Why There Shouldn't Be a Chess World Champion 284
An anonymous reader writes "An article at Slate makes the case that the time has come to stop crowning World Chess Champions. This week, challenger Magnus Carlsen is trying to take the title from reigning champion Viswanathan Anand. Despite currently holding the title, Anand is very much the underdog, which only serves to illustrate why the current system is broken. The article suggests measuring greatness the same way tennis does. Quoting: 'Here's what Carlsen should do: Beat Anand for the title, and then work with FIDE to institutionalize four big tournaments as chess's Grand Slams, simultaneously eliminating the title of world champion. Corporate funding for even major chess tournaments can come and go with frustrating regularity, meaning FIDE itself has to get involved. Perhaps the grand slam tournaments could be located in three cities permanently—Moscow, Amsterdam, and a Spanish locale such as Linares would be natural picks—with a fourth that would rotate from year to year. This would give chess the same clear and predictable yardstick for greatness that golf and tennis have instead of the extremely crude world champion benchmark.'"
I watch chess... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I watch chess... (Score:5, Funny)
Me too! OMG!
This is my favorite classic moment in chess, former Women's World Champion GM Alexandra Kosteniuk checkmaking GM Wang Hao!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDo8WXeVMx0 [youtube.com]
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The slow motion replays of Chess have nothing on this [youtube.com].
Note: for the true sporting connoisseur only.
World chess champ, yeah, that's great (Score:3)
But does he get a teapot and groupies?
Why not a "Super Bowl"? (Score:4, Insightful)
Clearly, the current 3-year cycle makes no sense.
At the same time, people LIKE tournaments. If you want to be the true world champion, why not have regionals, as the author suggests -- but limit them to residents and let them be "open" (single elimination in round 1). We have brackets in other sports. This would allow people to compete regardless of wealth.
Each "continental champion" (think "North American Champion" or even "East Asian Champion") could face off in a tournament with the other regionals. This would let each population cheer for its hometown star from New York to New Dehli. Sure, maybe the two "best" don't face off in the "World Championship" but it also allows underdogs to win more easily and makes it more competitive.
Or we could just crown Deep Blue every year.
Re:Why not a "Super Bowl"? (Score:5, Informative)
Because it is idiotic. The whole premise is. The young star challenging for the World Championship for the first time being the favorite doesn't tell us the system is broken... it tells us the challenger is a big rising star!
And the Champion is one of only, what, only 6 people to have held ratings over 2800? This is not the 90s, Anand is not Khalifman, and everybody knows Anand is the clear Champion. And that Carlsen is the clear #1 player.
We already have ratings that tells us who is the best. The World Championship is a title. Adding an extra series of tournaments and calling it a title is fine, but why would it replace the World Championship? And FIDE actually tried it, and it was a total joke and those "Champions" aren't considered real champions.
These people should first learn some history about the chess World Championship before they tell chess players how our championship should be structured to better entertain the most casual observers. Because this is a long-argued topic, and there is a very strong consensus that the World Championship title has value, that it is not always held by the strongest player, and that it is normally achieved by winning a 1 on 1 match between a Champion and a Challenger.
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My money is on Anand.
I can sort of see the point (Score:4, Interesting)
In tournaments it's about who can pick the most points from the weakest players, of course you'd like to win every time but if you're facing Carlsen I think most players will be more than happy to draw and try to outpace him on the rest. The world championship is intended to be a hardcore duel between the two best players, you have to defeat your opponent to win you can't skirt around it. The issue is twofold, one to get the opportunity to play you must win the candidates tournament meaning you must be pretty damn good in tournaments anyway and second by the time another championship comes around many expect the current champion to fall. Unlike many other sports the chess ranking is far more important than "points" collected from tournaments in other sports, so it's hard to make a single tournament be all that important. There are already several long-standing tournaments that usually have most of the top ten players, they're not going to get bigger even if the world championship went away.
