Why an American will NEVER be a World Champion

finally, you make a great arguement!!!! Saying that my parents are from India, i agree with every point you have about the education system. I dont belive though that weight has anything to do it, and i think in the next 20 years we have have a great new American World Champ, maybe even one that rivals of Bobby Ficher

In other countries chess is part of their culture, many youths are enrolled in classes with their normal grade school classes so they are instructed early on.  Not that I don't agree with many of the things you have written but I don't think you are right in the fact that no world champion will come from america again.

After all chess is simply a game, and many of america's brightest minds are involved in other more important things and probably don't put as much effort into a game.

Uhhh... The infamous cheater... Even though the article's aggressive as always, I found it quite interesting. The writing style is similar to that of my literature essays ;D 

An interesting link between obesity and lack of discipline! :D Though it is a bit too generalized, as not all obesity problems are mental (lack of...), some of them are genetic, medical.

Two of my classmates had lived in the U.S. and, according to them, the education level is very low there. They agreed that the curriculum of year 10 in the US can be compared to that of year 7 in Lithuania ;D Don't know how justified their statements are, though.

I saw no racism, and no laughing at baseball (or rounders as we call it over here).  The laughter as I saw it was aimed squarely at the "world" series. 

  Good one!

I spent 3 years living in Germany and quite a lot of time in the UK.  I didn't notice much difference.  The UK had quite a lot of overweight people.  In fact, in Bavaria it was very obvious the people had traded beer for exercise long ago.  Come to think of it, I've been to the Middle East and South America, too, and didn't notice a huge difference in the number of fat people compared to skinny people.  Of course, that's all just my personal experience.

I'm from the midwest, myself.  The greatest difference I noticed was when I went to California.  EVERYONE seemed almost unhealthily skinny there (southern Cali, northern Cali seemed much more even-keeled).

"Mr Cobblepot, have you actually seen Japanese League Baseball? Lots of tiny, short-sighted chaps running about and falling over.Great fun, but more family entertainment than serious sport to most.The Japanese also prefer proper football. "

Just add buckteeth and the sterotype is complete enough for those who can't

see it? 

Although Cheater_1 points of arguements are all certainly valid, he obviously exaggerates too much in many of them, however it is certainly worth discussing. 

My former Clarinet Teacher, when he was applying for colleges, was offered a free tuition to MIT (for those who don't know one of the best tech colleges arguably in the world) based solely on his ace-ing of New York State Regents Exams.  Now... all you have to do to pass the Math "A" exam in New York State is to get something like 16/23 multiple choice questions correct and NOT EVEN DO ANY of the free response questions.  This is about a 40%.  This state is supposedly one of the "best" in terms of public education standards in USA.  I think I could have passed this exam, take in 10th grade, in 3rd grade.  And I am by no means a "genious".  Hell, I am teaching my 8th grade brother the basics of calculus... not very hard.  ( by basics i mean the meaning of a derivative and the power rule)  Americans are certainly lazy and we have WAY too many lawyers.  McDonalds has to put "warning hot" on coffee cups because some idiot americans are going to sue McDonalds if spill their coffee and somehow didn't know it was hot.  I seriously fear for my generation.  We may need "mathematical translators" to translate 44-12 --> 32.

No offense, but that statement made you sound pretty unintelligent. It falls into cheater_1's statement that Americans don't know the difference between to, too, and two. You see, "to" is a preposition. You are looking for the word "too," which is the adverb that you need. I agree with KillaBeez in that this generation is too fat and lazy to do anything. I also agreed with everything else he said except for the unnecessary political reference. If you want to voice your opinion, go to the Open Discussion Forum. You would enjoy it.

But this is the most truthful thing cheater_1 has ever posted. I'm one fourth of the way through Spanish 2, and no one knows how to put a sentence together. I'm one fourth of the way through Algebra II, and no one understands how to solve a system of equations. Blame whomever you want, but it's the fault of the people. There is no discipline. There is no work ethic. Everyone expects everything to be handed to him, and no one is willing to work.

BasicLvrCH8r, you are dead on!  America is really going downhill.  Same for my Spanish 2 class.  They can't conjugate worth squat.  People in my calculus classes have the teacher do all their work for them!  They cheat on big examinations.  50 percent on a test is considered above average.  Is this how America will be?  And even if those prodigies get better and become GM's like Ray Robson, will they ever be world champions?  Likely not.  They may have been trained at a young age, but only have a certain amount of room to improve.  There will not be another American champion.

You can consider it the "world" series because all the best players from around the world play in the MLB!

I am not fat, quite the opposite in fact. There are millions of Americans that are not fat, and they are in great shape. So by your logic, their discipline and will is determined by the laziness  and obese around them? Very poor argument.

Also, your attempt to correlate the poor American educational system with not having an American world chess champion is poor also. There is no evidence to suggest there is any correlationbetween the two. In fact, our only champion as you point out, was not exactly the Einstein of the academic world. The fact that I have played 11 year olds (with 11 year old intelligence) in tournaments who could beat 90% on this site, just shows that you don't even need intelligence to be successful at this game.

