FIDE World Championship - Magnus Carlsen vs Ian Nepomniactchi

I think I might have misunderstood "publicize" as English isn't my first language, and thought it implies something along the lines of "popularize". If it just means to make the games accessible to the public I don't disagree.

I don't know where you and Wits-End get the idea that chess games are to be read but not watched. The reason why there wasn't a big live TV coverage back in the days was that in most countries only a minority cared enough about chess to justify occupying a spot on TV. That doesn't mean the chess community doesn't care. In Eastern Europe, for example, people would gather around radios to follow the moves. And Giri's and Polgar's coverage today had around 500k views. Reading about Fischer-Spassky is great, but watching it live is something different. At least I am quite happy that there is a coverage... I think the internet is a perfect spot for a sport like chess. Those who like classical chess can tune in, and those who don't can ignore it. Personally, I don't think it is a problem that people think chess is boring, I just think it would be awful if a long tradition of world championship matches would be tossed out the window and exchanged for rapid chess, as you've suggested in other posts, just to entertain the average chess.com crowd who is disappointed when they realize that a real chess game takes actually longer than an episode of The Queen's Gambit. As said before, there are a lot of "entertaining" formats available for everyone on youtube. No need to gamify the most important event of the chess world.

My strength went up by about 200 points just by following the coverage of the last match and listening to the commentators.

I highly recommend watching on fritz. No interruptions and it automatically analyses the game.

Whether we agree or disagree, i respect your opinion. And to be certain, if people want to watch the games and sponsors can pay the bills, then so be it, i wouldn’t take away from that. My point was simply that by making it a sizable event, FIDE is certainly trying to both popularize and publicize the game. And why not? I’d be disappointed if they did not do so. Here is my issue, once the event has been built up and we get viewers to tune in, they will most likely see a drawn event. To the more learned viewers this may well be exciting, but to the new viewers I’m afraid it is just a lost opportunity to make the game interesting and enticing. 

Hmmm, how do i put this? I never said they games shouldn’t be watched, my point was that the real fun begins in the after game analysis and will be talked about far longer and in depth long after the event is complete.

Of course, there wasn’t world wide tv coverage ages ago and radio was just one way of popularizing and publicizing events, of any kind. 

And i agree with you that we must not toss out the traditional and exchange it for rapid chess. There is room for both. However, the market is going to dictate what sponsors are going to be willing to pay for. If classical chess becomes too stale and utterly boring while rapid chess garners the viewership, the end of the road isn’t far behind for classical WCC. Perhaps the format could be altered whereby a drawn game is less palatable to the players in favor of going for the win. Again, just my novice opinion. 

I definitely don't think we should throw out classical chess, but could we maybe shorten it a bit? Three hours and fifteen minutes a side for games that last 60 moves, then increment? Seems a bit excessive.

Somebody needs to do a study to see how much errors increase at various time controls. If we find that statistically there is no difference, or even a very small difference between this format and one that gives two hour total + increment or even one hour total + increment, they should consider a change. We really need to know what the diminishing returns curve looks like so we can make an informed decision instead of assuming that we need six or seven hour games for the best chess.

Why?

Who knows better than the best players in the world. When the position doesn't need as much time, they simply play faster. Today they finished with over 1 hour on each clock.

99% of people don't watch, and 99% of people who watch, don't watch the whole time.

I did watch it today for atleast 85 percent of the time

I probably watched about 75% of it

Yeah, it was so fast paced that after losing those 15 seconds they never had a chance to talk about the opening

🙄

I watched less than 100% too.

@llama47 - we know through lots of studies that the number of errors increases dramatically after a couple of hours in mentally taxing activities such as standardized tests (SATs, medical exams, etc.). Fatigue starts to set in and the ability to focus decreases. Just because a position becomes complicated and a player thinks longer late in the game doesn't mean necessarily that they will come to better decisions. We all assume that 6 hour games will lead to better play than 4 hour games, but this is done entirely without evidence. Who knows, given what we know about standardized tests, maybe the quality of the games will actually increase. You can't just assume that more is better. That's why.

If less is better then the players can use less time.

Even as a lowly non-titled player, when I was playing in tournaments I was aware of the fact that I had to budget my energy. These guys are only one million times better than me. I think they can handle it.

And Karpov Korchnoi!

Imagine if Nepo invited convicted murderers to do yoga on a mat in the front row, and Carlsen was getting secret messages in his yogurt!

After a fair degree of flippancy and subjective comment, I'd like to throw in what the Americans call "their two cents", and add some sorely needed objectivity to the debate.

World championship contenders with long surnames seldom do well. Look what happened to Nikolay Bogolyubov against Alekhine. And Rustam Kasimdzhanov was not undisputed champion, only the FIDE champion.

I imagine that by the time Nepomniactchi has written his name on the scoresheet he will be down half an hour on the clock. No wonder Tal could calculate so many intricate lines of play !

That seems like a very unscientific view to me, Llama. Longer games don't come without costs, and you're just assuming a priori that more time leads to better quality of play. Heck, why not let them think until they fall over dead? I'm just saying we should find the sweet spot that balances time and quality of play, and determine this time based on evidence and not presupposition. It confounds me that someone could have a problem with this.

Fair enough