Different sorts of 'best' (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the problem the author has is that he wants to believe that there is a singular notion of "best chess player". In reality, there are multiple notions of the best chess player. Ratings measure more the ability to stay consistent throughout your career and never let your form dip, tournament wins measure more your ability to take points off weaker players and shift our mindset rapidly to deal with the next style which comes along... and the world championship measures more your ability to present an impregnable wall of defensive ability and be unbeatable.
These are all very valuable things to have, and wanting to take one of them away just because your mind isn't flexible enough to cope with them all existing simultaneously is selfish.
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Especially with the (relative) standardization of computer-readable move notation, you could probably derive practically any wacky fitness metric you could conceive of, compute it, and rank players according to
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Location for chess tournament (Score:5, Funny)
One town's very like another
when your heads down over your pieces brother
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Boxing? (Score:2)
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boxing, the same sport that has .. I don't even fucking know how many champions. 3 "pro"?
and then world champion? olympic champion? etc etc.. and if you get a match being arbitrary.
in boxing you must have some time between important matches though, but I don't see why a reigning chess champion should be able to wait for years for the challenger match to happen..
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There are currently *five* organizations independently handing out the title of boxing world champion. There are only two heavyweight champions, with one person holding four of those titles simultaneously (and, interestingly, the other one is his brother), but in other weight divisions there are indeed five different world champions. I can't see how boxing is an example for anyone to follow.
Get with the times! (Score:2)
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Great idea. We could also replace the Olympic games by much faster/higher/longer/more accurate machines.
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Great idea. We could also replace the Olympic games by much faster/higher/longer/more accurate machines.
No, the Olympics we should keep organic. Not necessarily entirely human; but organic. Just imagine hideous man/tick hybrids sprinting and jumping, ghastly quadruped-thing endurance runners, archers with creepy compound eyes... A glorious celebration of mostly-human athleticism!
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You just know that it would get higher TV ratings than the present Olympics do. Lifting 200 kg? Dull. Lifting 20 metric tons, on the other hand...
I don't understand (Score:5, Insightful)
I've yet to RTFA, but the sentence "Despite currently holding the title, Anand is very much the underdog, which only serves to illustrate why the current system is broken" does nothing to illustrate the point. Rather the opposite: a contender who beats the incumbent happens all the time. The fact that this is possible, is the prime motivator for trying at all, and thus the reason for the existance these tournaments.
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Why?
We only have Olympics and world cups every 4 years, so why can't these chess people wait 3 years to update their stats?
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Chess has to be rethought. (Score:3)
The problem with modern chess is that it has been analyzed to death.
To make it more interesting they should make some kind of modifications. One that was suggested a long time ago was the players choosing the positions on the back ranks. Maybe adding more pieces and squares etc.
Also add time to the clocks. Let games last several sessions. etc.
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The problem with modern chess is that it has been analyzed to death.
Not true
The current analysis of the opening moves is certainly very extensive. But since all top players are familiar with this opening theory, a game between two grandmasters only actually "begins" once one of the players breaks from the current theory. This will usually take the form of a player making a move that is considered to be inferior.
So each Grandmaster game becomes a contribution to current chess theory and will itself trigger analysis amongst chess experts across the world
Why? (Score:3)
Why does chess need a "clear and predictable yardstick for greatness"? It's a game, not engineering.
Yeah, get rid of the Champion title (Score:2)
and while your at it, let's stop having winners and losers, every game is a draw and these overgrown children can all feel good about themselves no matter how good/bad they do...it's all about their self esteem!
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Don't forget the ribbons! Everyone must get a ribbon.
-dZ.
Shit article (Score:2)
Consequently, he'd like to replace the current system which is subjective but works for other sports (boxing?) and replace it with an equally subjective system so that his favourite challenger will rise to the top sooner than he'd like.
