Re: The Future of Chess and Getting It "Unstuck" (potential heresy

On Apr 3, 6:13 pm, Quadibloc <jsav...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> On Apr 3, 2:10 pm, Guy Macon <http://www.guymacon.com/>
wrote:
> > Changing the rules of chess won't change that.
>
> Certainly it is possible to change that by changing the rules of
> chess, and I can prove it.
>
> 1) Football is presented on TV in the United States, and is highly
> popular.
>
> 2) Football has rules by which it is played.
>
> 3) Therefore, if you change the rules of Chess to the rules of
> football, it could attract public interest.

Actually, back in the early days of NFL football, they did change the
rules of the game, to make it work better over television.  And they
keep tweaking the rules every year.  Sometimes, they even
fundamentally changed the scoring.  They added a 2-point conversion,
for example.  That fundamentally changed the game.  To say that no
changes can be made in ANY manner to generate interest, and get
spectators, is to give up before even thinking it through.  It is an
immensely lazy way out to justify things as they are now.

> Of course, if one adds certain conditions to your statement, to make
> it:
>
> Changing the rules of Chess, subject to the constraint that the new
> rules still describe a game that would be recognizable as Chess, would
> not significantly affect the popularity of Chess in the United States.
>
> then, that statement may very well be true.

Changing TOURNAMENT scoring, how time-control is done, and reducing
the number of ties, so that a tournament produces a clear winner could
do that.  My question originally had to do with more to do with where
a game like chess can end up, as it keeps getting played.  As it is
now, innovation gets pushed further and futher out.  These other
questions also relate to the subject.

> After all, major Go tournaments and major Checkers tournaments and
> major Reversi tournaments are not televised in the United States
> either.
>
> Thus, one might well consider it to be a reasonable conclusion that
> even with a serious marketing effort, sufficiently large audiences
> would not be attracted to, say, a Tsiu Shogi tournament *either*. Even
> if Tsiu Shogi were modified to have drops just like modern Shogi (they
> could always remove the Drunk Elephant from the board to balance it
> out, if it was felt it was necessary).

They do all face the same fundamental issues, which is why none of
them are on TV.  Poker is, because it resolved these issues.
Backgammon is close, but hasn't broken through.  Straight up pure
abstract strategy games haven't yet.

> Live telecasts of games of Jetan with living pieces from Barsoom, even
> assuming capture is by replacement and not a fight to the death, might
> well attract interest... but the real Mars is uninhabited, so we don't
> have that op****tunity.

And again, you see the same issue brought up again here.  How do you
get people quickly up to speed on a game enough they can follow it
actually being played?  And beyond this, have enough drama around the
board that they can follow it.  Those are key issues.  How does it
have sufficient drama to interest people who don't play?

> Still, the Cold War caused Americans to pay close attention to first
> Van Cliburn and then R. J. Fischer. So, I would think that if the next
> President thinks it is vital to get more American children interested
> in science and engineering, because America needs some weapon more
> horrible than the hydrogen bomb to survive, perhaps we could have a
> cultural change towards an environment more congenial to the
> popularity of Chess. Or, the effort might be directed to beginning the
> colonization of outer space, which would be more congenial to the long-
> term survival of Chess, among other things.

What I will say that there are trends going on today that should make
things more condusive to chess, and other abstract strategy games
being able to break through.  There is the whole Sudoku and paper
puzzle craze going on now.  There is Nintendo pu****ng the whole Brain
Development bit.  There is poker out there also, and the media is
seeking the next thing.  If someone can get the actually play of the
games to be interest to people, then the World Mind S****ts Games might
actually lead to a breakthrough here.

It is happening.  It is just a few things are hindering it from
breaking through.

- Rich