What do we owe Pros?

Another question I have is how valuable are raw games really for amateurs?  I study some tacticts, endgames, and the general opening ideas.  A few well annotated games are good enough, it's not like I need to get a novelty or plan for any given opponent.  It seems like chess pros get the most benefit from each other's games do they not?  Or is this more a beef with Chessbase being able to make money?

There will be no meaningful sponsorship for chess until you can get more than the players to show up at tournaments. Unlike sports, chess has very few logical links to products.

In the 90's Intel and IBM both dabbled in chess activities but their products no longer have a natural connection to the "geeky" chess world. Meanwhile Nike, Gatorade etc.. pony up big bucks because of their natural connection to sports.

If anything, Scholastic chess is the best bet for sponsorship because they have a captive audience, the parents.

i hope everyone wishes them a great big good luck as they face off. i now i will.

 You may not need large corporate sponsorships for tournaments. A tournament that runs between 2 - 4 days like a Continental tournament could gather sponsorships from local restaraunts and shops trying to attract visitors. Companys like Subway, Quiznos, and other non chain restaraunts would be pretty interested in this I would imagine. I'm not sure for how much, but it would be worth inquiring about. Thats just an idea off the top of my head. I'm sure there are far more creative possibilities that aren't being tapped into.

yeah, it's a fair idea. i've thought of it, but i don't know of any organizer ever trying hard to implement it.

Argument: It is because of Bobby Fischer's actions that chess did not become as popular as poker or golf.

Challenge: What will it take to raise the popularity and prestige of chess to how it was during the glory days of the 1972 Fischer-Spassky match?

Do we really need two rival countries in the scene again? Do we need another underdog against today's chess super power?

Professional sports is a BUSINESS the players provide raw athletic ability to help their team (business) grow.

SPORTS PROVIDE ENTERAINMENT and people want to see the BEST of the BEST!

Who doesn't want to see competitions between the "best of the best?" If that wasn't imporatant in chess, there wouldn't be a world chess championship in the first place!

The bigger question is: Is Chess as entertaining as soccer, basketball or football?

NO. These people have to make a living. There are many FM's and CM's struggling to make a living and some people expect to watch these people for free? And anyways who expects to watch Houdini for free. (Especially since he's dead, .)No way.

I don't think it will ever have the commercial potential of those because it's not an entertaining spectator sport to most.  Chess could be slightly more popular than it currently is, but trying to shoot for the level of popularity enjoyed by, say, soccer would be a lost cause.  These potential business models shouldn't be concerned with expanding the player base.

Gonnosuke, totally agreed that there are lots of things pros need to do for the rest of the chess world. that was the subject of THREE of the four topics on last weeks' PoB show. this fourth topic was supposed to talk about what chess enthusiasts can or should do from their end.

i am quite convinced that there is a huge disconnect between pros and amateur enthusiasts, and that that divide needs to be bridged by actions from *both* groups.

What do fans of soccer, football and basketball do to "connect" with their favorite teams and players? Watch their games on cable/satellite TV, buy tickets and watch live games, buy jerseys, shirts, shoes and other merchandise.

What do fans of chess players do? Follow their games in tournaments and matches on the Internet, watch local tournamants and matches live, and buy their books, videos and Fritz trainers.

In this regard, both types of fans are doing (almost) the same things to show their "support" already.

Fans/amateurs cannot provide sponsorships and multi-million-dollar salaries for chess players.

The major difference between sports and chess is that people can easily understand sports. The average viewer can watch a game and understand what is going on. In chess, without computer assistance, the average viewer (class player) could not view a GM game and understand what is going on. One would most likely not even know who is "winning".

Also, professional athletes don't just play their games and that is it. A lot of them are involved in community outreach programs, charities, visit schools and clinics, etc... These are things that chess professionals could do as well. They could help set up chess programs at local schools. They could visit hospitals or whatever and help people there. They could give publically advertised clinics and simuls. There really is quite a lot that a professional could do to bolster the popularity of chess. Multimillion dollar deals can't open overnight. These things involve a lot of hardwork upfront for years before things pay off.

Outstanding Post.

I remember being part of a very small audience - about 50 college kids - listening to Frank Herbert  (science fiction writer, most notable "DUNE") talk about how he writes, why he writes...