He then goes on to spout nonsense about what the challenger should do *after* he beats the crap out of the
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You completely misunderstood the article. His complaint isn't about how Carlsen has arrived here or how long it's taken (it hasn't been long); it's that having a single, seldom-disputed title for Chess doesn't provide a fine-grained measurement for accomplishment. Through chance or deliberate "ducking", someone can end up being world chess champion longer or shorter than they "deserve". He believes that with more frequent sampling, you could get a more accurate "signal" in terms of player skill. He belie
Not seeing the issue (Score:2)
The article really fails to make a substantial argument. Okay, the every 3 year issue I can see. Make it every two. First year is to pick the top 4 contenders. The next year the tournament.
But I don't see what the issue is with having one champion. It seems there may be an issue with point scoring system. As frankly, I think wins are more substantial than draws.
I just came away from the whole article questioning what the issue is in having a world champion. It seems to me that no harm is there. And the f
Except... (Score:2)
This would give chess the same clear and predictable yardstick for greatness that golf and tennis have instead of the extremely crude world champion benchmark.
Except that golf and tennis are actual sports, while chess is not. Golf and tennis are followed by 100s of millions of people, while chess is not. Now if you want to destroy the tradition and intellectual pursuit known as chess and turn it into something that can be monetized, go ahead. Years ago, they did that to wrestling, so who knows, 25 years from now, we might all be watching All Star Chess on television.
Re:IF YOU WANT TO MAKE MONEY MUST BE IN AMERICA !! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:IF YOU WANT TO MAKE MONEY MUST BE IN AMERICA !! (Score:5, Funny)
To be fair, it's because the game is pure cerebral memoization and lacks and true skill component or even the mildest hand-eye coordination. The devs have all but abandoned the game after the queen and bishop patches. IMO, I liked the preivous versions when the queen was no more special than the king. At least it was more accessible to checkers players.
From a game designer perspective the complexity level of chess is painfully low, so much that computer "AI" opponents consists of better ways to organize a tree of known moves, hardly anything like machine learning at all. It's only slightly less boring than checkers to most folks. It's not like other more complex (and fun) turn based strategy games don't exist. Try out one of the flavors of Ogre Battle, or Final Fantasy Tactics -- Hell, even Advance Wars.
If the "digital vs board game" component is throwing you for a loop: It shouldn't. I implement tactics games as paper cutouts and dice to ensure they're fun before spending a bunch of time fleshing out the tedius combat details you'll only concentrate on in rare instances, in favor of the larger game. See? Chess even lacks the levels of complexity an average videogame has. Humans are cybernetic beings, as such they can allocate their attention across a wide ranging field, then bore down into problem spots; A good game provides interesting detail at all levels of play with enough varriation that even without dice you'll never get the exact same game twice -- With chess? There's basically right and wrong moves starting at the 2nd move -- no emergent properties at all, and an environment complexity of precicely ZERO. Whomever can think far enough ahead wins. That's why Chess is a solved game.
Oh sure the game's got history and an over inflated sense of prestige. Look down your nose at other games and play that shitty one. You die-hard elitist chess fans are fucking ridiculous from an information theory and cybernetics vantagepoint. Computers can just help precicely manage more variables and thus allow us to play games with more breadth and depth than a 64 cell grid overlaid with 6 -- COUNT THEM: SIX -- movement patterns. A kid playing halo competively has more shit going on in their brain than a chessmaster. Don't believe me? Whip out the FMRI and see.
Bunch of pompus morons. I'm fine with chess having it's circlejerk. What pisses me off is how folks who tend to like these "ancient" games see everyone else as childish, when their game requires the least cognitive ability to master comparatively. Pokemon would be a step up, though I reccomend Magic: The Gathering instead.
Perhaps it's not America that sucks at chess, but Chess that sucks at America?
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Magic is a great game but it will never be that popular due to the business model. It's about to get demolished by Hearthstone and Hex simply because Wizards of the Coast are fucking retarded. The amount of people playing Hearthstone already dwarfs MTGO and Hearthstone is still in a fairly exclusive beta phase. It's a shame because Hearthstone is an inferior game in almost every respect.
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Bunch of pompus morons. I'm fine with chess having it's circlejerk. What pisses me off is how folks who tend to like these "ancient" games see everyone else as childish,...
