26 ms·

I may be misunderstanding something, but isn't Chess exactly the opposite of what we're talking about? Take two players, one ranked extremely well, and one a li

by edanm 16y ago

I may be misunderstanding something, but isn't Chess exactly the opposite of what we're talking about? Take two players, one ranked extremely well, and one a little below him. Chances are, the higher ranked player will beat the lower ranked player almost every time. That's exactly the opposite of what I think makes soccer so appealing: almost no one can predict which team will take a World Cup, and every World Cup has its own team which does far better than predicted. This rarely happens in Chess.

jules 16y ago
That depends on how big the difference between the two chess players is. But the question is, would it make grandmaster chess matches more interesting if we removed a random piece from the board? This is essentially what the current refereeing system is doing with soccer. I am baffled that anyone could think that introducing random unfair judgement by a referee improves a sport.
- edanm 16y ago
  I think I haven't explained myself properly. It's not that I think the bad refereeing makes the sport better. I don't, and I wish it were fixed. What I do think is that, with something so obviously successful, it's pretty hard to know what kind of changes might break it. To use a simple analogy, assume you're a new programmer going over some very old financial software at a bank. The thing is written in 30-year-old COBOL code (and written badly at that). I'm guessing most programmers would cringe at such a system, not understanding why it isn't being "improved" by rewriting it in a better language (and there are good reasons too, like being able to easily add new features, etc.). But as you and I both know, it's probably not a good idea to change it. Not because COBOL doesn't suck, not because there are good reasons to rewrite (there are some good reasons), but because it already works, and no one wants to mess with that. P.S. Having said that, I personally do wish they'll change something to make the refereeing more solid. I don't think it will make Soccer any worse, even though I can't be sure. More importantly, I'm pretty sure that Fifa is going to cave on this issue withing 10-20 years, because of public pressure, and allow some form of instant replay.

by edanm 16y ago

jules 16y ago

That depends on how big the difference between the two chess players is. But the question is, would it make grandmaster chess matches more interesting if we removed a random piece from the board? This is essentially what the current refereeing system is doing with soccer. I am baffled that anyone could think that introducing random unfair judgement by a referee improves a sport.

edanm 16y ago
I think I haven't explained myself properly. It's not that I think the bad refereeing makes the sport better. I don't, and I wish it were fixed. What I do think is that, with something so obviously successful, it's pretty hard to know what kind of changes might break it. To use a simple analogy, assume you're a new programmer going over some very old financial software at a bank. The thing is written in 30-year-old COBOL code (and written badly at that). I'm guessing most programmers would cringe at such a system, not understanding why it isn't being "improved" by rewriting it in a better language (and there are good reasons too, like being able to easily add new features, etc.). But as you and I both know, it's probably not a good idea to change it. Not because COBOL doesn't suck, not because there are good reasons to rewrite (there are some good reasons), but because it already works, and no one wants to mess with that. P.S. Having said that, I personally do wish they'll change something to make the refereeing more solid. I don't think it will make Soccer any worse, even though I can't be sure. More importantly, I'm pretty sure that Fifa is going to cave on this issue withing 10-20 years, because of public pressure, and allow some form of instant replay.