When a simple child’s game pays $60,000 to win
Aime Dunstan, Florida
May 12, 2007
SOUTH Florida is home to many world-class athletes, and second to none is Armando Valverde. The 38-year-old Royal Palm Beacher hopes to make his hometown proud as he prepares for his shot at a national title.
His game? Rock paper scissors.
The game of chance will draw 325 finalists and “trainers” from around the country to Las Vegas this weekend, where the second annual 2007 US Rock Paper Scissors Tournament Finals will be held. The grand prize is $US50,000 ($A60,000).
“I’ve been practising since I was a young boy, and my aspiration is to become the Rock Paper Scissors champion,” says Mr Valverde, a sales executive who began his journey to rock paper scissors stardom when he happened upon a regional tournament in Fort Lauderdale.
“I am excited. This is a great opportunity. It’s not every day that you get to try and win $50,000 playing a childhood game.”
Los Angeles TV producer Matti Leshem co-founded the startlingly official USARPS League in 2005 and serves as its commissioner. He was inspired to bring rock paper scissors to the US after learning about a similar league in Canada.
“It turns out Americans play a different style of rock paper scissors. It’s much more hard core, much more rock’n’roll, and we’re much better at it than the Canadians,” Mr Leshem says with deadpan authority, adding that this weekend’s tournament will be broadcast on ESPN.
“It’s really a validation for the sport that they’re going to be covering it.
Here is the full story.
Chess players!! Are you reading this? We have strong GMs playing for $500 – $1,000 prize when a Rock, Paper, Scissors champion pockets $50,000!! That is why the USCF needs to move to a different direction. We need to modernize this organization and put in professional people who can get the job done.
It is being held in Las Vegas and it will be broadcast on ESPN.
Rock Paper Scissors on TV sounds pretty entertaining. Over the last few years, it has become a very popular “sport” in bars across the U.S., and there are frequent tournaments, usually held in bars. I’ve read articles about them in major magazines.
If there were a TV audience for chess, it would be much easier to get sponsorships and large prize funds.
But Chess isn’t very well adapted for TV, especially with all the draws, very long games, lack of physical “action” or visuals for TV, and geeky, introverted /obnoxious chessplayers.
People have tried several times to create TV programs about chess, with varying degrees of success. But none of them have really drawn large audiences, although the viewship for Spassky-Fischer in 1975 wasn’t too bad.
This is really looking sad. I was depressed reading about bingo going on national tv. But… 🙁
http://community.tvguide.com/blog-entry/TVGuide-Editors-Blog/Tv-Guide-News/New-Tv-Game/800014519
Everyone can understand RPS. Most people can imagine themselves competing for the prize.
Not so with chess. Only about 20% of Americans even know the basic rules for how the pieces move. If your rating is in the 1100s, you’re still considered a “beginner” even though you’re probably better than 90 – 95% of all people who know how to play the game.
If you’re in the top 5 – 10% of all people who know how to play the game, that puts you in the top 1 – 2% of the general population. And yet, an 1100 is incapable of appreciating the nuances of play that a Class B or Class A player employs, and is totally mystified by master and grandmaster play.
Couch potatoes can appreciate the greatness of star athletes they see on TV, non-musicians can appreciate the a brilliant concert their favorite performers.
Unfortunately, in chess it takes at least a Class A or Expert level player to be able to appreciate what a grandmaster does. That would mean a potential audience of approximately 1% of 1% of the general population.
That’s the difficulty chess has to overcome in order to become a spectator sport.
-Eric
Come on: keep it real. You have better grounds for criticising the USCF board.
Roshambo is a fast-moving, televisual sport. Roshambo tournaments are not won by random choice, so the author is wrong [see the reports on the two Computer Roshambo contests]. Sophisticated processing of the back-history, and runtime adaption, is required to win.
TV Roshambo: excellent – let us have more of it.
Hi anonymous.
I took a look at the reports. It seems that if you are using a strategy that is non-random, then
the game is not won by random choice, but if both uses random strategies the result is won by random choice.
So, to have at least a 50% chance in winning, use random choise. That is because there is no pattern to trace for your opponent, and no way to know in the short or the long run the next choice.
That holds for computer RPS, but humans are not as random as computers, except when we take help from random sources. Therefore this game can be of some interest to the public.
Everyone seems to forget the tremendous publicity generated by the Deep Blue / Kasparov matches.. In my opinion the computer world is our greatest ally in terms of sponsorship but.. how to get that sponsorship to be economically viable and beneficial to them while advancing our sport. Perhaps sponsoring young hopefuls for the world youth championships with the companies getting advertising benefits. With all that being said..what about the kid? There is no money in chess (yet), so I rather be a lawyer or a doctor.. or a wall streeter,.i.e Gata Kamsky, Ilya Gurevich, Michael Wilder, Pat Wolf, and I am sure, at some point,Nakamura too. Geez I rambled enuff. You’ve got my vote Susan. I hope u see the winning continuation. Because right now the game is unclear without any sure way to go..
I am looking forward to see you as president, Susan, you have my vote. I must say the position on the board is extremely unclear without precedent. Here is what I want. Our team to win the Olympiad, female and male. World Champion candidates built from the ground up. China did it, India is doing it. So can we. Sponsorship from corporations of these kids. Chess as a subject in schools..too much…not so!
But why do you want that? When Susan gets on one of these “promote chess” kicks, I always want to know: Why? Seriously, why does chess have to be a corporate-sponsored sport with big-name celebrity players making big incomes? What is wrong with chess being mainly an amateur recreational activity?
Chess is already dominated too much by arrogant grandmasters who treat other chess players as fish and patzers. Why are we in such a big hurry to make these guys rich and famous, as well as obnoxious? (Assuming we even could.)
I’ll tell you why I want to see chess promoted — it’s what I see happening to kids when they get into the game.
Take your focus off of the relatively small number of egomaniacs and look at a junior event where a room full of elementary school kids are concentrating silently for half an hour or more with virtually no noise, no interruptions.
Watch a shy, awkward girl as she awakens to the realization that she is good at this; watch her start to read more because now there is something she wants to read. Watch her become a leader for the younger kids at the chess club who now come straight to her for lessons and advice.
Watch a highschooler get up, stunned, from a game where he was mated by a kid half his age — and come looking for help and advice on what and how to study. Study. Not play Nintendo for five hours an evening. Not make small circles at the local intersection on his skateboard. Study.
Watch an eight-year-old lose four games in a row and come away smiling, saying “Now I have some games to show to my coach so that I can get better!”
Watch children learn to think ahead, plan for contingencies, take responsibility for their mistakes and learn from them.
Then watch them come back stronger than ever, with the confidence that comes of having actually mastered something that inculcates both patterns of thought and patterns of behavior that are necessary for a full and fruitful life.
That is what I have seen. And that is why I want to see chess promoted — and how it should be promoted.
It’s all about personalities, entertainments and competition.
Remember iron chefs on TV?
We don’t need big money tournaments, TV contracts, and corporate sponsorships for scholastic chess to develop in the United States. Scholastic chess is developing rapidly in the U.S., without any of those things. Susan is a part of this boom.