How to Make Chess More Popular

Scott Tortorice

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I think they're on the wrong path:

How to make chess more popular?

A round table conference took place in Odessa on May 29th on the theme “Popularisation of the game of chess: experience, perspectives, plan of action”. Both famous chess players (Ivanchuk, Eljanov, Gashimov, among others) and top-level managers of the chess world (including FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov) participated. We received a report on the round table, and our visitors are invited to join the discussion.

The report below was written and sent to us by WIM Olena Boytsun, who is General Secretary of the International Association of Chess Professionals (ACP) and working in marketing and PR for chess. Since June 2010 she is full time employed as Marketing Director of the Ukrainian Chess Federation.
After the findings of the round table were published earlier this week by Chessbase, Olena also sent us the material, adding
…it would be very interesting to gather any comments, suggestions, ideas on the subject – I usually follow the comments after ChessVibes articles with interest, although never participated. It is always great to brainstorm, and chess community is such a creative and wise community.
The right path:



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That's GM Alexandra Kosteniuk, BTW.

But seriously, as long as Chess is seen as a bunch of guys staring at a board for hours at a time, Chess will never go "mainstream". Its irksome, but to gather the masses you sometimes have to...package things a bit better. :D

But perhaps a better questing is: do we really want Chess to go mainstream?
 

kcdusk

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There was a thread here asking "How to make chess more popular?" a few months ago. Good question.

I think Chess is seen as "nerdy" and on a perception level with people who play "DnD". Lots of people play and enjoy the game(s), but how many are comfortable admitting it to other people? I have to admit, I just found out that my town (in rural Australia) has a chess club! I'd been looking for one for years but never found anything. Then the other day I noticed a small advert in the local paper saying they meet on the 3rd Wednesday of every month. Do I go? Who else will be there? And do I wear a disguise?, were the thoughts that crossed my mind.

I found this article which runs through some ideas for how to make chess more popular.

Link: http://gambit.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/28/how-to-make-chess-sizzle/

The article compares the popularity of Poker to Chess, and some of the ideas to make chess more popular include
  1. teach more people how to play
  2. treat chess as a sport and make it more exciting by having knockout competitions
  3. chess is better suited to the net where a "community" is needed (& chess has ready made communities) and advertising could excel
  4. for big games, between GM's for instance, have a "guess the next move" competition where anyone can guess and maybe win prizes.
The article actually argues that "treating chess as a sport and make it more exciting by having knockout competitions" wouldn't work. I disagree. Think of the worlds most popular sporting events. World cup soccer, NCAA basketball, Tennis Grand Slams - all knockout type competitions. Knockout is exciting. The best team/player doesn't always win which increases pressure on players and makes for better viewing. It also gives a clear cut winner at the end.

This article http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/crosswords/chess/05chess.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

uses the example that knockout or blitz games are "riddled with errors" as an argument why knockout or blitz games would not be a good idea for promoting chess. I'd argue the opposite. If you want chess to be popular you need excitement, timely finishes to matches and a clear winner. So maybe knockout or blitz tourney games are riddled with errors. But the goal was to increase popularity, and not more of what Chess aficionados value which is "a beautifully played game".

I also understand why "top players" would argue against blitz games deciding the outcome of tournaments or "worlds best" matchups. Playing 24 or 36 games where each game can take 3+ hours to complete means the best player is more likely to win than loose over the long haul. So current top players what to play more and longer games rather than less and shorter. But thats not whats going to make Chess popular in the public eye. The public wants upsets and under dogs and above all shorter conclusions to games.

I'd use cricket as an example. Test matches are seen as "pure" cricket but take up to 5 days to play out and still often end in draws. But its the traditional way to play the game. 50 over games are more popular and can be played and finished in a day with a winner, and have overtaken the popularity of test cricket. Maybe it goes against the "gentleman's game" of 5 day test match cricket. But 50 over games is what brings in the money to the sport. Even 50 over games are slowly being overtaken by 20/20 games (20 instead of 50 overs per side). Shorter games again. More risk. More upsets. Quicker results. The public are demanding it. I think there's huge parallels between chess and cricket. And chess could do well to model itself on cricket marketing.

