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Chess is booming among teens

polygon.com

111–120 of 227 posts

Re: Chess is booming among teens

#111

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…

[deleted]

Re: Chess is booming among teens

#112

I visted my relatives recently, and i was shocked. At first I though it was a new clash of clans type of trendy game, but its actually chess! The teenagers have chess.com installed everyhere and are challenging each other nonstop, sometimes with real chess boards too! 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…

> its football but for people who don't like football. What's football for people who don't like football or chess? :)

Riichi Mahjong

Re: Chess is booming among teens

#113

I did poorly at chess because instead of thinking of my next move I'd be thinking about writing a program to figure out the next move for me. You could call it the "Programmer's Curse".

You and Alan Turing both. He was an appallingly bad chess player, but wrote an algorithm which was more or less minimax, the standard algorithm today. Unfortunately he didn't have hardware to run it on.

I picked up the book "Chess Skill in Man and Machine" and read it cover to cover. I learned a lot about programming from it.

Re: Chess is booming among teens

#114

I visted my relatives recently, and i was shocked. At first I though it was a new clash of clans type of trendy game, but its actually chess! The teenagers have chess.com installed everyhere and are challenging each other nonstop, sometimes with real chess boards too! 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…

Is that related to The Queen's Gambit tv show ? During the running and a bit after there was an uptick in players in public spaces.

I suspect it’s more about streamers on Twitch.

Re: Chess is booming among teens

#115
I’m almost certain most play it for the status. The average elo on chess.com is abysmal with most just playing for one turn copy paste tricks at a fast pace. At least that’s what I discovered when creating a smurf account. I just don’t see how that’s fun when the fun of chess comes from how nuanced and deep it is.

Re: Chess is booming among teens

#117
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…

I think matching by level is quite psychologically destructive, and should be avoided. People grind for hours and they see no sense of progress as they keep always being around 50% winrate because the stronger they get, the better the opponent get. And inversely they can play drunk chess and still win 50% and burn time pushing random pieces for a little short-term fun. It probably depends on people but I think the av…

Interesting point, but of course it’s not possible to create a platform with an average win rate of 80%.

Re: Chess is booming among teens

#118
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think matching by level is quite psychologically destructive, and should be avoided. People grind for hours and they see no sense of progress as they keep always being around 50% winrate because the stronger they get, the better the opponent get. And inversely they can play drunk chess and still win 50% and burn time pushing random pieces for a little short-term fun. It probably depends on people but I think the av…

Interesting point, but of course it’s not possible to create a platform with an average win rate of 80%.

Nor any actual group of people. This "optimal" is zero sum: someone else has to have a lower winrate in order for it to work.

Re: Chess is booming among teens

#119
post #83

Andrew Tate is a chess player and promoted chess. Andrew Tate was the most internet famous person for a period of time with a huge following in the teen male demographic. Possible cause-effect.

> Andrew Tate was the most internet famous person for a period of time

I think this may just be your recommendation bubble - most people only heard about him when he was arrested.

Re: Chess is booming among teens

#120
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…

I think matching by level is quite psychologically destructive, and should be avoided. People grind for hours and they see no sense of progress as they keep always being around 50% winrate because the stronger they get, the better the opponent get. And inversely they can play drunk chess and still win 50% and burn time pushing random pieces for a little short-term fun. It probably depends on people but I think the av…

I play different elo-rated games for the past 13 years and completely disagree with you. 50% is very healthy psychologically as it keeps you humble and challenged all the time.

If your play improves to ~55% win rate, you already feel highly rewarded and most of the reward feelings come from the fact that you now play on higher elo. You don't care about single losses/wins anymore.

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