Did you have an actual point to your tirade? Have you even attempted tournament level chess? No, there are no pretty colors, or toons with inflated boobies, only real head to head mental stimulation. And believe it or not, some people are actually capable of playing both chess and video games.
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Is it just me, or did anyone else hear "One Night in Bangkok" playing in their head as they read this?
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Not to mention the queen is far too op. She needs to be nerfed to balance the game. I'm sick and tired of getting demolished by queen pickers. NoobS!
Chess: stagnant and dull (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:IF YOU WANT TO MAKE MONEY MUST BE IN AMERICA !! (Score:5, Insightful)
we've always brought in big talent from elsewhere
Einstein 'nuff said
Arguably, we have a certain talent for importing talent... Scoring all the Jewish physicists when the Nazis drove them out, in order to build a bomb, and then scoring all the Nazi rocket scientists when the Soviets drove them out, in order to build something to deliver it with...
Playing both ends against everybody, awww yeah...
Re:IF YOU WANT TO MAKE MONEY MUST BE IN AMERICA !! (Score:5, Insightful)
Truly the greatest thing about America is its ability to attract immigrants that then add to its greatness. We should be very careful not to ruin that, either through policy or xenophobia. It's the one thing we can compete in better than anybody else, and that fresh infusion of energy and labor keeps our economy and culture going.
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"Truly the greatest thing about America is its ability to attract immigrants that then add to its greatness."
It got you the World Series.
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Yes, it's only open to U.S. teams like the Toronto Blue Jays.
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We are the Americans. You are welcome to assimilate with our culture if you wish. We're far from perfect, but your intellectual distinctiveness can be celebrated and rewarded like in no other nation in no other time on this planet. However, you can also choose to remain a pinko socialist and degrade with the futile effort of the rest of your culture.
FTFY
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Arguably, we have a certain talent for importing talent... Scoring all the Jewish physicists when the Nazis drove them out, in order to build a bomb, and then scoring all the Nazi rocket scientists when the Soviets drove them out, in order to build something to deliver it with...
Playing both ends against everybody, awww yeah...
I have mod points, but I don't see the "+1 America Fark Yeah!" option.
Re:IF YOU WANT TO MAKE MONEY MUST BE IN AMERICA !! (Score:5, Informative)
That would have been the Indians. Or the Italians and Spanish for the modern game, via the Moors who brought it from Persia.
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You mean the Moops?
Re:IF YOU WANT TO MAKE MONEY MUST BE IN AMERICA !! (Score:5, Funny)
"That would have been the Indians. Or the Italians and Spanish for the modern game, via the Moors ..."
I'm so sorry, but It's the Moops.
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Indians are the only true Americans. Every one else is an immigrant. And if republicans had their way would be kicked out ex post facto haste.
Archeological for any human inhabitation of the Americas is pretty recent. (Some) indian populations did have the distinction of being the only immigrants who didn't need to squish the locals; but all available evidence suggests close to zero chance that any human population originated here.
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Re:Related question re: Women's Chess (Score:5, Informative)
It is not actually separated. Most chess is open. And there is no such thing as men's chess. There are special women-only tournaments as a response to there being 10-1 men in the sport, and a lot of sexist morons. So for a lot of women that is the only way for them to enjoy it.
See also: http://phys.org/news150954140.html [phys.org]
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Indeed, if you read various chess forum comments (the vast majority of which are made by males), the difference in the way male and female chess players are discussed is striking. Big names like Judit Polgar and Yifan Hou attract comments about their physical appearance and the femininity of their demeanor. If similar comments were made about Anand or Kramnik, people would find it bizarre and laugh. And then, of course, are the more overtly sexist comments, making broad claims about how women are simply
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This is also true in more conventional athletic sports--e.g., tennis. The culture of sexism is so ingrained in the male psyche that most men are completely incapable of detecting sexist behavior, whether in others or themselves; and when confronted, the response is predictably some form of vehement outrage and denial. Some then proceed to shift the blame, claiming that others have been indoctrinated by some militant feminist agenda, or worse yet, a nebulous "political correctness."
