Ideas for chess promotion

Various sports like soccer, football, nba basketball, formula 1, and others have their superstars paid in tens if not hundreds of millions dollars, while top chess players get paid hundred time less. This of course, doesn’t include income superstars make from marketing of brands like, Nike, Coca Cola etc.

If we don’t compare chess to other sports in this way, we can at least compare it to games like poker or backgammon. Even in poker, top players have made tens of millions dollars with their profession which is of course a lot more than top chess players can make.

I believe that truly amazing and brilliant players like Hikaru should be paid in tens of millions dollars and have the status of superstars and that all strong chess players deserve more bread for their performance.

 I also believe that chess needs better image than the one it currently has. I mean, you would typically imagine professional poker player as some cool guy who is living on the edge, is sort of like movie or rock star, drinks Dom Perignon out of high heel from Megan Fox and is free from all the burdens of society. On the other hand, you would imagine chess pro as some nerd who can only speak in weird language with strange (probably Russian, or Croatian J) accent, has Phd in quantum physics, has thick glasses, and when he or she is on a date –takes a girl or a guy to public library and ..  well you know what I mean ;-).

Typical response to even suggesting that chess deserves better name is that chess is to dull, it is to complex , you can’t make anything exciting out of it to general public who don’t understand basic concepts of the game and things like that.

Well, I have to disagree with those remarks,

First let’s take soccer for an example. 11 guys on each team are running on the field for 90 minutes, and maybe. if you are lucky , someone scores a goal or two. Personally, I find that thing extremely boring to watch, and at one time when I was watching some particularly boring game, I was yawning so hard that my jaw hurt afterwards. What, may be interesting at some times is the tension and occasional fight between players.

So how come they can have all that money, well, everyone in the audience wears shoes, everyone has a kid that has mandatory gym class in school, and you can sell this things to all these kids over and over again. And if you want real good selling business, you got to mix it with something that is addictive, it can be alcohol, it can be sugar in soft beverages, and you have soon come to money from sponsors of this goods that is marketed via soccer and sold to customers/audience.

Let’s look at poker as second example; it is obvious that poker, specifically Texas Hold’em which is most popular, (and which I like J), got rolling with start of regular TV poker shows, and with appearance of online poker. It has it’s addictive aspect and poker sites make money on rakes on hundreds of thousands of players addicted to poker. Thus, the popularity and cool image is provided by sponsors and poker sitescampaignes and their role models, while

the high earnings of top players is financed partly by sponsors and mostly by winnings. Regarding fun or not aspect in regards to what can be seen on TV poker, if you have ever played poker and have seen analysis of hands by expert than it resembles more the chess analysis or lecture in statistics than anything even remotely connected to fun, in fact, poker grinding is extremely exhausting and can be very boring but you don’t see that stuff on TV nor you hear such thing from commentators. What you can see is stacks of cash and chips on table, great tension on players, you can see fear or excitement in their eyes, you can feel their disappointment when they lose or feel their joy when they win, and you can almost taste the deceptive ease with what they get kind of money that ordinary human has to break their backs for years to see only small part of.

With things said before, I believe that chess has good chances to get to the place I believe it deserves, since it is not truly more boring to non-experts than any other high paid sports or games, and it has its highly addictive component.

From here on, I will wright down ten ideas on helping promote chess and grow its brand and I would also like that you also write down your ten ideas also. Ideas that I write may be good or bad and I don’t care too much for that. Maybe some other day I will have better inspiration, and then I will wright something better, it works the same for you. If we can write down hundreds of ideas, maybe one or two of them will be really good and they could be operated on to get this beautiful game to a place it deserves to be.

