chess vs soccer

 Please re-read what I wrote: "Strategy in soccer? Of course there is! That's like saying there's no strategy in basketball, or no strategy in football. Every team sport involves strategy!" I can also give you examples of long term strategy in soccer if you like, but frankly I think this is a silly and irrelevant point to be debating.

>>Moving chess pieces around a board willy-nilly in any form or fashion that comes to mind - even though the 2 people are using a chess board and pieces - is not chess

I agree. I never said that anyone kicking any object willy-nilly counts as soccer. My point was that you are saying that if a soccer game is not played on a full-sized field with 11 players per side, then it doesn't count as soccer. I object. If 4 kids throw down a couple of jackets as goal-posts and play soccer 2 vs 2, then it counts as playing soccer. If the kids are just passing the ball back and forth, then ok fine maybe it's not playing a game of soccer per se - but it's the soccer equivalent of playing online blitz, or working with the tactics trainer. The kids are still practicing their soccer skills.

>>Neither the FIDE nor the USCF require the use of a clock.

Fine, you got me there. But I'll give you a quote from the FIDE handbook:

8.7 At the conclusion of the game both players shall sign both scoresheets, indicating the result of the game. Even if incorrect, this result shall stand, unless the arbiter decides otherwise.

How many people follow these rules in their own homes, when playing against friends and family?

My apologies.  This is what you wrote, "American football involves a series of short-term strategies; so does soccer. There is just as much strategy in soccer as there is in American football."  I took that to mean that you believe there are no long term strategies involved in either sport.  That is a reasonable conclusion to draw from what you said.

American football is played on a field 110 yards long by 53 yards wide, goal posts in the middle of each end of the field, 11 players per side, 4 quarters of 15 minutes each, etc..  8 kids in their back yard tossing a football around, 3 complete passes equal a first down, a player is downed by being touched, etc., is not football 'per se'.  It is more properly called, "Touch football".  And although it does require the use of some of the skills involved in playing football.  The children may fantasize that they are playing real football.  They may all wish they could grow up to play real football.  But that doesn't mean they're playing real football.

Neither the NFL, the NCAA, the CFL, nor any of the many high school regulatory bodies would consider the game that those children are playing to be true football.  They'd consider it another game altogether, namely 'touch football'.

On the other hand, neither the FIDE nor the USCF would observe two people playing a bame on a chess board, with chess pieces, following all their rules save for writing the score sheet, and deny that they are playing chess.  The lack of a score sheet, in the eyes of both organizations, only means that the game is not officially sanctioned. 

And neither the FIDE nor the USCF have ever made any claim that any game of chess must be by either of them in order to be chess, so long as the rules of play are followed.  In fact the USCF makes it clear in their ruls book that their rules regarding the recording of games is applicable to tournament and match play of sanctioned games only.

However, if 2 people are playing a game on a board of 36 squares with 6 pieces per side . . . it's not chess, not even if they're playing with chess pieces.  Not even if they Think they are playing chess.

The 4 kids kicking a round ball around a sand lot are no more playing real soccer than the children tossing an oblong ball around their back yard are playing real football.  The fact that they are 'honing their skills' for the real thing does not make it the real thing.  In the case of the kids playing touch football, they know they're not playing real football.  If the kids playing makeshift soccer don't know it's makeshift soccer, that doesn't make it real soccer.

No one would observe the kids playing touch football and call them 'football players' based on that, no matter how often they do it.  Anyone observing a grade school child playing a very real game of chess with her older brother, or observing two old men playing chess in the park, will concede that they are chess players, no matter how seldom they do it.

Tunatin, if you were playing soccer by the accepted rules of soccer then you were obviously playing soccer.

I hardly consider it a technicality that the fact that there are more people around the world who actually play chess than there are who actually play real soccer.  In my above post I make clear the difference between real football and touch football.  The latter is not the former.  Neither does a few kids kicking a ball around constitute a real game of soccer.

The fact that people play at soccer in public while people play real chess in private no doubt gives soccer fans the idea that more people play (Play, not Watch) soccer than play chess.  Also, you sound like you are under the mistaken belief that having once played soccer means you still do.  It doesn't.  If you no longer play soccer then you don't qualify as being a soccer player.