I've heard plenty of wom
Re:Related question re: Women's Chess (Score:5, Informative)
As to why there are so many more good men chess players compared to women? I don't know.
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At the risk of sounding sexist, I wonder if it is because men seem to have more of a tendency to become single minded/obsessive about things. I don't know whether it is just more socially acceptable, but I note that men are far more likely to be the ones that have all consuming hobbies.
As to whether this is a product of the way society is structured or nature I have no idea.
Re:Related question re: Women's Chess (Score:5, Funny)
I wonder if it is because men seem to have more of a tendency to become single minded/obsessive about things.
You're obviously not married.
Re:Related question re: Women's Chess (Score:5, Informative)
And moreover, since Judit Polgar was capable of becoming a world championship candidate, it's proven that women can compete with men at the top.
The problem is that chess, or at least, serious chess seems to be an almost exclusively male pastime, for reasons I can only guess at. This leads to there being very few women in the top ranks of the game, simply because there are very few women at all ranks of the game, which creates the perception that they can't compete. So people organise separate tournaments for girls because that's what you do in sport. And so girls learning chess only have a tiny pool of other people to practice against, so they don't get the broad range of experience that the boys do, and they imagine becoming women's world champion rather than world champion so they don't get the ambition boys do, and so the regular stream of Judit Polgars which we need to break this idea is suppressed.
Segregation is a disaster for women's chess, but it creates a self-propagating vicious circle. It is its own explanation.
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And moreover, since Judit Polgar was capable of becoming a world championship candidate, it's proven that women can compete with men at the top..
I can tell you aren't really a player, at least not anyone who's ever played in tournaments. You're actually quite wrong in that statement, unfortunately. All Judit Polgar proved was that she could compete at the top levels with male players, but she never even came close to being a world championship candidate. What she did is roughly akin to a woman competing in the men's tennis tournament in Wimbledon and getting past the first round but losing handily in the second. Judit is really good and lots o
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Why do they have separate men's and women's?
But why in chess? It's baffling to me.
Its because the girls don't have a penis, silly.
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It's because men are at a severe disadvantage in cognitive ability to women, so we are having separate tournaments to "protect" women from sexist assholes to camouflage that stain on our greatness and otherwise supreme superiority. Now stop asking questions. Thank you very much.
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Re: Related question re: Women's Chess (Score:2)
It isn't often that I physically roll my eyes when reading, but you managed to get me to do it.
Clearly a better metric is who can win at "Guess Who?" without asking if they're wearing glasses.
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Democracy in the Golden Age of Greece, established the original blueprint that evolved into modern democracies, eventually. But it was once very different. First of all, if a member of the senate voted for something that turned out bad, they could be punished or even executed by the state for neglectful voting. Also, there was a random factor in elections that did not require a majority vote for every representative: an electoral appointment was made by lottery to the senate so that common man was assure
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The only thing worse than gridlock is when they do stuff...
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Chess does not need to be a show financed by big money
Of course it does.
Announcer:"If Kasparov fails to move his Redbull King within the next two moves, he could face danger from the Challenger's Capital One Queen."
Madden:"That's right Gus. All he has to do is put Kasparov into a Bud Light Checkmate, and then he might just stand a chance of winning this thing."
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Chess does not need to be a show financed by big money. All sports where money got injected tend to turn into reality shows with media buzzing around searching for dirty stories, with pervasive doping, etc.
In that case, give chess one hell of a cash bolus, stat!
Wouldn't having the same care and attention devoted to developing exotic new ways to juice mental performance that sports doping has to enhancing various aspects of physical performance be an amazing boon to humanity?
Right now, the situation is pretty bad. We have a few stimulants and alertness aids, sometimes enough to get ADD Billy to do his homework; but nothing compared to what a suitably enthusiastic athlete can do to muscular performance...
