Louis Blair wrote:
Liam Too wrote (31 Jan 2006 07:56:01 -0800):
It's the excitement of the game that differs poker
from chess. If chessplayers will be able to overcome
the presence of some noises, then chess is ready
for TV.

I wrote (31 Jan 2006 13:54:42 -0800):
In Sam Sloan's book on Chinese Chess, he described
the atmosphere of the game as being quite different
from that at a European chess event. Evidently, there
was a lot of crowd participation. Perhaps we need to
be more like the Chinese.

Liam Too wrote (31 Jan 2006 14:09:12 -0800):

But that is Chinese chess. I thought that it's different
from the regular chess. We need to learn Chinese
chess first and then go to China and participate.
I wonder if there's a Chinese poker?

Ask Johnny Chan. :-)

The Chinese Chess game is certainly very different
from the European game, but there are a lot of
similarities, too. Offhand, I can not think of
anything in the essential rules of the games
themselves that would dictate that one could
be played with crowd participation and the other
could not be played with crowd pariticipation.
The possibility that I was raising (for discussion)
was that (for purposes of television) European
chess be played in an atmosphere like that of
a Chinese Chess game.

In my view, Louis Blair's choice of term,
'European chess', is unfortunate.

1) Was 'European chess' invented by Europeans?
2) Are only Europeans the top players in 'European chess'?
3) Is there an International Federation of 'European Chess'?

By the way, according to a source whom I consider reliable,
a chess club (now defunct) in England excluded (at least)
one player from membership only because he's black.

My suggestion is that we refer to 'European chess' simply
as 'chess'. I doubt that any reader in rec.games.chess.*
will be confused by that term. We should also refer to
'Chinese chess' as 'xiangqi' and to 'Japanese chess' as
'shogi'. If necessary to insure clarity, we may write of
"xiangqi ('Chinese chess')" or of "shogi ('Japanese chess')".

If we did decide to change the game itself, my
guess is that the best version of chess (in terms
of potential for the future) is Japanese Chess
(Shogi) because of the low probability of a
drawn outcome.

By the way, GM Robert Huebner has played xiangqi.

--Nick