Would you play chess for money?

 It's interesting idea, but I agree with xMenace.

Why not, earning while playing is good, that's why we invest in buying resources to learn, and of course a good computer to help us study in the internet...we pay the electric bills...so earning is just right to compensate the money that goes from our pocket...and most of all we invest so much time in playing/learning..

Just for the record, AMcHarg, I was making a stab at sarcasm.

To be clear, I think that if a site says it's "100% secure and cheating-free," you should make a mad dive toward the virtual door. I'm right there with you, Andrew.

Not that I would ever condone such a thing, but it seems to me it would be easy to cheat at online chess.  Of course by using a simulator, and programming in the moves your opponent makes, observing the move your simulator makes, and playing that move on the site.  How can the site detect this?  It cannot.  Online gambling in general is usually a bad idea, but it's too easy to cheat at chess online, of all things.

I wouldn't play chess for money because I suck (most of the time although I do have my days).

Yeah, this is a really bad idea. If you want to gamble some money on chess, play against a friend and place a bet or enter a tournament with prize money. Any kind of site that offers online gambling is only looking to make money. Sure they are going to say they are cheating-free and they may be putting effort to that end, but that is far from a guarentee of the safety of your investment. Why ruin online chess by attaching a price tag to it?

A friend of mine played an online card game which sounds eerily similar to this scheme. He is a high-caliber player, state champion a few years back. But, regardless of his skill, he lost countless thousands of dollars online for a game he could have been playing for free. He is now completely broke and plays online poker where he can only lose $0.10 a game.

There will need to be alot of laws and serious regulation of online gambling before I will consider it anything other than an immoral scam.

I thought DIMKNIGHT was using sarcasm about "sure convinced" ?! That is how I took it to be, at least.

In response about this:

• "A master I know, in a moment of bravado, offered odds of 5-1 that he would go five-for-five in a local tournament. I told him to put me down for $20. Was this wrong of me? **"
  

I certainly don't see anything wrong with you taking him up on his offer ...unless one is opposed to betting, or gambling, completely. If he was going to sweat it, the way it was proposed to you, he could have simply insisted to the precise terms as stated ... that he would cover "1" dollar (or cent!?) with 5. Then of course you might come back with "cover this 1 Andrew Jackson bill". But isn't the bluster and haggle the fun part of a bet? And watching a guy shave his head and wear a bar-rag on it all weekend, of course. (Picked up that little thing in London. They aren't allowed to take away a man's hat there, you know ...)

And suppose you had said, "I'll put up $5000.00"; he might have given each opponent a $900.00 gift, and still pick-up $500 plus the tournament prize ?!

I've played for a few bucks in Washington Square Park, that was fun.  But ye gods!  No way I'd play for money on the Internet.  Who knows who my opponent is, or what the heck he might be doing?  If I want to lose to a computer, I'll do it myself for free.