Chess is a game for rich people?

i never said you shouldnt charge money and dont get me wrong nothing you say makes me wrong and you right.

So you said it would be an insult to your teacher to not charge money, that is complete nonsense and just phony. 

If you said you like to be compensated, well thats ok no doubt about that.But one should never ever use moral reasons or third persons for charging money. Dont get me wrong its honest and not bad to charge money, just using weird reasons is very dishonest.

you misunderstood my words, i said it is an insult to charge for something that someone else gave you...the problem is that not only you cant put a price on it to begin with, it makes a mockery of the act of anothers charity....

to put a different way, if someone gave you a shirt and you decided to charge money to a shirtless man for the same shirt, it would be an insult to who gave it to you in the first place.....also , if it offends your sense or lack thereof of morality, you are a hypocrite to tell me i cant observe some sort of moral obligation i hold myself to...who are you to scold me for sharing my sense of it and then telling me i cant rightly do so, when i didnt tell anyone else they could or couldnt do anything ? my advice to you is stop telling others what they can and cant do with their free will....

ok then i misunderstood you..

i thought you said: i charge money because not charging money would be an insult to my teacher.

That indeed would have been phony, but yes you are right what you said is very correct. My english skills are not so good, thats why often misread the meaning of things people say.

in your defense, this phone sucks for typing on, capitalization, punctuation, numbers and symbols arent working well. it also wont leave space in posts when i quote...other people complain when i post on it....soryy if i seem too cruel and i appreciate your acknowledgement of your oversite...

...they need a bowing symbol for this....

I go for rich food and rich women.....and antique chess sets made of gems, precious metals, and inlayed 'mother of pearl' chess  boards!

sounds like james bond would be jealous

That's all? :D

The difference between a spy and a chessplayer. Make the wrong move as a spy, and you're not likely to get another new play at it.

I wouldn't say it's exclusively a "game for rich people", but like most pursuits in life, money CAN help you on the road to excellence.

I'm a mother to a 7 year old boy who just started playing in a few scholastic tournaments.  I taught him chess last year, he quickly became addicted, and we still play multiple times a week.  However, I'm just a casual player myself, so outside of being a ready and willing opponent, there is a limit to what I can teach him.  I was lucky enough to find a wonderful and reasonably-priced chess club nearby where my son can attend once a week, have a short group lesson with an instructor, and then play other kids.  However, at tournaments I found out that many children his age are already getting PRIVATE LESSONS!  Seriously?  I could never afford such a luxury.  However, don't you think these privileged children have a leg up in the world of competition?

Even scholastic tournaments themselves, with the cost of entry, the possibility of travel, and the need to have a parent available to accompany the child--  all these factors assume at least a certain level of financial comfort that not everyone has.

Finally, the world of adult chess competition is time-consuming.  You need to devote yourself to study and competition--  people who need regular jobs to support themselves just don't have this luxury of time to devote to improving their chess. 

There are not many "spies" in the popular acceptation (ie athletic guy breaking into governmental fortresses and being betrayed by Russian females who seduced them).

The guys from the information services today are mostly in an office analyzing reports etc. and any wrong move would get them to a bad position but not to their death. The "operational agents" are a very small fraction of the spying process.

As a parent, I think it depends on what you want out of the game.  Do you really want the back-biting competition against well-funded competitors, clawing for every rating point for your child?  Is winning the only thing?  Or do we teach our children to enjoy the game for its recreational, learning, concentration and analytical aspects aside from its Machiavellian competitors?

I shared the following on another thread, but it bears repeating here in this context, I think.  It was written by the sports-writer Grantland Rice and seems to be something that is slowly disappearing in our over-competitive society:

"For when the One Great Scorer comes

To mark against your name,

He writes - not that you won or lost -

But how you played the Game."

I could not agree more.  Just from the tournaments and such that I've attended with my son, I've realized that similar to overbearing, hypercompetitive "stage parents", there is a culture of (usually affluent) "chess parents".  I feel like the "privilege" of this early intensity is a double-edged sword, for sure.  How much fun could it be to be 7 years old, freaking out about your rating and worrying that you're going to disappoint Mom and Dad?  The whole point of chess, and the reason I taught my son at age 6, is that it's a fun, awesome game.  There's so much in it for kids--  learning how to concentrate, learning how to strategize and think ahead, not to mention just having fun.  Why snuff out all the enjoyment of it with this back-biting competition?

There are, of course, arguments on both sides.  We need to learn to be good losers and avoid being arrogant winners.  I've always felt that those who win all the time at life have learned very little unless they struggled and lost and learned in the process.  It has been said, as well, that in chess you only learn from the games you lose, and not much if any from the games you win.

So back to the thread topic, chess can cost whatever you want to pay for it.  The only difference is the level at which you think you need to be to enjoy it.

Private tuition is pretty expensive for every one to one sport, if you are looking to reach the top. They all take sacrifice and years of hard work.

Tennis, golf, martial arts,fencing etc. Private tuition is expensive. However, there are lots of clubs where you can go and play amongst your peers and learn at the same time.

The thing is, I don't think this can possibly apply to chess in the same way as many other sports. With the internet, Chess is one of the most accessible games in the world in terms of training material, playing partners, master games....the list goes on. The same is just not true of most other activities.

You can't practice much more than pitching or putting in your garden (if you can practise driving I doubt money is an issue anyway :P), a tennis racket and your garage wall will only get you so far, a punchpag is great but sooner or later you need to fight a real opponent.....Chess, however, can be studied to a high level in your sitting room.

To be fair though, there are some really high level coaches on here charging around $30 per hour. That is very cheap, in my opinion. I think that equates to £21 an hour in exchange for years of experience. I wouldn't come to work for that and I don't have to put effort into training schedules, homework or reading material.