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0 pointsV-23y ago0 comments

> I feel like Fide should focus more on rapid, and get more involved in the online scene. Maybe this is the opportunity.

This cheapens the tradition and the prestige of the discipline. Chess has attained a revered status over the years. It's not perceived as a game like any other. That's why it's able to attract luxury sponsors, if nothing else. Shifting the focus onto the "double bong cloud drunk banter blitz" territory destroys this legacy. This casual, fun aspect exists and does very well independently of the official, suited up aspect. They are complementary. But I'd really think twice before trying to remove one of the pillars. Chess is the most known, researched and commented mind game on the globe, it doesn't suffer from niche viewership. There's no need to try and fix a problem that doesn't exist. Tradition and legacy is something no amount of online clicks could ever buy.

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dalbasal3y ago

I didn't say anything about removing classical. It obviously has a place.

As for prestige and tradition... we shall see, I suppose. Prestige follows the prestigious. We are now entering terrify, with Magnus at least, where the best players don't want to compete in traditional matches and the chess watching public doesn't want to follow it anyway.

If you think FIDE involvement in rapid/online cheapens chess... then you'll eventually be in a world that has tradition & prestige on one side and popularity and the best players in the other.

V-2OP3y ago

> We are now entering terrify, with Magnus at least, where the best players don't want to compete in traditional matches

[Citation needed] :) Says who? What exactly indicates the best players "don't want to compete in traditional matches"? What implies that Magnus forfeiting his title (having collected five) is a result of such general trend?

Either it's "best players", or only Magnus, in this specific situation, having already built a remarkable legacy.

> and the chess watching public doesn't want to follow it anyway.

[Citation needed] again : ) Because I'm not sure if the chess watching public KNOWS that it "doesn't want to follow" traditional matches. Regarding the previous world championship match:

"Total viewership for the event exceeded 12.6 million hours watched with a record peak streaming viewership for chess of 613,000 concurrent viewers making the FIDE World Championship in Dubai one of the most watched events in streaming globally."

https://kommunikasjon.ntb.no/announcement?publisherId=168238...

> In total, viewers of the World Championship spent more than 12.6M hours on broadcasts, which is twice as much as at the World Championship 2018. The average audience of the World Championship 2021 was 239.7K viewers, which is almost 2.5 times more than at the previous iteration of the tournament

https://escharts.com/news/fide-world-chess-championship-2021...

Guess the chess watching public didn't get that memo. Viewership can grow substantially, despite this era of shortening attention spans. I can't see a problem in need of fixing here, much less a trend going in the opposite direction that these numbers show.

> If you think FIDE involvement in rapid/online cheapens chess...

Involvement in and of itself, no. It has its place. And they're involved already. There are World Rapid and World Blitz championships. But these titles don't hold the same value as "the" World championship. Ask Abdusattorov ("who"? Exactly :)) if he wouldn't prefer to be the classic world champion.

What I'm saying is that this involvement should be kept in proportion, and pushing towards rapid/online, with the goal of attracting more publicity (which is already larger than ever before, the internet takes care of itself without the need for any official blessing), steers towards diminishing returns, while the long-term costs would tend to increase.

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