We got to ask him all sorts of questions like "what were you thinking when you created this character", etc. The event was free to students. My guess is that the college paid for it.

How difficult would it be to connect 50 chess amateurs with a world famous chess player for a two hour Q and A session? World famous authors show up to bookstores where fans can ask questions.

Would Grand Masters consider sitting down face to face with 50 chess amateurs and talk chess for a fee. 20 dollars per person times 50 amateurs = 1000 dollars. Would a GM be happy making 1000 dollars for 2 hours of his/her time?

What would an IM be happy to make in two hours? 

You are trying to merge two worlds that will never be the same. You are using ball games that are championed by physical attributes (speed, strength, agility, endurance, reflexes, accuracy in throwing, catching, kicking or shooting) as a template to make a cerebral game (where the only physical attribute needed is enough endurance) just as popular.

Your argument of how fans of ball games can "understand" the physical game can still be applied to the game of chess. Basketball fans know that a team must shoot more balls in the other's team's hoop to win the game. In chess, one must checkmate the opponen't king.

The fun is in watching how the win happens, right? Basketball crowds go wild with fast breaks, dunks, steals and assists whether the players are successful or not. Unfortunately, the same fans will not find it as exciting to watch a chess master move the pieces, capture enemy pieces, push the button on the clock and make body motions or facial expressions occassionally. And that's all the physical excitement that there is during a chess match!

If anything, we should limit our argument to poker and chess wherein their fans "understand" the games in the same cerebral way.

While chess is an all-information game, poker is not plus it is affected by the luck of the draw. People who like accurate gameplay (making it more difficult) will be drawn to chess and those who like unknowns and randomness in their cerebral games will drift to poker.

If poker were as difficult to play and win in as chess, do you think that it would have been as popular?

I'll give a chess pro music lessons in exchange for chess lessons.

Some players have been promoting chess in exactly the way that you've described. A young Bobby Fischer visited a hospital and played against the patients, Susan Polgar established SPICE, a chess institute at Texas Tech University, Kasparov had a failed web startup calld Kasparovchess.com, Botvinnik and Karpov both established chess schools in Russia, Susan Polgar and Alexandria Kosteniuk have numerous advertised projects that can be read on their respective blog sites, Kasparov held a scholastic simul at Harlem, NY last year, titled players have been holding small-scale simuls at local chess clubs but are not publicized as widely as Kasparov's, there are chess camps that are held nationwide during summer and spring break seasons every year, public schools with enough funding hire chess instructors to teach chess as an extra-curricular activy, and most recently, Carlsen and G-Star promoted chess by allowing the world to play against Magnus through chess.com.

As I see it, these activities are similar to the things that celebrity atheletes of ball games are already doing.

You mean that there needs to me much more of these efforts to attract more fans and eventually, more money, to the game of chess? I do not recall Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan working this hard on promoting their sport before they were famous. Their exceptional sportmanship and athleticism led to the multimullion contracts and endorsements. In the history of the game, Kasparov has enjoyed this fringe benefit more than any other chess celebrity.

This leads me to believe that what is truly needed is a large, solid fan base who love the game to be able to establish chess franchises and eventually bring in the big bucks from sponsors.

Theoretical challenge: If the NBA games weres held in Germany, the Germans would probably watch soccer instead. If the NFL franchises moved to England, the British would still be loyal to rugby. So what would it take to make a country with its own established favorites quickly embrace a new game?

Does America need another Bobby Fischer, the first Westerner who single-handedly wrestled the World Chess Championship from the "Soviet Chess Machine" who was dominating the game for decades.

Vishy Anand's fame as the first World Chess Champion from the East probably boosted interest in chess in Asia, especially in India and China.

We should not forget the effort of manufacturers that have tried to attract more people to playing chess. We have seen specialized chess sets that represented Peanuts and Smurfs to Transformers and Star Wars characters, all-in-one game sets that include backgammon and checkers, cartoonish computer software to teach chess, upcoming console games where the fighting chess pieces look like characters from World of Warcraft, fascinating, robotic and seriously strong electronic chess computers, high tech peripherals such as DGT electronic chessboards and Monroi Personal Chess Managers.

On an economic level, chess is probably the cheapest sport (since it is it still a competition game that some schools offer educational sponsorships for) that anyone in the world can start to get into with chess sets that can be bought for under US$1.00.