Chess is on Fox Sports

Tin Man

AzB Gold Member
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lol

People actually watch OTHER people play chess??? I've seen the old farts in the 'hall watch other old farts play gin. Whatever floats your boat but i think i would enjoy a root-canal with a butter knife about as much. I hope i never get that bored. ;)

Definitely not for everyone. But I'm not old fart, I'm a competitor myself. And the guys I'm watching are champions playing chess at an unprecedented level in a heads up match for the world title. Vastly more interesting to me than any other sport I've seen on TV.
 

garczar

AzB Silver Member
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Definitely not for everyone. But I'm not old fart, I'm a competitor myself. And the guys I'm watching are champions playing chess at an unprecedented level in a heads up match for the world title. Vastly more interesting to me than any other sport I've seen on TV.
"Sport"?? Now we're calling chess a SPORT? Its a sit-down table game not a sport. Next we'll be calling Monoply a sport. Pleeeeese.
 

ctyhntr

RIP Kelly
Silver Member
I think the cumulative clock for pool would an improvement on the current shot clock. There is no incentive and reward in the current shot clock for fast thinking.

Professional level chess is on a clock. It's not a shot clock like pool or basketball; it's a cumulative clock...much, much tougher. Each player is allotted the same amount of time to make all his moves; use up your time with slow decisions and you'll lose the game just by running out of time.

The result is that the first 20 moves happen so fast it's hard even for a diehard chess fan to keep up without intense concentration.
 

lfigueroa

AzB Silver Member
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Chess is on right now on Fox Sports Midwest. It is interesting to me they are talking about a big chess club with historical museum in St. Louis. This is the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Saint Louis. Chess has an actual museum - wow. If chess can be on TV makes you wonder why pool is not getting more coverage.

Pool promoters need to check into getting more local or regional coverage on TV. Butts in the seats would happen if more people knew events were going on and then pool events could gain some income via the door/tickets. Perhaps something from sponsorship.


The STL Chess Club is just a few blocks from my house in the Central West End neighborhood.

I suspect one of the reason they get the exposure they get is because local billionaire, Rex Sinquefield, is their angel. He built it, gave them like $300k for a tournament prize fund this year for the Sinquefield Cup, donated like $50M to a local hospital, well, you get the picture. It's a situation not unlike the private 3C event earlier this year. Been going strong for several years now.

Lou Figueroa
 

BassMasterK

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
It is a complicated matter with many factors. For people who don't play pool, watching pool is about as exciting as watching chess. Kaci's 8 rack run is an amazing, exciting thing of beauty for us to watch, but to many people it is just one guy who makes shot after shot and position play is so good nowadays, most of the shots don't look that hard or impressive.

What pool does have is a large number of recreational players though. But then you still have competition for their eyeballs. Even the best free streams don't get much over 10k viewers. Personally I love the streams because there is so much content available and when watching live it is fun to have the option to comment with other viewers. In a sense we have never been so spoiled with pool matches available to watch as we are right now.

I think the Us vs Them and high production value of the Mosconi Cup is the best option for getting some sort of attention from the general public. Fast games, good production, large crowds, it makes it LOOK like pool is actually a happening thing. The crowd is hyped up and the teams look like sports teams. The problem is that it can't seem to get any huge coverage here in the US. If that was on a major sports channel it would get a lot of new viewers who normally don't watch pool which is what we really want.
 

bbb

AzB Gold Member
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People actually watch OTHER people play chess??? I've seen the old farts in the 'hall watch other old farts play gin. Whatever floats your boat but i think i would enjoy a root-canal with a butter knife about as much. I hope i never get that bored. ;)

do you watch onepocket???:grin:
 

smashmouth

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
chess is awesome and can help your pool game

best part is you can play it online, turns promoting it into a whole different animal compared to pool, poker is the same
 

gcmortal

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
"Sport"?? Now we're calling chess a SPORT? Its a sit-down table game not a sport. Next we'll be calling Monoply a sport. Pleeeeese.

Sport..? Debatable, sure, yes. But realize that these guys have to be fit as an athlete.
I used to play a little, five hour games kick your *ass*. Chess players at the top level (with very few exceptions) can no longer hang by age 45 or so.

As far as watching, of course it would be boring if you don't "speak the language".

Fitness is also important in top level pool, right? Not necessarily APA :grin-devilish:
 
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