Classical Time Control Is Dead

I don't know how you're capable of telling a rapid game from classical game besides the annotations of "white was probably in time pressure at this point and missed a +8 continuation and settled for a +3"

@bbmaxwell Umm... you’re not spectating the games from 100 years ago, you’re watching a summary of the gameplay. It’s like watching only the highlights of football, not the game itself. It’s impossible to spectate a game that involves staring at a person’s face for 30 minutes while they think. Could you imagine how horrible The Queen’s Gambit would’ve been had the players moved in real time? The series would’ve been 40 episodes of nothing happening.

Also, you’re watching only a handful of games from a large historical period; of course you can find great games in a pool of thousands.

Finally, what made those games such great theater was that they were filled with inaccurate play, leading to spectacular mates. Classical today features more precision, and thus more draws, leading to loads of clunkers.

As I said before, if you want to watch the best possible chess, it’s not going to be from humans, so why even try. Keeping a match under an hour total is just way more fun for everyone except those who enjoy watching tectonic plates shift.

My opinion is this. Classical time controls are necessary. Why do I say this? Well, you know how you say that faster chess is more entertaining? If classical chess ceases to exist, speed chess will be of lower quality as well, because by getting better at classical, players play better speed chess as well. Take away the classical, there will be no need to go deep into position and future generations of players will ultimately be weaker, as there will be no need to study in depth.

Standard chess doesn't exist to satisfy crowds, but the challenge the players to do their best. Opening theory is a problem though, memorising a game up to move 20 is against the spirit of the game.960 chess or other variants are the future of chess.

@nklristic this is silly. I’m not saying that the WCC should be blitz, it should be rapid—maybe something like 30+10.

The quality of the chess is only marginally lower, and in exchange you get more exciting games. Why is “going deeper into a position” something to be desired? Right now matches last 3-5 hours. Why not 8 hours? That’s deeper. Why not correspondence? That’s deeper still. Why not just watch Stockfish play Leela at depth 100? That’s way better than anything mere humans could do.

Chess has exploded in popularity because of the online revolution and faster, more exciting games that are still high quality.

And nothing will preclude anyone from playing classical chess, just make it a niche category for the old folks. As I said before, the WCC is already decided by rapid and blitz, since the classical section is usually drawn these days, so why even bother with a week’s worth of Sveshnikov draws? It’s pointless, tedious, ugly, and unwatchable.

From our perspective, yes it is only marginally lower, but that is not the case in reality. For us there is no difference between an IM and Carlsen. In rapid you could play some gambit line and catch someone totally off guard, in classical they will punish each other for that in many cases.

Correspondence is entirely different animal, they use engines in competitive games and it is legal for some reason.

Well some matches in the candidates lasted around 7 hours, Giri's game game with Alekseenko on the top of my mind.

Chess might have exploded, that is true, but without classical chess, the quality of players would dwindle, by how much, I don't know, but it would. Even very strong, established players say that too much speed chess can hurt their abilities. Look at GM Hikaru Nakamura, he is playing speed chess all the time and his classical is suffering. Now imagine new generation player who has never played classical time controls. Compared to someone strong from today, that player would be much weaker and that is a fact. He would never have the opportunity to play the most accurate moves, and quality would be much lower in general - speed chess abilities included.

In other words, speed chess needs classical chess if it is be of the highest quality it can be, and classical chess needs speed chess in order to be watchable. 

Think about this as well, your argument is like saying that marathon should be removed from athletics, and only 100 m sprint should remain as it is better to watch.

Besides, from most players perspective, it is probably more enjoyable to play longer games - maybe not 8 hours, but 90/30 per side or something like that for sure. Speed chess is a rush, that is great, but let's not forget that the original idea of chess is to sit down and have a think, to challenge yourself to find the best move you can. You can't do it in the same capacity in speed chess.

Meh. You could also argue that longer time controls are a crutch. Boring methodical players have time to calculate every variation to counter every move. Players know this and become hyper risk-averse, playing to not lose rather than to win.

So ultimately it depends upon your definition of “high quality chess.” I find risk-averse play to highly accurate, but not particularly interesting in any sense of the word. It’s ugly chess. Is ugly chess “high quality” or is it just accurate? Very few games from the WCC from this century will be celebrated because they’ve been highly accurate snoozefests.

I just know that when I play I prefer to think more about what I do, and when you find something that is good, there is nothing like it. If you play 5|5 you will never have that kind of thing. From the viewers point of view, no pun intended , I can understand your point. But that is not the only point of view we need to address. There is the point of view of players themselves. After all, there should be a place for short and long time controls.  No need to discard one or the other.

Chess is a business and requires attention to survive and flourish. There are plenty of interesting things that one can do that nobody wants to watch. For instance, some people find knitting to be highly enjoyable, but sponsors aren’t going to pay my Aunt Elaine to knit a sweater.

Viewers = money and sponsors = higher prize funds = more of the best players gravitating towards faster time controls.

Classical chess is going to wither away, like it or not.

Ok, agree to disagree I guess.

Can you point to empirical evidence for this?

If there's any actual evidence in there, give me the time into the video, please.  As far as I can tell, the popularity of Chess plummeted after Deep Blue beat Kasparov.

1:20 : "A new game has made it to the top of twitch"

Thanks.  I'm not sure esports are a good way of comparing current and historical popularity of chess, but at least it's evidence.

Timy!!!!

it's just the first thing I remembered when you wanted empirical evidence; chess streams steadily increased until you could see them at the top.

Yes, there is evidence. There have been articles in The Sporting News about the surge in popularity, and a survey by YouGov showing its popularity. We also know that chess.com has seen its members increase dramatically and that chess viewership on Twitch has skyrocketed. Nobody on chess.com plays classical games and nobody watches it in streams. GMs are rushing to adjust to this new world and even popular non-chess pros are streamers play the game occasionally online. Yes, it’s more popular than ever.

Although a reason why classical games are nonexistent here is because they don't offer any classical time controls...

Makes sense that there's so many reasons that lead the average viewer to gravitate towards faster time controls. Watching people do practically nothing as they think is not entertaining to watch. Not everyone has the time to watch classical for a game that will most likely lead to a draw in the end.