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Chess is having its soccer moment now. Here is why: 1- The entry cost has fallen dramatically. Before at a minimum you'd need to afford a chess set and a coup
by IG_Semmelweiss 4y ago
Chess is having its soccer moment now. Here is why:
1- The entry cost has fallen dramatically. Before at a minimum you'd need to afford a chess set and a couple of books. Now, all you need is a parents phone. This is similar to soccer, where the entry cost is any ball you can find.
2- its egalitarian. Your size, sex, height, and even age do not matter. This has always been true but now its more pronounced with apps blurrying entry further. This is also similar to soccer in that even age differences dont really matter
3 - learning curve has flattened dramatically. This to me is key. In soccer, anyone can jump in an play even if you cant learn by watching. This was not true for chess until apps came along. It is particularly powerful that kids no longer need to follow notation or boring books to learn how to play well. Everything can now be taught by video, at your own pace.
4 - chess is now hyper social. This is another key element also enabled by apps. By being a 2 player game, its not a game that is social by nature. However, now you can be social anytime, anywhere. No board required.
- localplume 4y ago[dead]
- rcme 4y ago1 is funny because a chess set and some books is way cheaper than a phone. The harder part is finding people to play.
- humanizersequel 4y agoTrue, but a phone capable of running a chess app is essentially mandatory in the West, whereas a board + books is an extra purchase.
- BurningFrog 4y agoThe biggest thing is that now you can find someone of similar strength to play with in 20 seconds!!
- jrpt 4y agoYou could do that 10-15 years ago too though. Chess.com has been around a long time.
- pavo-etc 4y agoWasn't always in your pocket though
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y agoAnd ICC(Internet Chess Club) was around even in the 90s! Chess video lectures have existed since the eaely 00s too, though they cost money and you'd buy them on a DVD filled with a mixture of video files and PGN files along with some metadata to be viewed through Chessbase. It was basically the same thing as Chessable is today. Probably competitive in price too; Chessable is pretty fucking expensive if you actually want the video lectures.
- BurningFrog 4y agoI compare with when I was young, and you had to find and meet a physical person.
- raincole 4y agoMy question about online chess is: why aren't people feeling that their opponents are cheating? I don't play chess. But in other online games, like FPS, the players always complain about cheaters. Then why isn't it a problem with chess.com? It's much easier to cheat with online chess than an FPS game, no?
- creakingstairs 4y agoIn lower Elos, it’s pretty obvious if the other user is cheating, so the platforms seem to detect them pretty well.
- hannob 4y agoThe question is: Do I care? Particularly if I'm not super-competitive. I play chess irregularly on a not very sophisticated level (ELO ~400). I get automatically assigned opponents. Sure, it's possible that some of them cheat. It's probably not super attractive, because I'm not sure what the fun is in "I beat random ELO 400 player on chess.com with a computer". So maybe one in a few dozend games I face a cheater. If you get into much more competitive chess then people probably cheat more. But I guess for the vast majority of players it doesn't matter.
- hgsgm 4y ago400 chess.com Elo (not ELO) is so low that bo cheater would never fall so lo in rating to play against you. 400 rating is still learning how the pieces move.
- bsder 4y ago1) A lot of "cheating complaints" in multiplayer games are simply people that suck. There was an article a while ago that examined several of these kinds of games and most people made the most absolutely basic blunders. 2) FPS games have a lot more degrees of freedom to cheat. There is network lag, hidden information, aimbots, etc. Chess, by contrast, has no hidden state and everything is contained on the server. The only way to cheat is simply to play better moves than your level. 3) Cheaters get bumped up in level quickly and wind up against people who can flag them for cheating. Almost all of the master level chess players can identify suspicious "computer" moves. Most systems have a way to flag a game or move for review. Finally, computers can deeply analyze the games and look for behaviors that don't match "humans". 4) The flip side of that is that amateurs blunder so much that they wouldn't be able to tell even if they got cheated against--by and large. Jerk behavior tends to be far more problematic than cheating. For example, if you get a winning position, it's not uncommon for an opponent to stop playing but make you wait the rest of the time to count the win. You will bump into this, and it will annoy you way more often than cheaters.
- jrpt 4y agoThat was all true ten years ago too so I don’t think that’s it. What changed is the Queen’s Gambit got popular, then covid caused online gaming to become even more popular, and then there were some things that made chess popular recently like chess boxing with streamers on YouTube.
- nextaccountic 4y agoAnd the Niemann cheating scandal
- wongarsu 4y agoAlso Magnus Carlsen being relatable to young people, Hikaru Nakamura ,the world's best best speed chess player, having fun and dishing out sass on YouTube and Twitch, and lots of good commentators and players making great content on popular platforms. Lots of factors built the base that was able to turn the interest from Queen's Gambit into a lasting and growing phenomenon.
