Mirliva2012 wrote:
It isn't loud and fast enough.
LOL. That's priceless!!!!!!!!!! [and with more than a modicum of truth alas]
Why isn't chess more popular?
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Before the Euro 2012 match between Russia and the Czech Republic one of the commentators I listened to said that he really hoped the match wouldn't turn into a game of chess. When asked what he meant he said: "Well, a game where both sides just try to avoid mistakes and play it safe, and nothing interesting happens". I bet that's approximately how chess is perceived, and not only by those that followed the recent title match :-)
...well, it is kind of like the bank robber answered, "I rob banks because that is where the money is!" Poker is where the money is, and, like backgammon, or dominos, scrabble, horseshoes...there is the illusion it is based on luck. In the short term, luck can favor a beginner...but the reality is, good players end up at the final table. Also, girls like to play cards and have fun. This is much more attractive than being confined in a hotel for three days with people who on par, are over-weight nerds. However, the top chess players are among the brightest minds on the planet....go figure.
The would be players heard it's a "bored" game...
Also.. chess has close to no luck involved. So a bad chess player cant have a lucky day and beat someone. This is possible with Monopoly and Settlers of Catan.
Also the deep thinking scares casual non chessplayers off. Funny enough: the only place where I do see casual players play a game of chess, is in Dutch Coffeeshops. In many of those places you can ask for a board behind the bar. Appearantly some smokers enjoy thinking about such a game when their brain is actually a bit impaired :)
I probably know about 10-15 other people who play chess. Everyone I have met over the past say 30 years, if I had to chance to know them a little better ofc, I would say prob 80% played Poker and various other board games. I am not an intellectual and most others I have I have known were'nt either. I have always been a kind of social freak.
Could it be that chess is a board game designed for the non-social community? This would certainly provide answers if this were the case?
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dekaleaas wrote:
Also.. chess has close to no luck involved. So a bad chess player cant have a lucky day and beat someone. This is possible with Monopoly and Settlers of Catan.
Also the deep thinking scares casual non chessplayers off. Funny enough: the only place where I do see casual players play a game of chess, is in Dutch Coffeeshops. In many of those places you can ask for a board behind the bar. Appearantly some smokers enjoy thinking about such a game when their brain is actually a bit impaired :)
Reality is for people who cannot handle drugs. : ^ )
I disagree with the basic premis. Chess isn't popular? I've read that there are more books written on chess than any subject other than religion. The game has been around for 1,500 years, and the rules have been pretty much the same for 500 years, since the queen and bishop were given more mobility and pawns were allowed to move two squares on their first move.
Here in the Dallas area, many elementary schools have after school chess classes. The parents pay for their kids to have chess lessons once a week.
I can't remember the last time I saw adults playing monopoly or checkers or scrabble. Poker is certainly very popular, but of the others, I've no doubt that chess is far more popular.
....speculation, but a possible reason chess is not that popular is because the majority of people in the world are stupid and lazy....
Scrabble, Poker, and Checkers are all games that are extremely easy to understand (not to be good at though, mind you). ESPECIALLY poker. It's so popular because everyone can understand it. So now they can put it on TV and make advertising $, making it even more popular.
They tried putting blitz chess on tv with GM commentators (like maurice ashley I think actually). As you can imagine, it didn't work out so well.
1) Chess is a game that forces one to confront one's own intellect, it's strengths and it's limits. Most other games, taken less seriously, allow us to imagine that if we really wanted to we would be good at them. Not so with chess. One can never say one lost only because he wasn't trying.
2) Magnus Carlsen has said that what he loves most about chess is the look on his opponents face when he knows he has been beaten. Other games don't have, to the same degree, the sense of being forced to do something, make a move, as you find in chess. It is actually quite exhilerating when you are doing the forcing and quite discouraging when you are being forced. Knowing that you probably will never be the best, or even in the top ten per cent of the best might drive a lot of people from persuing chess, it's simply too hard on one's ego. Better to stick with games we can all claim are just for fun.
3) You can only improve by truly forcing yourself to think both differently and more deeply. At the highest level, luck has very little to do with chess. It would never be considered a game of chance, like cards. One could never truly say 'I had a bad run of luck tonite, I'll do better tommorrow.' More aptly we might say, 'I wasn't thinking well tonite, I'll think better tommorow.' (When in fact, internally, we might be thinking, 'I was thinking tonite as well as I will ever think.')
The mental aspect of the game, it's ability to both exhilarate and humiliate, drive us who love it (If I just work a bit harder I can get better) to it and others from it. 64 squares of heaven and hell!
I would like to throw-out a different viewpoint. It's because people think it's an intellectual game, when it's not. I've heard it a lot "Oh, you have to be smart to play chess" - no, it helps to see patterns - but the average person can do that. I see a fear in people that they won't measure-up in some way - that and the anti-intellecutal culture out there (Kids with straight A's are teased by bullies - simply for their grades).
But this handicap - about chess being intellectual it seems affects adults and perhaps teens, more than children. At least that's my experience with boy scouts. The young ones are at least willing to give it a go.
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On a side note - chess may seem slow - but I'd put forward that Baseball is slower - and cricket is mind-numbingly so.
chrisr2212 wrote:
check the rating, that should answer it
I play go when I'm not playing chess.
Chess is second on the list of game complexity.
1. Go. 1,000,000+
2.Chess. 1,000+
3. Checkers. 100+
Yereslov wrote:
But, to answer your question, chess is unpopular because of its very nature. It's a thinking game. Thinking is considered a waste of time by mondern man. We would rather have someone else think for us.
lol
If you like barbaric, mechanical, and dull games try chess.
The only thing separating chess from checkers is piece movement.
Chess resembles barbaric European ideals of how war should be fought.
Go is a much better game.
Yereslov wrote:
If you like barbaric, mechanical, and dull games try chess.
The only thing separating chess from checkers is piece movement.
Chess resembles barbaric European ideals of how war should be fought.
Go is a much better game.
Says guy with Russian grandmaster/name for username.
But I like Go too.
Yereslov wrote:
Why are you complaining about chess?
Try playing go.
There are only three clubs I know of in my entire state.
That's a lot less than the 15-20 chess clubs spread across the fifty mile area.
But, to answer your question, chess is unpopular because of its very nature. It's a thinking game. Thinking is considered a waste of time by mondern man. We would rather have someone else think for us.
If that was true, why would anybody think, should everyone be a "modern man"?
It isn't loud and fast enough.