 Then if a group of kids are playing on a field with a soccer ball, following all the rules of soccer save for having the right number of players and official sized field, FIFA would not deny that they are playing soccer. (In fact - and I coached kids teams for 4 years - in kids leagues it is common to play with 7 or 8 players per side instead of the full 11, and play on a field that is about 1/2 to 3/4 the size of a normal field and with a smaller-than-official net, depending on the age group).

I understand your point about touch football. I think you're still missing my point however. The question of this thread was which is more popular, chess or soccer. In terms of spectators, soccer wins hands down. Now the only question is participants. A teenager shooting hoops on his driveway is not playing an official game of basketball - but is he "participating" in basketball? I would say yes. Practicing for a sport counts as participation, in my books.

You may very well be right about there being 100s of chess games played for every soccer game. An official soccer game takes 90 minutes with a 15 minute break in the middle. One person could play 50 online blitz games during that time - but that says absolutely nothing about the total number of participants worldwide. In this example, 2 people have participated in chess (by playing 50 blitz games against each other) whereas 30+ have participated in soccer (11 players per side + 3 substitutes per side + coaches & referees) - despite there being 50 chess games to one soccer game. So your point about # of chess games vs # of soccer games is likely right, but also basically a red herring.

Also, I think you vastly overestimate the number of people who play chess. You claimed that "everyone" and "billions" do. Apparently the actual numbers say that about 600 million people worldwide "know the rules of chess". How many know the rules of soccer? I'd guess 3 billion. How many play soccer, even occasionally, at a very informal level? I'd guess 1 billion. And I've shown you evidence that 240 million are actively registered on FIFA-associated teams. Even if 600 million really do know the rules of chess (for the sake of argument, let's say that this number is not inflated) - how many play as actively (i.e., as often) as those 240 million soccer players?

Don't get me wrong, I love chess and I am hopelessly addicted to it. I'm not trying to say that soccer is better. But I think that worldwide, it's quite obvious that soccer is far more popular - both in terms of spectators and participants. 

Y take time to read?

Chess wins for me as players can play more games in their lifetime whether indoor/outdoor or organized /not organized. Also the word popularity is deficient for me. Is it just in recent years or decades or does it include all enthusiasts since the game inceptions? Vote for chess guys

@ "perfect gent"

obviously you aren't really a 'perfect gent'... and soccer might be fun for some people, even if it isn't fun for you because you've spent too much time playing chess and not enough time using your real muscles (that is of course other that your stepping outside to win some scottish archery contests).  lol

actually though, i enjoy all three (chess archery and soccer/football)

Lance (please forgive me for shortening your name, no offense is intended, it's just to keep from running the risk of misspelling it if I continue), the game you describe coaching I would consider a real soccer game.  Kids kicking a ball around a sand lot, under rules that very from day to day, I would not.  Neither would I consider the kid shooting hoops to be in the act of playing basketball.  He is shooting hoops, nothing more.  Now, he may well be a part of a basketball team, in which case that would make him a basketball player.  But the act of his shooting hoops alone does not.

When I said that for every 1 game of soccer there are 100s, even 1000s of game of chess I am not counting a person as a new person every time they start a new game.  I am saying that, for every 22 people actually playing a real game of soccer there are 50 or 500 playing a game of chess.

Also, I am not counting former soccer players as now playing soccer.  Neither would I consider someone who played chess 50 years ago, and never since, to be a chess player.  Someone who played soccer when they were a kid, but no longer plays, is not a soccer player and does not play soccer.  Soccer is almost exclusive to young people.  Chess is not.

When I have lived in 3rd world countries yes there was a municipal soccer game played every Sat or Sun afternoon (those were the real games), and kids kicking a ball around every day after school (those were not real games, but were the equivalent of the kids playing touch football).  But there were always a dozen of so people playing chess in the park, and after dark chess and liquor became ubiquitous.

When I've lived in Europe there again were always several games of chess going on in the park and in every coffee house I came to.

I never doubted that soccer has more fans and is watched by a great many more people than is chess.  But soccer, by its nature, limits itself to who can participate.  Chess does not.  Soccer also requires more facilities to play a real game than does chess.  In rural areas the space may be readily available in 3rd world countries, but in the cities it is not (again, not for a real game).  Yet I've never been in an area so poor, be it in Bogota, Guayaquil, Mexico City, Aftica, or anywhere else, where people weren't playing chess.  Little children?  Maybe not.  Yes they might be kicking a ball around (but not really playing soccer).  But teenagers and adults?  Definitely.

