Why isn't chess more popular?

First time for everything, right?

Because non chess players have a weak brain.This proves 90% of the people in the world are IDIOTS

Yet we have non-chess players, known as electrical and software engineers, who have figured out how to beat us chess players outright in a game? I laugh at your statement sir, laugh at it!

Go is the second most popular board game.

So is chess.

The nice thing about go is that you can never draw. Someone will always have a 0.5 point advantage.

@Flags,  you should join in @Snakes new thread...

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/off-topic/troll-war-known-trolls-exposed

It's a great belly laugh.  You're posting skills are way ahead of most the participants, expect (maybe) for @Snakes himself.

Very funny stuff.  Great graffiti by @Snakes in the first 40 posts.  And the comments are rising very fast.

snakes can be such a snarf bag. He ought to unblock you. He claims to be spiritually awakened after a visit to Notre Dame. He should "walk the walk".

Snakes is hilarious. I was actually taking him seriousley until I saw the rest of his forum posts: http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/chess-is-only-for-a-higher-class-of-people-who-belong-in-a-higher-society

Thank you chrisr2212, Still am : )

Keep toasting yourself to random comments. It's very becoming.

Seems to me Chess is increasingly popular thanks to internet sites.  

I do! hehehe

I was already crazy, so big loss there.

Cheers!

A book about gamedesign (The Art of Game Design, Jesse Schell) gave an interesting view about this matter. In chapter 9 its about the focus of the player, and how to keep it.

Some general rules for most people:

People want clear goals: if a long and shortterm goal is clear, people will stay focussed longer.

Direct feedback: short feedback after an action keeps focus better than feedback that comes long after the action.

Continuously Challenging: humans like challenges as long as they are reachable. In general people enjoy to resolve a challenge that is slightly more difficult or about the same as their skill level. (you dont enjoy solving "1+1=?"- thats no challenge)

The author then gives an image that explains quite good why some people are frustrated if a task is to challenging and others get distracted because its to easy.

The graph shows the tunnel of 'flow'. If a game keeps the player within that tunnel it keeps the player interested, because each time the player solve a challenge that matches their skill.

The example that is given is Alex (A). Alex starts playing tennis, and he is happy to get the ball across the net (A1). The challenge getting the ball across the net is easy, but Alex just started playing, so they match.

After some time Alex's play improves and just hitting the ball over the net is not challenging anymore. His skill is bigger than the challenge and that gets him bored (A2).

However, when he meets a strong oppononent his skill of "just getting the ball across" is not enough. Alex will feel anxiety because the challenge of "getting to about the same level as his opponent" is not within short term range (A3)

To make it enjoyably again, he'll have to practice (alot) so his skill again matches the challenge. (A4)

Interesting. Thanks for sharing it.

I believe that no matter what the chess lovers of this world do. To even consider  chess may have any form of sustainability, is such  a ridiculous notion, it's actually quite amusing...lol. 

The presumption that the boardgame, chess, will be in any type of public demand in the near future(10-20 years), is, "simple arrogance!"

Ahem... "simple arrogance" from an arrogant simpleton ?

Sorry, I just couldn't resist that.

So basicly I think people are confronted with to high challenges to quickly when they start playing chess.

And at the same time they are not able to improve their skills to match up with the challenges they face.