a dress and behaviour code put into effect.

[Vlad Dobrich]

Re: Dress codes?

Paul you are to be thanked for posting such an insightful commentary on ChessTalk! I know several intelligent people who refuse to post because they do not want to immerse themselves in the petty mud slinging that goes on here.
I do feel that if someone wishes to pursue a career in a 'mere game' such as chess then they have every right to do so. However, they should return value when they are paid to do so. Simply being a good player and making good moves is not enough one must also entertain. The people who pay for the pro's participation do not do so in order to be insulted. A chess pro who insults organisers and lesser players should not expect to be invited to tournaments solely based on their ability to find good moves.
Poker organisers understand this. If you watch televised poker you will see far more outrageous play than actually occur in real poker. In real poker its fold, fold and fold some more. On television, that doesn't get you invited for repeat performances.
I know backgammon players who could compete with the very best players but never get the lucrative side games because all they do is hunch over the board and scrutinize the strongest moves in order to squeeze the last penny of equity from a position. They are' in a word, boring!
Now if you look at dressing up as just another game or giving respect to the game and the organisers/sponsors. Then it need not be so painful.
I take it you probably prefer to dress casually - most science people I have known consider sloppy/casual as their right. Did Einstein ever comb his hair?
I suspect that if you ever win the Nobel Prize in your field that the first thing you do when you get to Oslo is go out and rent a tuxedo! Am I right?
I thank you again for posting on ChessTalk.

[Egidijus Zeromskis]

Re: Dress codes?

Corel seem to recall writing something about it in the Governor's Letter, though I may be wrong. But no actions were taken, and no corporate sponsorships acquired.

I'm not sure that the author was you, but the idea about the dress code discussed in GLs long time ago. I think the main concern was that players are more or less free people.

[Jean Hébert]

Re: Dress codes?

Once I explained the truth of the matter, it was suggested that if I could have some code put in place then there would be no problem with the sponsorship.

I do not see what would be the problem with having "some code" whatever that would mean, but I wonder what kind of "truth of the matter" you came up with. Did you really have to say, just guessing, that chessplayers dress sloppily, sometimes showing up in tournaments half naked in their underwears ? You may not have misrepresented chess, but you probably failed to present reality in a smart way as to close the deal and go on with it. When someone comes up with a vague idea of a dress code, you say "of course" and quickly move beyond to deal with the serious stuff. Serious people know that when you deal with independant minded people like sportsmen, artists, actors, or even poker players you cannot impose a dress code. On the contrary you want them to express their creativity and their individuality, within socially accepted behaviour. Chess players do that just fine.

[Jean Hébert]

Re: Dress codes?

I know several intelligent people who refuse to post because they do not want to immerse themselves in the petty mud slinging that goes on here.

Thank God you are not of them. :)

[David Ottosen]

Re: Dress codes?

I do not see what would be the problem with having "some code" whatever that would mean, but I wonder what kind of "truth of the matter" you came up with. Did you really have to say, just guessing, that chessplayers dress sloppily, sometimes showing up in tournaments half naked in their underwears ? You may not have misrepresented chess, but you probably failed to present reality in a smart way as to close the deal and go on with it. When someone comes up with a vague idea of a dress code, you say "of course" and quickly move beyond to deal with the serious stuff.

That's a lot easier to say when you're not the one who has to answer the call from the sponsor asking why, despite their insistence that a proper dress code be followed, the players all showed up however they wanted to look. It's also a good way to ensure that the sponsorship is one-off.

Serious people know that when you deal with independant minded people like sportsmen, artists, actors, or even poker players you cannot impose a dress code. On the contrary you want them to express their creativity and their individuality, within socially accepted behaviour. Chess players do that just fine.

The problem is that businesses do not approach chess like art; art is meant to be linked to creativity and such. Chess is meant to attach a link to intelligence and class to a company, which is not congruent with people in jeans and tshirts.

[Bindi Cheng]

Re: Dress codes?

Paul you are to be thanked for posting such an insightful commentary on ChessTalk! I know several intelligent people who refuse to post because they do not want to immerse themselves in the petty mud slinging that goes on here.

I take it you probably prefer to dress casually - most science people I have known consider sloppy/casual as their right. Did Einstein ever comb his hair?
I suspect that if you ever win the Nobel Prize in your field that the first thing you do when you get to Oslo is go out and rent a tuxedo! Am I right?
I thank you again for posting on ChessTalk.

Ass-kiss much?