Your arguments of professional athletes...what does this have anything to do with chess?

How somebody raises their children...what does this have anything to do with chess?

Your entire argument was based on a bunch of half baked assumptions that had nothing to do with supporting your argument. Even the fact that we have only had one champion since 1862...So by this logic we will never have a black President (since we have not had one at all since 1776). I'm pretty sure that will not be true by next week.

Judging the whole by weaknesses of the minority is just plain stupid. Just like this post. By the way, there has only been one world champ, besides Fischer, outside of the old Soviet Union since the 1930's. So you could probably make a this generalized assumption about any country you wanted to without so many rediculous attempts to justify yourself.

Full disclosure -- I am American -- but this is not the basis for my rejecting these outlandish arguments.  I will not argue that Americans are better in any way than anyone else.  Nor will I even argue the ever-so-popular "All men are created equal" liberal line.  No, my argument is more subtle -- are Americans allowed to be subtle?  What are people like in your country?  In your city?  Are they all old?  All young?  All hard-working?  All lazy?  As if any one of us could accurately classify all Americans as being this way or that way.  Yes, trends do emerge, and I will not deny the grain of truth in them.  But to confuse the population with the individual is a serious lapse in logic.  Rules tend to have exceptions, and even if Americans tend to be lazy -- something I am not prepared to admit, by the way -- this would not mean that EVERY American is lazy.  There are just too many of us to generalize.

Suppose, for the moment, that we were all stupid and lazy.  OK, what about those who go live somewhere else, and pick up those customs?  What about naturalized citizens who come from somewhere else and were so ingrained when young and impressionable, but now consider themselves to be Americans?

OK, suppose there is no immigration or emigration.  Completely sealed border.  And within this sealed border all Americans are stupid and lazy.  Even this would still be a snap-shot in time, and would say nothing for trends in the future.

For all these reasons, it strikes me as highly arrogant to presume that one can know the future with such a level of certainty.

Even though i'm not American some that i've seen are obese, and most "American" Champions will probably be people from foreign countries.

It's pretty easy to make mistakes with to/too and their/there/they're when typing.  Your fingers tend to type what you hear yourself say, and generally don't care about context.  'To' is much more common than 'too' and starts the same, so this is what often gets typed.  A few years ago I wrote a report to do with dark matter, and by the end of it, i'd typed 'neutrinos' enough times that when I had to type 'neutron' I just couldn't do it.  It kept coming out as 'neutrino'.  I know, pretty cool huh? Also, I quite often type 'thing' as 'think', and 'though' as 'thought'.  Sometimes your fingers just decide on words for you.

I think there is a way for America to produce chess world Champions. Create important chess tournaments on American soil with good prize money. Get the best players in the world interested on playing on American soil. Let them win for the first years, then Americans will want part of the action. Chess will grow and eventually great players will emerge!!

Sorry cheater,

Most of us have no great need to live in reflected glory.  Apparently you do and it bothers you that you can't.  Also, if you're fat and feel it hurts your game, get thin.

The Russians had 30 + years of rigged championships before Fischer.  They even tried hard to rig that one.  If they hadn't rigged them, Keres would have been World Champ.  Then, after winning, Fischer wasn't allowed to play under the same rules that the Russians had forced on everyone, through the Federation, for those 30+ years and wouldn't play.   Recently the last, and probably best, World Camp since Alekhine (who drank and smoked to excess) finally lost to a computer.  And so it goes. 

As Bob Dylan once said. It's like obsenity.  Who one really cares?  If the Champ is from Andorra, it won't stop me from playing.  And, it certainly won't improve or worsen my play.  

Nor will having your rant about the American education system change chess.   It's not related to the game.  That has never has had a bearing on one's ability to play chess.  Ask any 5th grader who's kicked some college graduate's adult butt at a tourney.  Ask any computer. They can't count past one.  Education? Fischer was no great shakes.

Rant all you want.  Draw idiotic comparisons and irrelevant analogies all you want.  They have no bearing on playing chess. It's still a game. It's the best game there is.  But, it's still a game.

Wasn't Morphy World chess Champion also?  Yes Fide and USCF might not have been around, but he was an American and also the best in the world bar none at the time. 

Also America gave us the mind of Harry Nelson Pillsbury who without doubt would have challenged for the title if he hadn't been ill.  Remember he won one of the strongest tournaments of all time.

America will have a reincarnation of one of those minds sooner or later.  :)

Nowhere near top of the medals per capita table I'm afraid.  America was number 32 on the medals per capita table.  Jamaica was of course top, by some distance.  Only Jamaica and Bahrain won more golds in Beijing than they had millions of population.  America were way behind Britain (15th) but slightly ahead of canada (39th).

The OP might as well be racist. Maybe not to the highest degree, but creating the premise that all Americans are the same?

Sings stereotype to me.