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>The Cult of the Hand-Egg,
I didn't know Rugby was a cult.
--
BMO
Re:locations (Score:5, Insightful)
Why should all three locations be in Eurasia? Fuck that.
Why should the US baseball finals be called "the world series"? Why should the US rugby-ripoff-for-sissies-in-padding-who-need-a-rest-every-twenty-seconds be called the same name the rest of the planet had long been using for a completely different game? Fuck that, in the wrong'un.
Re:locations (Score:4, Funny)
You mean Hand Egg?
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Re:locations (Score:5, Informative)
Association football is called "football" because it's played on foot, as opposed to polo, which is played on horseback. The name was originally given derisively; it implied "poor people ball."
In the 1850s, the word "soccer" meant "a member of an association." A 19th century soccer star popularized its use to mean "the game played by members of an association football association."
Re:locations (Score:5, Informative)
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need-a-rest-every-twenty-seconds
Not for resting ... it's for the adverts, the resting part is a side-effect
Re:locations (Score:4, Informative)
Why should all three locations be in Eurasia? Fuck that.
Why should the US baseball finals be called "the world series"? Why should the US rugby-ripoff-for-sissies-in-padding-who-need-a-rest-every-twenty-seconds be called the same name the rest of the planet had long been using for a completely different game? Fuck that, in the wrong'un.
Ah yes. I love when British or Aussie wankers like you post that. Allow me to educate you out of your ignorance.
Imagine, if you will, that the MLS (Major League Soccer - the top US professional league of what the rest of the world calls "football") announced that it was the greatest team in the world and that the EPL champion was a bunch of chumps who it could easily defeat. You would laugh. Rightly so. What European league do you think MLS is probably equivalent to? Maybe the French league?
The fact that you don't know due to your ignorance is that the best players in the world in baseball play in the USA in MLB. The gap between MLB and the best other league, which is Japan, is probably akin to the gap between MLS and the EPL. So there actually are no other leagues/teams that can realistically claim to be world's champions. That's why it's called the World Series - it truly is the best of the best. There are players in MLB right now from Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean and Asia. The cream of the cream play in MLB. They don't toil in the other leagues. Again, the only other professional league that has a decent number of MLB quality players, and it's probably only 1-2 per team, is the league in Japan. I'm deliberately ignoring the top minor professional leagues in the USA as the best of those players will be in MLB eventually, but explaining how that system works would take more time than really necessary.
If you don't like American football and prefer rugby, that's your business, but rugby is actually a pretty crappy sport. If the US cared about it at all, and we do not, we would own the entire world in the sport. I have zero doubt about that. In fact, I wish that someone would field a team out of our best professional football rejects and compete internationally.
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I'm pretty sure this type of "USA is the greatest" response only establishes the point of the AC you replied to. Nationalism is a funny thing, it's actually helpful up to a point, as it creates a sense of belonging together. After that point, though, it varies from laughable to dangerous. The amount of flag waving and anthem singing going on in the USA would be considered well into dangerous territory by many.
Re:locations (Score:4, Informative)
The EU comes close to providing a similar environment, but it has greater cultural variations between its various parts than the U.S. does, at this time. In those instances where its interest in an activity crosses all, or most, of its internal borders, it is able to develop a similar position on the world stage that the U.S. does in baseball and basketball (that is, develop world class competitors and attract the best from the rest of the world).
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NZ also has very few registered players compared with other countries (Oz, UK, SA, FR) but has manag
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What European league do you think MLS is probably equivalent to? Maybe the French league?
Not a chance... do you know how good PSG are currently?
So there actually are no other leagues/teams that can realistically claim to be world's champions.
Some [wikipedia.org] would beg to differ. Have you seen the USA's record?
If you don't like American football and prefer rugby, that's your business, but rugby is actually a pretty crappy sport. If the US cared about it at all, and we do not, we would own the entire world in th
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Why should the US baseball finals be called "the world series"?