- mcv 4y agoMagnus and Hikaru are absolutely fantastic ambassadors for chess. Very relatable indeed, and that does a lot to get rid of chess's old stuffy image.
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 4y ago> made chess popular recently like chess boxing Because everyone is a boxer already.
- Shorel 4y agoI would say Nakamura, the Botez sisters, and Ben Finegold are bigger factors than chess boxing. But in general, yes, YouTube streamers are making the sport more popular.
- alexb_ 4y agoFailing to mention Gothamchess is weird - he's a 10 times bigger pusher of chess than Ben Finegold.
- qup 4y ago5 - your parents are really likely to actively encourage it, instead of restricting the amount of time on it
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- MisterBastahrd 4y agoThese are good points, but there's a social aspect that this misses: there are quite a few twitch streamer personalities who are high level chess players AND can actually hold a conversation. So you've got a lot of kids and young adults who are being exposed to the game through entertainment and want to do it themselves. Hikaru, Magnus, the Botez sisters, etc... they're all highly popular and they all stream on twitch. Take a look at these chess viewership metrics: https://www.twitchmetrics.net/channels/popularity?game=Chess https://www.twitchmetrics.net/channels/popularity?game=Chess That's 21 different streamers averaging at least a thousand concurrent viewers. On average, it's 12,600 concurrent viewers. Chess ranks #28 on Twitch when ranking by stream type. This includes games, just chatting, ASMR, and Special Events. It ranks higher than Elden Ring, Rocket League, Destiny 2, and Genshin Impact.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y agoI don't see how chess has become more social. It's always been a very social game. You go to the chessclub, meet lots of interesting people, make friends. Tournaments are very social events too. Playing online actually feels like the least social way of enjoying the game to me. I have no interest in chatting with random people, and most of the time someone tries to write something in chat it's an insult or accusation of cheating. Or just "gg", "nice tactic", etc.
- michaelt 4y ago> I don't see how chess has become more social. It's always been a very social game. My impression of high-level chess is that the games are >1 hour, and the participants don't talk to each other, or anyone else. In contrast, you watch a chess streamer on Twitch? They'll be talking constantly - as well as playing much shorter games. So I can see why someone who hasn't experienced a chess club in person might identify the latter as more social.
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y agoI guess I can see that perspective yeah. Certainly there is no speaking during the game, since it's a game of concentration after all. And top players might not do this, but most everyone else does: we discuss the games with the opponent after the game. Club nights tend to be less formal; usually blitz will be played, banter and trashtalking during the game is common. But yeah I guess it must look like we all hate eachother and never speak to eachother, from the outside. That's funny.
- harph 4y agoIs watching a twitch stream a social activity? I guess you can participate in the chat, but we know what twitch chat looks like...
- IG_Semmelweiss 4y agoMust expand on 3: You really have to see the intro videos to strategy in youtube or chesskid. The production value and ability to engage has skyrocketed. Yes there was some content on YouTube then... But the material was NOT online 10 years ago. You can easily verify this looking at the ratio of views/years for the more recent videos vs old ones. Top comment was for Gothamchess channel. Check it out. 4: The social element coupled with the ability to "play now" is very important. Until the last 5 or so years, a teen could not put together a similar rated game on demand. Even if you lived near a chessclub. Mobile apps with ELOs have brought the chessclub to the living room. And originally meant to add 5: As downposter said, parents will actively encourage chess, instead of restricting the amount of time on it. No parent will bat an eye if you play 3 hours straight. I wonder if thats because all parents have seen the queens gambit.(?) In retrospect 6: Algorithmic rating : the matching with a similar rated opponent is important since the satisfaction for winning (instead of continued losing) drives engagement.
- michaelt 4y ago> No parent will bat an eye if you play 3 hours straight. I wonder if thats because all parents have seen the queens gambit.(?) I'd say it's more that chess is old, famous for being intellectual, and doesn't have the flashy childishness and addictive mechanics of many computer games. So many of the usual parental worries around screen time - cyberbullying, causing body image issues, destroying attention span, rotting the brain, designed by experts to be addictive, promoting gambling - simply do not apply.
- bachmeier 4y agoHave to disagree with your first two points for the US. On 1, soccer became popular because there were organizations providing soccer for a fee. There may have been pockets of the US where kids would just go outside and play. That's not how it grew to be so big across the country though. These days it's not unusual to pay thousands of dollars a year to get on a club team - and that's where the fun is. I've never seen anything like that for chess. On 2, player age and physical development matter a ton. One of the things I warn parents about when getting into soccer is to find a coach that focuses on player development rather than winning. Many teams make playing time and position decisions based only on which players are the biggest and fastest. (Those parents are getting ripped off, since the big and fast players don't develop skills, and the others don't learn the game.) This is quite different from chess, since as you note, size, sex, height, and age do not matter.