Chess has always been under promoted. If you are the Director of Marketing for chess, how would you promote chess? How do you make it exciting? How do gather interest from the non chess playing crowd? How do you promote chess to the masses?
Chess Daily News from Susan Polgar
Chess is for nerds, that’s all.
I think special underwear to trap flatulence would be a boon to mankind. The unwanted exhaust could be transferred via a tube to a location several feet away. Imagine being gassy but still being able to enjoy a movie with the family, just unfurl the exhaust tube down the aisle of the theater sit back and enjoy the show and let someone else catch the blame for “cutting the cheese”. I call it the “Aztube”.
John Wayne was a nerd? Who’d a thunk it!?
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Try:
http://www.chessbase.de/Nachrichten/bilder/puzz8-08.jpg
Has any thought been given to making chess more appealing for TV, as was done with poker? I’m not saying that serious chess be eliminated. But how about a second type for commercial TV/cable with perhaps Fischer Random setups, rapid time controls, maybe the use of a doubling cube, and a particular stake for each game.
Learn from poker, tennis, basketball.
If I was a marketing director for Chess I would ask the managers of stores such as Borders Books and Starbucks about hosting local tournaments for small prizes, perhaps a gift certificate to the store etc. This would be mutually beneficial, as it would not only bring chess lovers (and new chess players) together, but it would also increase store profit.
It would be even better if they had two divisions: one for non-USCF affiliated players and another for USCF members, and a USCF recruiter/representative would be present to encourage newcomers to sign up.
People are lazy, they can’t bother watching serious movie, let alone playing chess.
This is actually an easy question. The answer is to promote chess as a sport.
First and foremost, promote the tournaments. There should be previews, explaining who the players are and whether they’ve been hot or cold lately. Is someone looking for revenge against another participant? Tell us. Give us the drama. Make it exciting.
Then, cover the tournament in progress, if you can, or after the fact, if you can’t. Don’t just state that so-and-so won this round. Make it exciting. Give us the rush to the finish, the thrill of victory and even the agony of defeat.
Promote the GMs. Speak of them as if they were sports figures and even celebrities. It’s not the such-and-such tournmant that’s the story; it’s the individual dramas. Kramnik and Topalov going toe-to-toe in an attempt to win the tournament. The lone American GM, underrated and out-matched, who upsets the 2700 superstar.
Here’s what not to do — and what USCF currently does too often, esp. in Chess Life — is talk about chess as a mere game, hobby or recreational pursuit.
Tournament articles should be about the winner or the American participants, not a big thank you to the organizers, a report on how many players there were in the under 1800 section or some sort of personal reminiscence.
Making chess more popular won’t be easy and it won’t happen overnight. It will take time, persistence and determination. But I, for one, believe it can be done.
–RS
The best idea I’ve heard elsewhere would be to videotape a regular game, then afterward have the two players (and/or other commentators) verbally talk thru the game. Overlay the analysis over the video, edit out the long boring waiting times, and bingo, you have an interesting and educational chess program that can be edited to whatever length you want.
Stop calling Chess a sport. It is more a competitive synthesis of art and science. The documentation associated with it makes it an academic discipline.
The answer to promoting it is applying a layer of political intrigue like Fischer vs. the Soviets. Team US vs. Team Iran at this point. Or Bush vs. Amadoinajihad.
Dear Susan,
One area where chess can be promoted is in the workplace. Many companies have sports and have active teams participating in tournaments. I haven’t heard of chess teams representing companies. There are many people who would be interested. USCF should take active interest in promoting rated tournaments within company premises.
Regards,
Ravi Kulkarni
Ravi’s idea is great, but let me add to it.
get a corporate team and have them challenge other corporate teams!
GM vs. Ford
Yahoo vs. Google
That would be fun.
Plus, these companies would start recruiting GMs to work there!
Susan, have you ever walked up to a kid that quit playing, or someone who doesn’t like chess and asked them why? I think the biggest problem is we go around asking other chess players what the problem is. How can we answer these questions? We love chess and can’t even fathom what is wrong with it.
You travel the world and are highly involved in the public. Why do “you” think most people don’t care about chess. Why do “you” think children quit playing?
I can only say that there are two types of people. Those that like chess and those that don’t. This is decided at a very early age. I think its very rare if not impossible for any person who doesn’t like chess to suddenly like it enough to put any money or time into it.
Kids quit playing because they fear being rejected by their peers. Chess isn’t cool, past a certian age. Rap music, sports, going to the mall, dating… those are important. Chess is for nerds and intellectuals. Both of which will not get you a date. That is American culture. There is a kid that was local to our area. He got up to 1600 or so by age 14. Then the P word hit and he felt his time was better spend playing sports. He doesn’t come to tournaments anymore. My guess is he is very content hanging out with friends, playing video games, and checking out girls.