Because I'm pretty sure the Toronto Blue Jays would object to it being called the "US baseball finals."
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Why do you assume !Eurasia consists solely of the US and no other countries? Last I checked there were two continents in the Western Hemisphere and quite a few countries that aren't the US.
Re:locations (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, and the whole football name criticism is a bit disingenuous as well. There is no such sport as "football." That's merely a common shortening of the name of several sports. In America, technically it's American Gridiron Football, whereas what most of the rest of the world calls football is Association Football, which itself is a "ripoff" of Rugby Football and Cambridge Rules Football. Then there's Australian Rules Football, Canadian Gridiron Football, Gaelic Football, two major kinds of Rugby Football, and a host of other related sports. Most of these involve a fair bit of hand use, with Association Football being the exception, though let's not forget the goalkeeper uses his hands quite a bit. All the games involve the feet, and all the games share a common ancestry. Just as we didn't evolve from chimpanzees, both species evolved from a common ancestor, the same can be said of the various football sports.
Re:locations (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, and the whole football name criticism is a bit disingenuous as well.
In America, technically it's American Gridiron Football
"American" and "Gridiron" make sense. But "Football?" The players feet hardly ever contact the ball. And it's not even a ball.
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The players feet hardly ever contact the ball.
Presumably because it starts with a kickoff.
And it's not even a ball.
The "ball" part was probably to associate themselves as a sport with the much more popular (at the time) "baseball."
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Stop applying logic to my favorite useless gripe.
Re: locations (Score:3, Informative)
You do realize American Football is a very intellectual game and is probably the closest physical sport to chess. I very highly doubt you know anything about it. Each play is carefully choosen to outwit the opponent. The time between plays allows for that setup.
You keep watching that sissy garbage of yours. Ill stick to a real sport.
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You do realize American Football is a very intellectual game and is probably the closest physical sport to chess. I very highly doubt you know anything about it. Each play is carefully choosen to outwit the opponent
I will state without fear of contradiction that Bill Belichick could lecture on the cover zero, cover one, cover two, and the necessary gap responsibilities and after about three hours of that any chess snob would be no masing out the door.
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I think there's something to be said in spreading it around. It will garner more interest worldwide, and probably have economic benefits as well, with more money flowing into the competition from more than just three or four countries.
I would take it a step further, though. Instead of 3 permanent cities and 1 floating competition, how about 3 permanent continents and a floating one? It could be sort of like the Olympics, with the events moving so it's more of a worldwide competition. Moscow may be a good ch
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Surely chess is a game, not a sport. I know the difference is subtle, but chess does not require any physical exertion beyond the lifting of the pieces.
And yes, I know snooker, pool and darts are not much better. But there must be a line, or go, scrabble and monopoly would be sports too.
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The brain is only 2% of the mass, but actually accounts for 20% of the energy usage.
I suspect Magnus might use even more when he is really thinking.
Personally I can get exhausted for long periods of heavy brain use, and this championship lasts for 100 hrs.
I'd not be too sure I wouldn't call it a sport.
Re: (Score:2)
I love /. for just these types of justifications. Between a lawyer and a good /. poster, I'd take the /.'er for clearly they can think way outside the box. With that said, yes, Chess is a sport for not only do we need to exercise this mass of tissue, but like any good sport, we can also finds ways to dope it up for extreme gains and that "do anything to win" attitude. Eventually we change from "doing our best" to "I need to win no matter what"
As an aside, I thought my sport (Eventing), the one I compete
Re: (Score:2)
Then why did my brother need to pass a physical in order to be on his high school chess team?
(OK, the answer is stupid bureaucratic rules, but still)
More seriously (or more pedantically, really), Sports and Athletics don't mean the same thing. If you're doing it for fun, it's a sport. If it requires athletic ability, it's athletics.
Re:It's already implemented ! It's named ELO :-) (Score:4, Funny)
I love ELO... Jeff Lynne is a musical genius!
Re: (Score:2)
I thin this one [youtube.com] is more pertinent for the Salon article.