Even American baseball has come into focus for taking too long to decide the winner of a game. Families don't have time to sit through a full game anymore when they can be at home in front of their large plasma TV and watch 2 or more episodes of the latest hit series for free. Article here by Bill Simmons re making baseball more popular. Again, the arguments fit well with Chess. http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/100729

So how to make chess more popular? Maybe chess has to ask itself if its willing to make the sacrifices necessary to gain the popularity it craves. I think once top players realise the money that could flow in from the changes, they would be more likely to support the currently unpopular changes that are seen as necessary.
 

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Some interesting considerations in this thread. Either the attention span of the average american is not very long or bogus psychological analysis would have us believe that is the case. I've never been fond of blitz chess as it's full of errors and quite sloppy and I prefer to approach perfection if possible. Still, blitz can be a lot of fun.

With that said, it's interesting if you look at the history of the Ultimate Fighting Championships, where back in the good old days each contestant fought several rounds to determine the ultimate victor and weight classes were not in the equation. Some fighting styles (ground fighting) were very slow and methodical and could take a long time grappling for position without a lot of action occurring. The current version you see on TV all the time has been ruined IMO by what I like to call "Americanizing", in that the contestants are not allowed to ground fight for very long if little is happening and are then forced to stand up and square off again, with a greater chance for a quick violent KO. This impressed me as someone's idea of what we in the US supposedly like to see - quick and violent - as opposed to the art of great technical expertise as required of good ground fighters. Funny but in the old day the ground fighters always won over the violent strikers as tech beat brute force almost every time!

So if we are going to promote chess to a larger audience then we would have to cater to all types of mentality I think. Those that relish the accuracy in the art of the game for the sake of the game more than its outcome, and those who like fast action and a quick result over any real technical expertise.
 

Scott Tortorice

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I've been meaning to jump in here again....

When people ask how we can make chess more popular, they are really asking one of two things:

1) How can we make chess more profitable?

or

2) How can we get chess on TV?

I say this because chess is currently one of the most popular games in human history! I mean, it's not like when you tap someone on the shoulder and ask if they play chess, they respond with a "Chess? What's that?" :)

Chess is one of the most recognized "brands" in the world and is tremendously popular with tons of books, an occasional movie, countless websites, a bunch of magazines, etc., etc., etc. Really, it is the envy of the gaming world. Unfortunately, because Chess is a public domain brand, no one has an incentive to try to merchandise it in a big "World of Warcraft" type of way. As such, the profit of chess arrives in small batches, from niche publishers to online sites. That is why most professional chess players don't command the salary of a pro-athlete. But let's also be accurate: Kasparov and Anand are both millionaires because of chess...so there is respectable money in chess.

That is why, ultimately, I believe the "how can we make chess more popular" really comes down to #2 - getting it on TV.

People who say that chess is not suited to that medium don't know their history, for chess was on TV and commanded a sizable audience. Check out this article.

Q: How did you get involved in the coverage?

A: As I remember it, I was giving chess lessons to Mike Chase, who had a very important job with PBS then, who ran the facilities for half a dozen stations. He was very enamored by chess and he was very excited by the teaching I did. One day I suggested, with the Fischer-Spassky match coming up, would it be possible to put something on PBS. Between the two of us, we got this thing going.

The initial idea was to go on every hour and do an update. It kept increasing. We finally decided that we would go on for two hours and do move-by-move.

I thought it was crazy. I said, “How can you explain chess when there is no interaction?” The audience can’t ask me questions. But anyway that is what we decided to do.

And we went on on that first day, before [Channel] 13 went on their regular schedule, and then we were supposed to go off for an hour for the break. … The final format was that we would go on for two hours until 3 o’clock, which was when NET’s program day started … and then revert to a report every hour.