Why do you say it is “under-promoted”? It is only under-promoted from the perspective of people who want to make money from it. Those people want a bigger audience/market for chess so that they can sell books, TV programs, coaching lessons, etc, or else receive substantial prizes to compete professionally.
From the perspective of everybody else, the commercialization and promotion of chess is not necessarily such a good thing. It would be nice to be able to view top tournaments in progress and follow top players. But we can do that today on ICC or chessbase.com.
Chess is still mainly an amateur activity, and is almost exclusively an amateur activity in the United States. It seems to have gone out of fashion, but why is amateurism in sports and games bad? Does chess have to be on TV for chessplayers to feel that they aren’t wasting their time?
For many years, only amateurs were allowed in the Olympics, and participants were proud of the fact that they were playing for the love of their sports rather than money. The IOC eventually threw in the towel, beaten down by professional sporting interests, including the state-amateurism of the former Soviet bloc countries which was indistinguishable from professionalism.
Susan has been a chess professional since primary school, so she probably takes it for granted that the professionalization of chess is only good, but I don’t think it is so obvious.
Why is the professionalization/commercialization of chess (i.e. “promotion”) a good thing for most chess players? Why is it bad that in the U.S. chess is a game for amateurs — that is, people who love the game?
No non-chessplaying person is ever going to be interested in watching Kramnik advance a pawn so as to take away a support point and render Topalov’s knight useless. Well, maybe if Topalov could then take a swing at Kramnik, followed by their handlers rushing the stage in a free-for-all brawl emceed by Jerry Springer, with silicone implanted young ladies in thongs jumping up and down. In other words, chess is what it is, and those of us who enjoy it need to quit asking why the great unwashed don’t! On second thought, even us geeks – at least most the males – wouldn’t mind the young ladies.
… make chess a hope for a better life …
I agree with the post above. Everybody is always asking these questions, how can we promote chess, what can be done to bring the game to the masses, etc. They never stop to ask the simple question: why?
Why should those of us playing chess in the United States want to share our beloved game with those that tend to only ridicule that which they do not understand (which is almost everything), whose ideas of deep thinking involve, in the most extreme cases, Bill O’Reily and The Davinci Code. Many people in the United States do not even know the names of the top political leaders, let alone their job functions.
Do these people deserve to play chess? Is this really something to be so highly desired?
Anon, you missed the point. It doesn’t matter whether chess is a sport, an art or a science. Call it whatever you like. But if you want to reach the American masses, then you need to promote it like a sport. Even the cooking channel has figured that one out.
Why are you so obsessed with promoting chess? Chess promotion will only help the elite chess players. I am a class A player and very happy with the current state of affairs. Why must people always try to overpromote and exploit the good things in life? Just leave it alone already. Chess will never appeal to the masses in the USA. I love your chess site Susan, but I always get this weird feeling about you when you harp on promoting chess. LEAVE IT ALONE!!
richard stanz – I agree, but here is the crux:
The majority of the “action” in a chess game never happens and only takes place in the minds of the actual particpants. In order to even begin to be able to convey it to others, they need be educated in the game to some degree.
Even the cooking channel offers up a UNIVERSAL experience that is both tactile and tangible even when being broadcast through an old-school, cathode ray tube.
ALSO, there are many other reason why kids quit playing chess other than peer pressure. There are just too many other enticing offerings at the buffet table of life and many of them simultaneously provide a larger number of people with a substantove way to earn a living whgile also tapping into the same dynamics that chess play affords.
Does this mean that modern day chess promotion is akin to a modern day perpetual motion machine? No, but it means that there should be very realistic goals set for just what can be accomplished from a pragmatic point of view; instead of myopically only choosing the romantic and heroic perspective that all it takes is a sincere effort for it to succeed.
Yea, maybe chess can become as popular as American Idiot, err, Idol, where people write letters to the editor complaining about Sanjayah (sp?) not being voted off the show.
Find a way for a lot of non chess people to make money off chess playing and chess players and the problem will solve itself.
That is the crucial nucleus (that is oft tacitly not spoken about) in all these other examples that people bring to the table trying to bolster their arguments about how promtion/propaganda works and will be successful.
Find a way for the people supporting the chess players to make some big money, and then the chess players themselves will make some (less, of course– its capitalism!)
Who do you think makes more $$$? The people that win the World Series of Poker or the people that host it and those in the support and supply chains (TV networks, casino industry, gaming suppliers).
Chess players always seem to forget about the heirarchy of money flow in a capitalist system. Making money for other people FIRST, before taking it for yourselves, is the key.
This has been the problem for some time now. Denial of this basic tenant of capitalism with regard to chess promotion, growth, and chess economics has helped stunt all growth.
You are now returned to your regularly scheduled sychophantism sessions….
