ChrisWainscott wrote:
The Soviets put vast resources into developing champions and a chess culture.
Yes. True.
But why?
why are Russians so good at chess
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macer75 wrote:
batgirl wrote:
badenwurtca wrote:
BTW Baseball in not boring, unless you Do Not understand the game of course.
A lot like chess.
A lot like pretty much any game, really.
Not really.
Ping pong, tennis, the ball is in constant motion. There is no time to think. Speed chess if you will.
Maybe I can shed a light.
I myself, see myself as The King of the World. I don't know why. Maybe some of us a are born to rule. That is a serious and honest opinion. People in a society are like cells in a body. Some of us are the "brains" of society.
Russia is very big geographically and very diverse ethnically.
To rule such a diverse people, you must standardize things. That is the root meaning of "rule" and in "ruler" a person who rules, or a metric ruler with centimeters and millimeters.
You have to inculcate standards into people's minds. That is the only way to rule them.
Let's look at the opposite direction. A place that cannot be ruled. That cannot be conquered. Afghanistan. Their sport is Buzkashi. You've seen it in Rambo 3. You take a dead goat out of bounds, then you try to put the dead goat into a circle. That's it. There's a catch There are about 50 horseman. No teams, every man for himself. And rules? There are NO rules.
That is reflective of their society. Every man for himself and their are no rules.
I've seen black kids in street basketball do this. 10 guys, no rules, every man for himself.
To be honest and fair, that is the foundation of humans. You see it on Black Friday at Walmart.
To be continued . . .
To rule people, you have to put rules into their heads.
That is why Russia clings to ballet. It is rule based. It is standardized. It is formal. Ballet dancers say that ballet is correct, too correct.
It is through rules and forms and standards that you can teach people to rule themselves.
And chess fits perfectly into that.
Chess is rule based.
By a standard and rules, it allows for the organization of society.
More correctly it allows for self organization, self regulation.
I know this for a fact. I run 3 tennis Meetups, as a disguise for chess, as a disguise to teaching people to rule themselves and thus for society to be governed.
To be continued . . .
I've seen Sumo wrestling on TV in Japan.
I love it. It is the best thing I've seen on Earth.
2 guys. Here are the rules. If you go down, or you go out of the ring, you lose. That's it.
And you get paid in cash, in an envelope, right then and there!
And you can't complain that the other guy cheated. There is a referee there. Everybody is watching. It's taped on TV. You cannot point or claim that the other guy cheated. He was better than you, and you don't get paid.
It instills in people that society is fair. You get ahead or not is up to you.
That is how you rule people in a society.
Because they produced many champions. Americans seem inferior to other countries.
Maybe they love chess ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
MickinMD wrote:
TheCryptt wrote:
Why are Russians so advanced in chess? They produced many champions. Americans seem inferior to other countries
In general, we've developed an anti-math, anti-science attitude where we look at hard work in science as something done by strange people like the characters on The Big Bang Theory or Alex on Modern Family.
You have something there. It is something in the American psyche.
In comic books, the villains are the scientists, the Brainiacs, the Lex Luthors.
The heroes are endowed with physical strength, Superman.
ChrisWainscott wrote:
You don't have that much rating inflation in so few years. It's because we now have the Lenderman/Shankland/Robson/Naroditsky/Xiong's as home grown 2600's.
Add in guys like Sevian and Awonder Liang and you have more on the way.
Add in guys like Sevian and Awonder Liang and you have more on the way.
Being a new member and chess player explain in this case what "home grown" means. I take it to mean they suddenly showed up and were contenders. Thanks.
MayCaesar wrote:
. . . Smithing, for example, may sound extremely boring to people who don't know much about it . . .
We all know The Riddle of Steel.
BlindThief wrote:
in that promoting chess as an “intellectual sport” gives off the facade that they are a smart people.
This is the problem with America.
How would one "prove" one is smarter than another?
How about a simple game. An ancient Indian war game. 32 pieces. 64 squares. That's it.
That is the problem with America. We don't have it in our heads that one is better than another. We don't even know what that means, really. We are not taught.
In cowboy movies, they are always playing Poker. If I lose this hand, I can get lucky in the next hand.
Chess teaches you that you have to be smarter to win.
You have to teach people in society who are the winners and who are the losers.
https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/why-are-russians-so-good-at-chess?page=8#comment-87405905
BlindThief wrote:
in that promoting chess as an “intellectual sport” gives off the facade that they are a smart people.
If a Pentium 4 computer beats a Pentium 3 computer in chess, is that a facade?
Oh by the way, to invent an artificial thing that can play chess, you have to invent computers!
BlindThief wrote:
in that promoting chess as an “intellectual sport” gives off the facade that they are a smart people.
To extend our physical abilities we "harness" nature by putting a harness on a horse.,
We can run faster on a horse. We can hit harder on a horse. We can carry things better on a horse instead of a rickshaw. We can farm better.
Then came the steam engine, the Industrial Revolution, and the rest is history.
We can't make an artificial chess player until we invented computers, which was just a blink of eye ago compared to when we put a harness on a horse.
long_quach wrote:
MayCaesar wrote:
. . . Smithing, for example, may sound extremely boring to people who don't know much about it . . .
We all know The Riddle of Steel.
I see your Anvil of Crom and I raise my Raiders of Doom
BlindThief wrote:
in that promoting chess as an “intellectual sport” gives off the facade that they are a smart people.
I learn, here, in the Chess.com Forum, that colleges are now giving out scholarships ($) for chess.
They used to give out athletic scholarship. I know you didn't hear me. Let me repeat that slowly . . . athletic scholarships for academic institutions.
That's American true intellectual-sport for you.
Not only Russians are good at chess but European people, in general, are very good at chess. The United States focuses more on sports like soccer, basketball, tennis, football, and other sports. Chess is an odd sport that the United States does not care about. I think that in Europe, sports probably are not that popular and not interesting than in the United States.
This rubbish answer was picked out by Google in my search query "are russians still good at chess?"
Google should be finding better sources than a forum post.