We got so many phone calls [praising the broadcast] that we pre-empted “Sesame Street,” and we became a five-hour move-by-move show. And we did that for the next 21 games.

Within 10 days or two weeks, we had 1 million people watching in New York alone. It was phenomenal. We had the largest audience in the history of public television, doing chess. And of course, at that time, according to a Harris Poll, only 20 percent of the adult population over the age of 18 knew the moves of the game.
A fluke? I don't think so. I believe the reason why it worked is because the game WAS NOT rushed. In a style reminiscent of a WWII strategy room, Lyman & Co. did something very clever: they had each move come into the studio via a telex device. The play board would be updated and then Lyman would discuss the ramifications and, IIRC, take calls from viewers about what move should be made next. He paced it beautifully, giving everyone a chance to think about the game and try to figure out the best move. Add in the immediacy of a breaking news story, what with the telex and all, and the show was a hit!

Q: How did you handle the updates from Reykjavik?

A: The move was the event. And every time that move came in, we went to the move. A bell rang, and the move was posted, and we went to the move. And that created a tremendous sense of excitement. No matter what we were saying, no matter who I was interviewing, we stopped and we went to the move. And that created a great dynamic and flow.

Q: Was there really a bell ringing? Whose idea was that?

A: It was one of those little teacher bells, where you hit the top and it goes ding-a-ling-a-ling. We didn’t have anything else. It wasn’t because we knew it would be so effective. It was.

And we had someone — usually a female, as things were done in those times — a woman would come in with a move on a piece of paper.
This is why I believe the secret to getting chess on TV is to do the exact opposite of what everyone wants: we must keep chess slow and thoughtful, and invite the audience to play along. When you rush through a blitz game, there is no suspense. Worse, casual players will be left behind by the flurry of moves.

Now, to be fair, Lyman had the benefit of covering a chess match that transcended the game and entered into geo-politics, so a "war room" approach was perfectly suited to the show. At the moment, there is no such dynamic. So I would try this formula again, but I might tweak it a little. Initially, I would take a page from poker and have celebrities play chess. I hate to say it, but people will watch celebs do anything. :) Then I would add in a strong social media component, utilizing Facebook, Twitter, texting, etc. to allow the audience to follow along and offer analysis and vote on the next move. I would also have a "computerized war room" where the hosts could check with Deep Fritz or what have you and work that into the show as well.

In short, keep it slow, keep it thoughtful and keep it suspenseful!
 

kcdusk

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An article suggesting chess is already popular.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/claire-wasserman/how-to-make-chess-cool-an_b_747466.html

Quote "Chess doesn't have to be a niche market; in fact, chess is constantly and consistently being pushed into our collective subconscious. Through ads, subliminal messages, and Christopher Nolan's screenplay. Though Bobby Fischer has held the longtime monopoly on the mainstream's association with chess, apparently so have advertising agencies. From sleep aids to cell phones, financial planning services, the NBA Finals, and Marine recruitment, chess is the chosen symbol for all things Public Relations. It's history, it's setup, its strategy: all these make chess ripe for advertising interpretation and product hawking.

Film and television also frequently feature chess. Usually the intellectual emblem, chess can be seen in "Casablanca", "Inception", the "West Wing", "CSI" and "House". The list goes on. If chess is used so often, with such vast and varied audiences, then perhaps Chess-in-the-Schools need not worry so much about how to go "mainstream." Perhaps our demographic is built right in, with a bit of help from Ronzini pasta and the NHL. Rather than explain why chess is useful, we might be better served to just show our track record of success. "
 

Scott Tortorice

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Finally got around to reading this article. I find it to be a typical Huffington Compost article: rambling, inconclusive and, ultimately, little more than an exercise in rhetoric. I support Chess-in-the-Schools, but I think this article didn't shed light on anything in particular.
 
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