What do we owe Pros?

Games already played - finished - should always be accessible to the public. How to organize the live broadcast of the games is the interesting question, I believe.

I think the core here is that one could be interested in giving the organizers better rights and conditions which in turn will (hopefully) make them able to organize more tournaments or have higher prizes.

Of course, there are many great tournaments a year with great prizes and conditions, but these tournaments (Linares, Nanjing, Sofia, Corus, Monaco) are usually reserved for the same 6-18 guys every time. Making more tournaments for the top players who aren't in these prestigious tournaments would be a great accomplishment.

   Ok, I'm full of opinions today, and here is my second one.

   As far as the downloading of games go, yes, they should be free. If the chess world starts charging "royalty taxes" for PGNs from top players like IMs and up, my concerns is that money is going to be even more of an issue in the chess world than it seems to be already. We're already speculating on Anand's mysterious lack of presence from the Olympiad. Was it over money, or is he getting ready for the final stage of Bilbao or is he doing something else entirely away from the chess world?

   I stopped watching professional sports and supporting my favorite teams(Yankees, NY Jets) because of the fact I'm not wasting 3 or 4 hours of my day planted in front of the idiot tube when I could be chessing. I've been a die hard fan of those two teams since I was 5. In those 30 years since, I've learned about the greediness of the players, not playing there strongest because of contract disputes, signing bonuses, or simply not getting paid "enough" to hit and throw a baseball or knock some guy's poor head off. Remember when Piazza got 161 million for just being a catcher and his talent was fading even then? Anyway, the point is, you add money to any sport, baseball or chess, then it complicates things even more. We support players buy buying their books, buying CD lessons from Chessbase for Fritz or whatever, and even being here on chess.com. If there is going to be a "Napster-like" accessory or program to start charging money for PGNs and tourneys, then I think you're going to see a lot more corruption and more bickering over money. And who is going to lose out? Us. I have downloaded millions of games over the last few months from many web sites. My database has got to be to a point that I know I'll never watch all those games, but having them makes me feel wonderful knowing I can pop on Tal's complete career or watch all the games of Fischer or Karpov if I want to try to emulate some of their openings. Money is the root of all evil, and if you let it take hold or interrupt itself into something that you love, well, then the downward spiral of corruption begins.

   -Mark

Broadcasts: should be free. Monetized by ads or something.

Lessons: of course not. That's part of coaching, should be pay-per-view.

Chess games: definitely free.

I searched the Video Library and for the life of me I can't find any episodes of the show saved on-demand. I'd like to watch previous episodes. Where do I find them?

Facts can't be copyrighted.  For any public game, any game with spectators, if one of the spectators writes down the moves you can't stop them from publishing those moves.  Just like box scores can't be copyrighted neither can naked chess moves.

You can of course copyright commentary, broadcasts, and annotations.

professional chess players should get room and board and a stipend like in Soviet Russia in the old days.

i see them in the library. the very first one in the list is yesterday's show. the shows are listed in inverse chronological order. ep 12 is last week on wednesday, etc...

just one quick point:

some people are saying a pro adds the value when they make a lesson or comment on a game. not every pro is a good teacher. some are focused on studying, working on their own game, and playing great games. don't you think they add value just when they make their moves, thus revealing the truth of chess to us?

and let's say Carlsen could play at 2750 level instead of 2850 level if he would spend a dozen hours a week focused on teaching instead of playing. would that be better for us if he did that?

i think that it benefits the chess world for some of our top players to be really really focused on perfecting their chess, and leave the explaining and interpreting to lesser players. so, through some mechanism or other, it would be in all of our interests for Carlsen, Anand, Topalov, Aronian, etc... to be payed for the simple act of creating their games.

how that mechanism should work is a very interesting question! as we said at the close yesterday, we'll try to talk about some proposals/ideas in future shows.

edit/ps: this whole discussion has been good for me, because it's made me less confident about my "gms should be able to sell their games" idea.

IM Pruess,

I believe the top 20 players are pretty well compendated for playing their games.  The invitational only tournaments pay them quite well for creating their games.  I understand your point that it involves creativity to generate the moves, yet the same could be said of soccer and other sports.  I'd have to go look this up but I think at leats one sports league has tried to keep the facts of their games as intellectual property and failed. 

As an aside, who really is qualified to explain a game of Carlsen?  I understand in retrospect it is easier to make sense of moves than while the game is being played but history is full of even the greatest GMs annotating things like WC matches only to have the player later reveal their ideas were quite different.

yep, i thought of that point while i was writing jlueke, that it's rather hard to explain these players' games. however, with assiduous analysis, it actually is possible!

 hmm I'm at a loss. The first video in the list I'm getting in the video library is

USCL Game of the Week - Week 5

ah! you are looking at video lessons. what you want to do is go to www.chess.com/tv then it will load a video player for half a minute. (it will say "offline" and have colored bars. then in the lower part of the player look for a button that says "on-demand" click on it. now a list pops up and you can select past shows to watch.

working?

Ahh I am all set now.  Thanks so much.

Saw "Pardon Our Blunders" first time yesterday.  Excellent show!  I won't miss an episode now.  Keep up the great work and thanks again!

The link here http://www.law.cornell.edu/copyright/cases/105_F3d_841.htm#[fn3]00

is perhaps the most apro pro when it comes to United States law.  In particular the notes regarding section 102 and the renewal of the copyright act of 1976 may be of some interest.  Since the courts have not afforded regular sporting competitions protected status it seems doubtful they would change this precedent for chess matches.  Even broadcasts of games were in doubt until Congress passed this law.