They'll stop to watch the soccer game on TV.  But then they'll go back to playing their game of chess.  some of them may have once played soccer, when they were younger.  But they still play chess.

Again, Lance, think about it:  The vast majority of people who actually Play soccer, by necessity, have to do it under circumstances at least as organized as the ones under which you coach.  And those get counted in the 242M your figures estimate play soccer.

Millions of people know the rules to football but do not play (myself included).  The same with basketball, ice hockey, and soccer.  In all those cases, far more people know the rules than ever play those sports.

But now ask yourself; how many people do you know who went to the trouble of learning the rules of chess . . . and then don't play.  And what is the percentage of them compared to those who do play?

I think we're just going to have to agree to disagree here. He's not "playing basketball", I agree, but I would consider him to be "participating in" basketball. 2 kids playing an informal basketball game against each other on their driveway may not be playing an official game according to official rules, but in my view they are playing basketball. 

I don't think it's fair to count every online bullet/blitz game and every informal skittles game as a game of chess, while insisting that other sports only count if they're played in an organized setting. If you're only going to count other sports when they're played in an organized setting, then to be fair we should only count chess games which are played in an organized setting.

Soccer is fun and deeply pointless at the same time.

It's like TV for people who don't have TV.  Now that more people are getting TV, look for soccer to go into retreat.   If there were penalty kicks every five minutes, that would increase scoring.  Then it would seem more like basketball.  So you've got a tradeoff between rare scores that send the announcer into cardiac arrest  ("GOOOOOOAAAAALLLLLLL!!!!!!") and turbo scores that don't mean anything until the last 2 minutes  ("He's putting on a clinic!")   Just as a side note, this guy named Richard just popped in for no reason to tell me he's having a salad.  I know this has no relevance to the topic, but it seemed as if he really wanted people to know he'd chosen a salad for his lunch, and now his message has reached more people than he could have dreamed.   Caio.

lance, I'm not counting game of chess or soccer, but players.  I have nieces and nephews who shoot hoops but none of them play basketball, not do they claim to.  They all play chess however.  They may shoot hoops better than they play chess, but again none of them will claim to be basketball players.  If you ask them if they play basketball they will tell you, "No."  But if you ask them if they play chess they will honestly answer, "Yes".  And they do.

Much like touch football, two people playing at basketball is called, "one on one".  If someone wants to play one on one they'll ask you if you want to play "one on one", not if you want to play, "basketball".

It all comes back to accessibility.  Soccer, basketball, football, etc., are all team sports requiring some sort of formal setting and (in reality) a good deal of pre-game preparation for a real game to be played.  To get a real game of chess played only requires 2 people and a few minutes to set up the board.  And, not being an athletic activity, it's open to everyone.

Chess is cheap, simple (in terms of actually getting a very real game played), and accessible.  And that's a big why far more people play it than will ever play any sport.  The fact is that more people will play most any and every popular game than will ever play even the most popular sport for those very reasons.

 Your nieces and nephews don't play chess, they play skittles. Unless they play in official USCF or FIDE tournaments it doesn't count as chess. People playing chess informally, for fun, is not called chess - it's called skittles.

/sarcasm 

 If done competitively, a cupcake eating contest can be considered a sport.  Just eating cupcakes is not.  The idea is that of a competition.

what kind of salad ?

I would watch a soccer/football game than chess, but playing chess > playing soccer/football

Soccer involves more thinking than u think, just like when you have to think about passing the ball and the defender etc.. If any of y’all watch professional soccer you will realize that there is more thinking than you think, the people that pass, dribble, and/or shot the ball think many steps ahead about the goalkeeper diving on way and the defender on the other. If you want to know about the most simple/common strategy they use you can search up “give and goes in soccer” on google.

In my country we made hybrid sport chessoccer. Because in soccer you do not use hands, it made sense that chessoccer players should carry wooden chessboards and beat the other players with it to help score goal. This hybrid sport combines the strategy and calculation of soccer with the physical brutality of chess

I don’t think Russia or any other country has a sport like that but if u have enough people to play it with..be my guest

Comparing football/soccer with chess is like comparing a machine gun with a sniper. They just have one similarity, and that's that they both have tactics. That's where it ends.

Hi bruhs