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Chess is booming among teens

polygon.com

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Re: Chess is booming among teens

#171

Post by conradkay »

mcv wrote: post #149
cjonas wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it odd that all my friends & coworkers in the tech industry have ended up on chess.com instead of lichess. Even beyond the fact it's totally free (and free of ads), the architecture itself is super interesting: https://lichess.org/@/thibault/blog/starting-from-scratch/NI... It must be one of the best examples of a very large scale implementation of features that are simple and easy to understand

What are the differences? I'm not familiar with lichess, but chess.com has tons of bots at various levels that you can play against, and you can have one game per day analysed by stockfish for free (more costs money). I think that's a pretty good deal.

https://lichess.org/player/bots

Maia is great, probably more human than the chess.com bots.

Re: Chess is booming among teens

#172

Post by justaman »

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?

I've played over 500 games on chesscom in the last year at between 700-1050 rating. Its hard to point out a cheater but sometimes you just get a hunch, then on review of the game, they blundered twice in the first dozen moves then the game shifts dramatically. Early game rated 600, mid 1500+.

Whats more common is cheesy tactics. Kid will go on YT and watch a video about some cheeky opening and mimic that. Things like early queen pushes. Once you punish it, they crumble. So you get these players that have inflated ELO. If they can't do the one opening they know, they simply don't know the general tactics.

Then there are the smurfs. They don't last long at low rating but these people are the worst. They exist in any online game.

Re: Chess is booming among teens

#173

Post by DrThunder »

jacooper wrote: post #161
ranguna wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it just me, or is this comment AI generated? > and i was shocked. At first I though (...), but its actually (...)! > The (...) installed everywhere (...) each other nonstop, sometimes with real > There's social pyramid starting to form, with one of the younger ones conquering the game with no clear challenger, its football but for people who don't like football. The paragraph above specifically, it sounds coherent…

In high school usually there is some kind of a social class pyramid built on how good you can play football(not in the U.S.). The best one is the coolest and so on. While people who don't play are constantly bullied.

In what school, today, are kids who don't play football constantly bullied? The only place I've seen that happen is in movies from the 80's early 90's.

Re: Chess is booming among teens

#175

Post by thrilled2behere »

quijoteuniv wrote: post #70
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…

Imagine when you discover Lichess!

[flagged]

Re: Chess is booming among teens

#176

Post by gspencley »

My wife and I have played chess against each other off and on throughout the years. Once or twice I had started to get "serious" about levelling up my game but quickly dropped it due to other priorities.

Then I saw the Botez Sisters on Lex Friedman's podcast and started checking out their content. Holy crap is online chess ever entertaining as hell these days.

Not only are the various streamers on Twitch and YouTube great, but there are so many different variations of the game to come out, like Duck Chess. The bots that Chess.com creates every few months are more entertainment fodder. There is even Chess Boxing!

So I can completely understand why it's gaining traction with teens. Chess is "cool" now for the first time that I can remember.

This is also, of course, following The Queen's Gambit on Netflix and the Carlsen / Nieman cheating scandal. It is so entertaining.

Edit: it's also worth noting that a lot of non-Chess streamers have even started getting into Chess. That undoubtedly has an effect as well.

Re: Chess is booming among teens

#177

Post by michaelt »

IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #158
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…

Must 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 el…

> 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.

Re: Chess is booming among teens

#178

Post by michaelt »

mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #131
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…

I 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…

> 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.

Re: Chess is booming among teens

#179

Post by floitsch »

davidguetta wrote: post #134
cjonas wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it odd that all my friends & coworkers in the tech industry have ended up on chess.com instead of lichess. Even beyond the fact it's totally free (and free of ads), the architecture itself is super interesting: https://lichess.org/@/thibault/blog/starting-from-scratch/NI... It must be one of the best examples of a very large scale implementation of features that are simple and easy to understand

Its network effect. My friend was on chesscom so i went there. Now im on lichess but only because chesscom increased its basic price x3. Also puzzles are slightly better on chesscom and (arguably) the analysis interface imo

For games I'm usually on lichess, but for puzzles I tend to use chesstempo.com. I find their quality just better.

Re: Chess is booming among teens

#180

Post by fauxpause_ »

eitally wrote: post #169
fauxpause_ wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh. I don’t care about the chess world champions. I’m not playing them. RTS games suffer a similar problem. Until you become extremely proficient, you have basically no room to use novel strategies. You will lose to people with better execution on established strategies. And so you don’t do anything but grind execution and it’s pretty boring. Chess isn’t quite this bad, but I find it pretty boring after a while.

The flip side to your comment, though, is that chess can be highly entertaining for people just getting started, who neither know any established openings or play lines, nor are playing against opponents who do... which describes the vast majority of newcomers to the game. I would argue that you can get to approaching 1500 ELO without really knowing any theory at all, and just focusing on what "feels" like appropriat…

I agree. Novice chess is great. Especially with local peers. I find it loses its appeal pretty quick when you start playing in a system like lichess however. Once you stop progressing quickly which is probably around a month or three of interested play.

That may not hold if it’s an established form of social competition where you can earn prestige by being good at it within your local peer group. It would be nice to see more intellectual challenges take that role among young people.

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