Chess should be an elitist game

To my surprise, chess has appeared in the media recently due to the World Championship. Most people would think that is positive for the royal game. But they could not be more wrong.

Chess should be a game to be practised by the greatest minds of this world. It should not be played by the plebeians, the ignorant masses who by no means understand the logic hidden behind a seemingly simple board game.

Chess is not a ridiculously popular sport like football, soccer or basketball. And it should never be. Only a few are capable of finding beauty in it. Promoting and advertising chess would only damage it by attracting inferior human beings to it.

I am aware that there are many organizations, which are not loyal to this wonderful game and try to make it popular. One of those is chess.com, which allows ridiculously weak users to play here, thus bringing mediocrity to chess.

I will just warn erik & Co.

You will kill it before it becomes popular. Chess is essentially an unpopular, elitist game.

Also, the Internet has simply made the masses even more ignorant. The average attention span is shorter every day. Those who cannot even read a whole paragraph are not suitable for a game like chess, which demands being focused on what is happening on the board for a long time.

If we allowed them to play chess, classical chess would simply disappear, being replaced by rapid. Then, rapid would disappear too, being replaced with blitz, which would be replaced by bullet. And when they got tired of bullet, they would simply stop playing chess. And in the end, this game would be lost (those who really love it would stop playing if the time control nonsense were imposed), and in some centuries archaelogist would wonder what we used that black and white board for.

I agree.Not with the elitist mindset but with Chess not being a game for everyone.There's no need to popularize it,what we have is fine.

The current format of the World Championship is also intended to attract the masses to chess. A short match, which is of course bound to be tied at the end of the 12 classical games. Then there are rapid and blitz games to decide the winner, despite the fact this basically makes no sense taking into account they are playing the classical championship. But the herd likes it.

The masses are asses?

The kind of answer one could expect from an angry plebeian. I thought none of them would be able to read my whole thread, that is why I did not even worry about what they might say.

But let's be realistic, you probably just read the title and answered what you had been taught to say.

I totally agree.

Remember this world is constructed by the workers. They do not think. They only do THE HARD WORK.

The best minds have the good ideas (e.g. Bill Gates and others) and make the workers to work for them.

Chess is a symbol; a game played by the best minds.

Popularize it is not good for the best minds.

Let the folks keep with this junk like soccer, basketball and other stinking games.

Another characteristic of plebeians is that they think everyone else is as mediocre as them.

Yes.

If someone does not know the other, he tends to make conclusions as a mirror - or everything he thinks is inside himself, not inside the other.

He did not even make an effort to attack my argumentation, which makes it even funnier.

This is demonstrably false, open tournaments are way more exciting and interesting than these closed super grandmaster tournaments, way more.

The topic is not about open tournaments vs closed ones.

But I want to see how you demonstrate that open tournaments are more "exciting".

This sort of snootiness is what makes chess unattractive for a lot of players. Don't think you were born with a special talent to understand the hidden logic. New entrants should be encouraged to join the game. The logic is learned I'm sure, and then great minds get developed in the process.It should be more popular because there is a beauty in its complexity, and allows people to play a competitive sport, if they don't wish to play a physical one. I'm sure what you said was kind of tongue in cheek to create a ruse. However, it still needs to be addressed. I'm beginning to take chess seriously myself, and posts like this are discouraging. 

Some seriously twisted minds here... should chess be an 'elitist' game or a game of the supposed 'elite'? Could you please specify this? Oxford dictionary defines 'elitism' as 'the belief that a society should be led by an elite'. If what you mean is that chess should only be played or watched by an 'elite', than than way phrased it and your use of term was not semantically correct. if you really mean 'elitist' as in the way defined by the dictionary, then I do not see how you assertion can make any logical sense.

Furthermore, any human field tends to get eventually dominated by an 'elite' anyway, this a matter of fact rather than principle. You don't need a rule that says that only the best should be allowed to win at chess. If they are the best they will win anyway, if they lose, its because now there is someone better. If you are really the best and want to prove it, the larger the universe of players the better you can do it. A rule that essentially says that only the best are allowed to win would be redundant.

I think that the truth is that it seems like some people here are only interested in chess because it makes them feel superior. Some, like me, always loved chess and always will love it, no matter if its played by kings or by beggars.

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/elitist

The reference was not given to demonstrate a  difference between open and closed tournaments.  It was given to demonstrate that chess should not be elite.  How you failed to grasp this I have really no idea.  

What was actually claimed was that open tournaments are more exciting than super grandmaster closed tournaments and the reason for this is that because there is a greater spectrum of players this sometimes leads to giant killings where a notable player is put under pressure by a lesser light or where an unset occurs when a player of lesser strength overcomes a much stronger player.  Also open tournaments provide a much broader range of openings because once again there is a much larger pool of players prepared to try different ideas.  These dynamics are entirely missing in closed super grandmaster tournaments like the Grand chess snore.  

I suspect that if you had thought about this you may come to the same conclusion yourself.

I did not mean elitist as "only GMs should play chess". My point is that we should not try to attract mediocre people with no intellectual interests to chess.

too late.

I'm already attracted.... and if there's anything that I am.  "mediocre" is me!

It is never too late to give up.