The unfortunate fact is that Bill O’Reilly’s viewers – as stupid and gullible as they are to swallow the mistakes and out right lies that he repeatedly shouts in contradiction of the facts – in spite of that, are still probably above average in intelligence compared to the majority of people, just because they are at least curious enogh to care, even if not capable of the critical thinking required to separate fact from fiction – as with those who actually believe the Da Vinci Code is based on fact. In other words – We’re doomed.
I think chess is a fine game that helps kids develop intellectually. I can’t think of a better recreational activity for kids to be involved in from the point of view of intellectual development. So, getting more kids to join scholastic chess clubs where they could learn and experience the game would be a positive thing,
But apart from that, I can’t see a lot of reasons for promoting chess. Where I live I don’t have much trouble finding opponents at my level. Since internet chess became popular, it is even easier to find opponents. But in the Boston area, it has never really been hard.
And there doesn’t seem to be any shortage of top chess players to create new games to play over and appreciate. Chess literature already has millions of games, and hundreds more top-level games are added every month. If anything, chess is getting a bit “played out” after more than a century of being played as a professional sport. Indeed, one could argue that it would be good if chess theory were developing a little slower.
So, apart from seeing more kids playing chess, I don’t really see a lot of good reasons for chess to be “promoted”.
Besides, it is hard for me to see it becoming popular on television as a form of entertainment — not without a lot of compromises and adjustments that would take the essence out of the game.
It is hard to believe that it could compete, as popular entertainment, with poker, for example. Poker has very simple rules, is easy to understand, has the gambling aspect, and has money, women and loud-mouthed “characters”.
Even if chess were played by cool guys for lots of money with slinky women all over the place, it would still be slow game that is hard to understand for most viewers. It’s sort of like trying to make math a big sport.
Let’s face it, chess isn’t all that entertaining except to people who play chess themselves. I don’t see that changing, and I wouldn’t really want that to change.
Almost all of you left very sensible comments, but this comment struck me most:
“I love your chess site Susan, but I always get this weird feeling about you when you harp on promoting chess.”
Me too! Why make chess a mass sport? Chess sells itself and if it doesn’t, bad luck for human mankind
I would guess that most members of the USCF play chess because they find it challenging and fun.
We might like it if chess were more of a mainstream interest so that we could chat about it with our friends, relatives, co-workers, neighbors, etc the way most people do with football, baseball, and basketball.
But most of us a pretty comfortable with chess being a niche interest, and few of us are on a mission to make it extremely popular. Even in Germany and Russia, where it is about as popular as you could imagine it being, chess isn’t a major sport.
I for one don’t really want the USCF to spend a lot of money evangelizing chess. Having the USCF do a better job of “promoting” chess isn’t a goal for me. My goal for the USCF is that it rates games efficiently, conducts some annual national tournaments without a lot of fuss, and sends American players to international tournaments once in a while.
I’ll echo what another person said. Work very hard to get Starbucks as a corporate sponsor. When I first started playing, I had visions of being able to wander into a coffee shop …and finding people playing chess…and then be able to play the winner… (This has actually happened a couple of times!)
Maybe we could start at the local level, donating a few cheap chess sets and mousepad boards to the local Starbucks chain. Maybe they’d post a small sign “Chess sets available for customer use: Just ask!”.
Sponsoring a major chess tournament would be chump change for a corporation like Starbucks.
I re-read what I posted earlier, and have to say I was very cranky at the time. Hypoglycemia sucks.
For the most part I still think that promoting chess to non-players is very difficult, but I don’t want to be so pessimistic about it.
You obviously have done much more that most people have done for chess. While what you are attempting is difficult, I will admit if anyone can do it, its you.
I would downsized the question to
“Why my wife does not like chess?” I like chess very much. I tried to make her fond of chess, but I failed. I know she loves me, but she never loves chess whatever I told her. Because her parents never taught her to play chess.
But do you know that my two daughters 5 and 7 yo likes chess very much. We find quality time together. We can talk about chess story and top chess players. We went to tournament together, without my wife for sure. And you can guess that they will fond of chess when they grow up. They know Kramnik, Topalov dan their Toilet gate. 😉
My conclusion here is that we have to:
1. Start chess when we were kids. And we are in the right tracks already. Chess in School is the key. But we have to wait our chess kid players grow up. Maybe in 10 more years. At that time, chess is everywhere and very popular.
2. Make a free tournament and gigantous number of chess players playing in it and frequently. Because to enjoy chess, at least you have to had one or two times experience playing at a tournament.
Want to make chess popular? Have you teach your children?
Define the targets.
1) Sponsors
2) Serious Players
3) Causal players
4) Professional Players
5) Non Players
The needs and means are different.
Poker got it — they got a number of tennis players to play a poker tournament for their charities.
Can it be done with chess too?