There's also an interesting history of trying to copyright games in Europ in the late 19th and early 20th century.  Perhaps this would be something GM Becerra could research?

A decent history of attempts to copyright chess games in Europe etc. can be found here: http://www.chesshistory.com/winter/extra/copyright.html

The Chessbase controversy involving copyright claims under German law is here: http://www.chessvibes.com/reports/bulgarian-organizers-take-to-court-chessbase/  ad notably references the Motorola v NBA case, which imho, is the most analgous case for U.S. law (comparing chess moves as box scores).

Let's say for a minute that chess games could be copyrighted, either by the players or as works for hire by the organizers of large tournaments where the players receive fees.  Would that be good for chess.com to have to compete with ICC and others for North American rights?

Wrong. "Archaic" did NOT make the right point. Just because something happened does not make everyone have the right to report it.

Where would you guys/girls get such an idea? If Bob and Joe play chess in my backyard, no one has the right to their game! Think about when Kasparov trained Carlson. I'm sure that, during training, Carlson and Kasparov played a game. No one has the right to publish that game to the public other than Carlson or Kasparov.

 Danny,

       I would venture to say that most of all Bill Goichberg's tourneys are free for GM's and IM's by looking at a good amount of his flyers. These seem to be the biggest prize money tourneys in the USA. ( http://www.chesstour.com/)

    There is also no need to turn this into a pissing contest. I am 26 with a full time job. I"ve been playing chess seriously again for the past year and half after taking many years off and I have been very active during that time. I'm sure that you have played in more tourneys than I have, but so what? Why does experience and skill entitle an IM or GM to a share of my entry fee? Experience doesn't even really matter as we see more and more young players acheiving titles. If experience must matter, why would somebody like John Curdo need to pay entry to these events? He is only a FM, but he's probably won more tournaments than any of us will play in our lifetime. He peaked in the 2500's rating wise back in the day but is now around 2270. Why should he have to pay? Because he didn't earn enough norms? That doesn't seem logical to me.

Your last statement is exactly what I was getting at. What contribution are they making to the average class player? Why isn't a copy of all of those games made available to every who played at the tournament and consequently bankrolled them into a no risk/high reward situation?

Let me make an analogy to poker. What if we were playing at a 1/2 NL table and a portion of the rake or hourly table rate was just thrown into the pot for the guys at the $100/$200 NL table so that they are playing for free for big rewards? Would this be fair because they are better players than I am ? (let's assume they are and aren't just rich gambling addicts) I wouldn't find that fair. Is it enough just to sit in the same room as them?

I am not saying that this shouldn't be the case, but I do beleive that the contribution that you reference should actually be made to those who are the real ones supporting the chess scene.

And yes, I know that their "entry fee" is subtracted from their prize, but the math still doesn't add up. The open section is still usually smaller than the Class sections, so how do their prize funds end up being so big? I know that the prize funds MUST be bigger to prevent sandbagging, but do you know what I mean? I pay for chess.com, I pay for my coach's services, I pay for the ICC, and I pay for tournaments. I get things back for my contributions to these elite players in everything but tournaments. 

I think a fair possibility would be that any titled player who plays in a tournament for free must give a lecture or demonstration to earn that free entry. I would view that as completely fair. 

The problem here is that Chess tries to use either an Artist economic model or a Sports model. Neither work for chess. Consider

Artist model - pay me for the right to own a copy of my creative effort.

     At 1 dollar per game, and lets say 200,000 titled games are played a year (not including FM's whose games you might want as well..) and chessbase sells 10,000 databases a year that is a solid 20 bucks per copy. You can see how this cost would skyrocket when a player got something remotely close to a living wage for their game.

    Informator had by far the best model, which was to publish the annotation of a game by the winner. There was a lot of value here in the pre-Rybka era. A database where most or all the games were annotated is worth a lot more IMO.

    Regardless, outside the very ambitous club players and other pro's who would pay very much for a database of games? Your typical B player would be much more likely to grab a free database of Capablanca etc. and play through those than to buy the Rensch/Pruess database whe it comes down to it.

Artist - Sports model - Pay to watch me play.

Ask a random American (sorry for being US-Centric in this) to describe a Chess Grandmaster and they will probably conjure up some weird cross of disheveled, poorly-dressed derelict and an unmedicated mental case. I have often mentioned to friends who play casual chess that I was going to X tournament and it might be fun to check it out. Categorically the response is "I would rather go to a dentist."

The problem is that people play chess, they don't watch chess. I log onto ICC to watch USCL games and their are maybe 100 kibitzers... and these are serious chess players.

Sports Model - Make a living off winnings.

Bad economic model for anyone outside the top ten. As we see with the World Open- 2700s go home with 100 bucks.

For Chess Pro's to increase their standard of living they have to develop their own model, one that takes advantage of what people love to do, play the game.

Quoting Nimzo5: " Regardless, outside the very ambitous club players and other pro's who would pay very much for a database of games? Your typical B player would be much more likely to grab a free database of Capablanca etc. and play through those than to buy the Rensch/Pruess database whe it comes down to it."

I would pay for it and I am, at best, a class C player (I am about to enter my first rated tournament). I once asked Silman if his personal database of annotated games was for sale - alas no reply ! I might forgo buying a couple of chess books in lieu of purchasing such a database. We buy books to read the explanations, a free, non-annotated database only helps me in recognising patterns, not in understanding the nuances of the position.