Re: The Future of Chess and Getting It "Unstuck"

"Quadibloc" <jsavard@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message 
news:3d837770-e043-4733-89af-875519c17cab@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> You don't need to be an athlete to watch a game of football, but you
> do need to be intelligent to understand a game of Chess. That is where
> the limit to the popularity of Chess comes from, and a change to the
> rules to fix that would only destroy Chess! (Smess, anyone?)

This argument gets repeated enough that it's worth refuting.
First, following high level chess is not even popular among
those who play chess. Second, games that are even harder
to understand than chess, e.g. Go, manage to get more of
a following than chess does.

I have never seen anyone provide a single bit of data in
sup****t of the theory that chess' popularity is near some
inherent limit. Holding that belief, given that high level
chess has a number of obvious defects, is nothing more
than a mindless defense of the status quo.