IM Greg Shahade: "Slow Chess should die a fast death"!

What? According to your posts most of the online stuff is already fast. There is revenue, as the number of chess sites show, but those people aren't looking at OTB, for the most part, and there is only so much money flowing around those eyeballs.

They are playing and watching chess online. These are people who are interested in chess even without any promotion. More audience can be gained for high profile chess tournaments with better promotion. Right now, I think that people don't watch slow chess tournaments because they are not interesting. People don't watch fast chess tournaments because they are not promoted as high profile or not well presented.

I think you are completely missing my point. I am talking about gaining the audience first. You are talking about converting the people into regular tournament players. Regular tournament players is one of the last steps. The regular tournament players are the small fraction of a large audience. The larger the audience, bigger the tournament player pool. And as the audience goes down, the tournament player pool also goes down. Vitality of a game or sports is based on audience interest which leads to more future players and audience.

People do watch long time control tourneys. 

Asvhapathi, all I have is one question:
Do you ever see short time games in chess books?

That is the answer to how long time control games are more quality than short ones.
It's just so obvious.
A rapid game will never make it to chess books, they're not immortal, they won't be discussed and analysed for decades. Long time control games are. As simple as that.

look at this ludicrous blitz game between Giri and Li Chao, it goes past the fifty move rule and Giri claims a draw after fifty two moves without a capture!  All it is is a time scramble, nothing more and who wants to watch that? 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Abntb8L_yS4

Fast chess sucks!

Agreed!

Maybe for video games. But chess is doing pretty well with millions of players world wide for 100s of years. I don't think advertising / playerbase is an issue.

Chess has been doing well for 100s of years. But, during this period, it has constantly evolved adapting to changing times and circumstances. Thats the secret to chess' longevity. Chess has not survived in its present avatar and perhaps will not survive in its present avatar. The present classical format is from around 1850s. So, its around 166 - 200 yrs old. And many great social and technological changes have happened during this period and the that old long format is now outdated generating no interest(just like test cricket). Chess is still liked. But, not the classical format. Thats the point I am making. Chess is not just long format. Any chess is chess. And its better to promote a format that people want to play and watch, rather than promoting a boring format that no one wants to watch or play. The reason chess has not been able to use modern opportunities to grow richer is because of this problem. No TV audience for this format means that there is not much sponsor revenue. And therefore the chess is quite poor as a whole and depends on donors. That reduces the quality overall as the participants don't have much monetary interest. 

I think the popularity of chess has actually risen in the recent past with the advent of online sites which focus on blitz and rapid. I hope this trend continues and blitz and rapid becomes the main focus and I hope that slow chess dies a fast death. I believe chess has bright future if fast chess becomes the focus.

I don't know if shorter games feature in chess books or not. I haven't paid attention to that point when I saw some chess books. And I haven't read that many chess books with such keen attention to know about it. Anyway, if longer the format, more the quality, then correspondence chess is of the highest quality and it is the only chess which should feature in the chess books according to your logic.

I think your logic is wrong. I think chess books feature famous games of top players from big tournaments. Since, they mostly happen to be of classical format, the games also tend to be of classical format. I don't think it has much to do with 'quality' of the game as such. But, I think the times are changing and you will see more and more blitz and rapid games featuring in books due to the influence of online sites.

It's true blitz and rapid events could be marketed better, but they'll never be mass-market material.

Chess is just too abstract and complex to appeal to a general audience. It's a bit like showing differential calculus puzzles in prime time - it won't beat the Superball. Ever.

Of course, you could show bikini-girls fighting in the mud by throwing chess pieces to each other. That would probably be a good evolution from a marketing point of view. But who needs chess then ?

Chess is a pastime, an artistic endeavour and a sporting activity, but like many beautiful things in the world, it isn't meant to be monetized (and doesn't need to).

Shahade is a chess professional and would like to make more money. I can understand him. He probably thinks that by making chess closer to a video game, he will increase its audience, and maybe find more students, or sponsors. Good for him. Let him try and let's see what happens.

I disagree

This is false. Many fans follow tournaments, and there is corporate sponsorship e.g. Tata Steel.

 This is false, many players enjoy classical time controls. The German team league Bundesliga comes to mind which plays 40/90 SD/30+30.

 False! This needs no explanation.

Rapid andblitz should grow for sure but there is no way it can replace classical chess.

he s a cheater. its extremely obvious. his poor cheater skills is commensurate to his poor chess skills

You keep saying no one but this topic alone, in addition to all the people that actually play long time controls, is proof enough that your premise is wrong. Most chess sites either show long time control tourneys or relay the games and many people watch them. So even that point is demonstrably false.

Yes, they also watch the blitz and rapid events too. Still say the market for mostly quick/blitz isn't there.

All these people that want to speed up the game, i only have 1 question for them have you ever watched a Soccer match? All this running back and forth just so someone can score a goal after an hour Don't get me wrong, i have nothing against soccer or the folks that enjoy it but it is not really that exciting to me Maybe we should speed it up.

"Chess is just too abstract and complex to appeal to a general audience. It's a bit like showing differential calculus puzzles in prime time - it won't beat the Superball. Ever."

Yes.

"Chess is a pastime, an artistic endeavour and a sporting activity, but like many beautiful things in the world, it isn't meant to be monetized (and doesn't need to)."

And yes. Exactly.

Maybe Ash is right if he's talking about actually getting non-players to watch chess (even as a chess player I only occasionally want to watch chess, though). The only possible chance is to take away all of chess's pride and make it unrecognizably superficial compared to real tournament chess. But then, what's the point, and besides, that would still take an absolute miracle to work. It's just pure idealism to me that Ash thinks there is any decent chance at doing this with chess, of all activities. But as hicetnunc said, these guys can try to prove us wrong, and if they do, color me impressed.

That just plain sucks that the only way you can express your point about chess is to give your opinion on Donald Trump. Classless move.

It's pretty redundant, anyway. If it's demonstrably false that's already saying that it can be straightforwardly proven false.