1.       Chess tournaments prize pool should resemble more those of poker tournaments in the following way: For example each player stakes for 10 000$ to participate in tournament, he can buy chips with that money, for example 20 chips and then he bets minimum 1 chip on game result (win, draw lose) or maximum all 20. When a player loses all his chips he is out of the tournament or , he may be allowed to re-buy. Tournament plays in several rounds, and last 3 guys standing collect all the cash. If there are 200 participants, prize pool is 2 M $, and winner may take million bucks!

a.       Since you don’t want to be in a bullet tournament where you have say 2000 FIDE rating, and you invest 10 000$, only to see Hikaru in the same tournament J, participation should be allowed based on rating ranges, for example within 100 points FIDE difference (2700 – 2800, 2600 – 2700…). This way, you can be 1800 FIDE rating player and have a potential to win million bucks from participants with ratings (1700-1800). Now that would be exciting and feasible for even average Joe to win big time.

b.      Chess organizers would take their rake, same as in poker

2.       Make TV events of top bullet or blitz players. Some money can come from sponsors, but players should risk more with betting their own money. I would love to see a bullet chess match between Hikaru and Magnus where each of them buys in with 100 000$ of their own or sponsors money, and winner takes all! They may play numerous games for 10 000$ a game also.

a.       In TV events for general public, focus of camera and commentators should be on people and their emotions and only general aspects of game, like white is struggling or black is dead lost, this things would be easily understandable even by people not familiar with chess. The emotional swings in players can be huge and overwhelming, similar to poker or any other game or sport.

3.       FIDE online arena – Another thing to include in anti cheat mechanism – I suggest activating video camera and microphone of players laptops/computers that play rated blitz games along with current anti cheat systems to further enhance integrity of no cheat concept. I even believe that with such additional measures, you could even start with systems that would provide playing online chess for money with no cheating possible (or at least reduced to minimum)

4.       Hikaru once said that in today’s world, average Joe doesn’t want to watch 6 hour chess games and that only bullet or blitz games are suitable to even consider for some general non expert audience and I totally agree with him. In that context, I believe that for example bullet chess can be marketed with some higher paced background music than Beethoven’s symphonies. You could literally start playing background sounds that are used for race car drivers clips, heavy trash metal and stuff (I can totally picture Metallica’s “Ride the lightning” soundtrack on certain properly maid bullet chess videoclip. I even imagine video clips with fast clip changes, and when last 2 or 3 seconds of time for game comes, you could even use matrix “bullet mode” J). You could then also start connecting bullet chess with sponsors like Red Bull which was unthinkable while considering classical chess.

5.       In TV events of top rated chess players playing chess, start using pulse rate meter on players and displaying on some sort of speedometer to audience. Don’t allow display of this to chess opponents but only to audience so that they could see when player thinks he is in deep trouble ( like s**! I just made a horrible move, I hope my opponent doesn’t notice that) or when he makes devious trap for opponents or things like that. Speedometer displaying pulse rate or excitement levels of players could also be used for TV poker shows.

6.       Top chess players should work more on their public appearance and image beyond chess scene, and start thinking of themselves like celebrities and acting like ones. If in such public appearances they find themselves acting eccentric or excessive, it will bring more media coverage and consequently more popularity on chess

7.       Remember how big was the media coverage of Kasparov vs Deep or Deeper Blue? The whole world knew about this, it represented the last stand in fight mankind vs machine, it was sort of romantic and historical battle. After the loss, all people felt bad. I think that this sort of matches should be held again, I would love to see Houdini crushed by humans in chess! If humans can’t do it by themselves than they should team with machines in trying to beat machines.  The analogy to this would be – men made cars, at first people were running faster than cars, but eventually cars got faster than people. Did people stop and cry because cars were faster than themselves, no, they made rally, F1 races, and drove those fast devils.

a.       Anyway, I believe that such chess events would be interesting to general public and could acquire large media attention

8.       If there will be more blitz chess in future, than chess figures should be slightly adjusted so they don’t fall so easily during fast plays

9.       Angry birds chess? Chess figures can be mixed with  other brands to attract kids to chess, and may be used in another games. “You must collect them all” slogans so often used can apply here also

10.   You can use clips in Hollywood movies of main character playing bullet chess for money somewhere on parking lot or in a bar. This format has more potential to use in the movies than poker does. And of course, this format would be a nice change from the typical used in movies where two characters talk something over a chess board and someone always surprises his opponent with mate in one move (OMG, my stomach would hurt whenever I would see such s***)

That were the 10 ideas, it would be great if you would write your own 10 ideas on helping promote chess also, and maybe if there appears some idea that is good, and It gets seen by person who is in the position to actually use it , we may see something exciting happen.

WOW!! You must have some serious time on your hands to make that long of a post!! Well, more power to you. You have obviously put a good bit of thought into this.

Indeed.