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Chess is booming among teens

polygon.com

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Re: Chess is booming among teens

#51

Post by nextaccountic »

jrpt wrote: post #31
IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #20

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 b…

That 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.

And the Niemann cheating scandal

Re: Chess is booming among teens

#52

Post by watwut »

raincole wrote: post #30
IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #20

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 b…

My 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?

Lichess puts a lot of effort into catching cheaters.

Re: Chess is booming among teens

#53

Post by nstart »

Some people discussing cheating and the more boring aspects of chess. Thing is,

- chess education is more accessible and is fun af now thanks to folks like Hikaru and Levy (aka GothamChess).

- default games are now rapid 10 minute games or 20 minute games at tops. This makes it as quick as a Fortnite round and the odds of cheating in such rapid games goes down drastically. Couple that with the excellent anti cheat work being done and the game really does stay short and enjoyable.

With the game being in popular culture via queens gambit it feels understandable that it is rising amongst younger folks (impossible to have predicted but very much easily explained looking backwards)

Re: Chess is booming among teens

#54

Post by watwut »

Fricken wrote: post #13
sdwr wrote: post #3

This is wild. Chess feels old-school and boring to me. Don't understand how it's competing with modern sources of entertainment.

Modern sources of entertainment are dressed up in a lot of fluff. Blow all that fluff away and you're left with nothing that is any better than games and stories that have been with us since forever. The kids these days are drowning in novelties of the sort that were scarce to me as a child. It stands to reason they wouldn't be as easily impressed or fooled by such things.

None of however does not lead to liking chess. The game is massively about memorization and drill, with some patina of superior aura on it. At least on lower levels.

Like you trying to make everything else sound inferior, plus fluff. It is not true, once you scratch reputation out of chess, you get mundane drills and memorization of situations.

Re: Chess is booming among teens

#55

Post by visarga »

olkingcole wrote: post #6
sdwr wrote: post #3

This is wild. Chess feels old-school and boring to me. Don't understand how it's competing with modern sources of entertainment.

I think the main reason, besides chess being fundamentally a great and timeless game, is streaming. Popular streamers picked it up and many top level players also started streaming online chess, which can be very entertaining. Often they are playing fast, exciting time controls like 1 or 2 minutes. Chess.com and others brought flavorful tournament coverage and hosted events with guests from outside the chess world. C…

> Chess is born anew for the 21st century.

Where are the doomers who said chess was over after being solved by AI?

Re: Chess is booming among teens

#56

Post by szopa »

My father has always been a chess aficionado, but I got turned off by the fact that he was the only available opponent, and he had 37 years of headstart (it didn't occur to me to go to a chess club). When I was in University, I discovered Go, which felt somehow deeper than chess (I do enjoy the occasional game of chess, but compared to Go it feels like a knife fight vs a military campaign). After school I stopped playing (and I had never gotten serious). However, my family needed a distraction when the war in Ukraine started (we live in Poland, so it's right around the corner), so I started playing Go with my son.

Since then we've gotten pretty serious - we play at a local club, went to a tournament, take lessons, etc. However, it's very much a niche hobby - more than A local club it's THE local club. Part of me wishes that I'd have chosen chess, which would've given us an order of magnitude more opponents and materials, both online and offline. On top of that, apparently it would've given my son an additional way to gain social status at school. However, the truth is that we do enjoy Go more than chess, and have already invested quite some energy (I am beginning to be an intermediate with an ELO of around 1150).

There are some perks of course. The Go community is super nice (the joke goes that, unlike with chess, you cannot just go to another club to play IRL if you piss off your club members). It's so small that even as a beginner I got the chance to befriend the reigning Polish champion (and one of the very few European Pros, which is a big deal - they play almost on par with the Asian pros). He turned out to be a fantastical human being, if a bit intimidating at first (he will casually play 5 games simultaneously, maintaining separate teaching conversations over each board, and a bonus conversation about AI; then he will be able to write down every game on paper).

While I feel a hint of jealousy for the popularity of chess, if Go were to disappear, I would just switch to chess and have probably have 85-90% of the fun I'm having with Go (not to mention access to my father's vast chess library). So, the fact that young people enjoy mind games makes me very happy - I feel that playing chess or Go is genuinely good for you.

Re: Chess is booming among teens

#57

Post by knaik94 »

Over the last few months Rozman has dominated short form content for chess, and I think this article doesn't give him enough credit. Both long form and short form videos of his hit millions of views, consistently over the last few months. The analytics for his channel speak for themselves.

Here he responds to a reddit question from 3 months ago about the rise in Chess and he reponds "me" in an implied tongue in cheek way. [1] He is very active in the chess community and feels very accessible. Unlike the original elitist culture that chess was known for, he works hard to make it accessible and makes an effort to praise brilliant moves from low elo games/moves. His video answering chess questions on the wired youtube channel is a great introduction to him as well as chess, regardless of your skill level.

Rozman's videos that focus on beginner plays made me feel okay to be low elo, and that's impactful coming from someone at his skill level.

I am weak with opening theory and don't enjoy learning it. I enjoy playing intuitively, and have started playing much more chess960, a variant where starting piece positions are randomized. Lichess has recurrent chess960 torunaments. [2]

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/10glwhg/does_anyone_...

[2] https://lichess.org/team/lichess-chess960

Re: Chess is booming among teens

#59

Post by danmaz74 »

hannob wrote: post #37

I've recently started playing chess again a bit (after doing it a bit when I was a teen), and there's an interesting aspect of online chess that I began to realize: When I was young you needed a local opponent to play chess, and that wasn't always easy. Why? Because most people around you were either significantly better (you always loose) or worse (you always win). It's not an interesting game if the outcome is almo…

Yes, the rating system is fundamental to be able to enjoy the game, and also to lower the impact of cheating: if my rating is 1500 and I play against other players around 1500, I don't care if they are at that level thanks to cheating or not. I only care about being competitive with them and trying to do my best.

-- Shameless plug: I recently released a platform to improve tactically with puzzles and spaced repetitions, https://chess.braimax.com - feedback very welcome!

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