Why is Grandmaster-Level Classical Chess so Boring?

The other day, I decided to kick back and watch some of the Tata Steel Masters tournament going on right now in the Dutch village Wijk aan Zee. I turned it on near the beginning of the stream and planned to watch most of it, meaning about 2 hours or so.

I ended up only lasting about 20 minutes before I got incredibly antsy and bored and ended up going to play some online chess while the stream was on in the background. Why?

It wasn't the broadcast. I've always thought that Chesscom's streaming was actually super well done, and that's hard to come by. And honestly, I quite enjoy the commentary as long as either Robert Hess or Daniel Naroditsky are one of the commentators (with the occasional Levy Rozman). Hess because of his chess knowledge and Naroditsky because of his sports references.

It wasn't the fact that I hadn't been all that active that day. I've gotten used to sitting still for long periods in both chess tournaments and school.

The reason I found that experience so boring was because of the games that were being played. 

At my level, which is about the 1200-rated level, every single game is full of many, many blunders and mistakes throughout until one person finally finds a checkmate or piece that has been hanging for half of the game. At the grandmaster level, many times the game is played nearly perfectly and the game ends in a draw. Who wants to watch that?

Here is a game that proves my point and actually happened in one of the rounds of the Tata Steel tournament between grandmaster Magnus Carlsen (world #1) as white and grandmaster Ding Liren (world #2) as black. Both of the players played a perfect game, with white playing at 98.8% accuracy and black playing at 98.6% accuracy. The game, not surprisingly, ended in a draw. Take a look:

Excitement plus, am I right? I wouldn't blame you if you just skipped over that PGN entirely.

I really enjoyed following (to the best of my ability) the World Rapid and Blitz Championships this year, mostly because it taught me that even grandmasters blunder badly in rapid and blitz games. After watching that performance by Magnus Carlsen, you're probably thinking this man is a walking, talking engine, and he kinda is. But every once in a while, like here in this position, he proves that he is just human like the rest of us:

Although Magnus went on to win the tournament AND the blitz tournament as well, it taught me that I am not alone in the blunder struggle if the world's best is also making mistakes. 

My point of it all is that GMs playing fast-paced rapid and blitz is fun to watch. GMs playing over an hour-long classical is not fun to watch.

Maybe I'm being a bit dramatic because overall I have enjoyed watching the Tata Steel Chess tournament this year. But it's games like that Magnus/Ding game that kind of make me wish that they would make this tournament a Chess Boxing tournament so that at least we would get some action.

What do you think? Do you find these GM classical tournaments boring? Comment below!

I hope you enjoyed this blog. Cya next time!