"John Rowland" wrote in message
...

Surely a significant factor of Shogi's popularity as a media spectacle is
that while draws are theoretically possible, in practice they hardly ever
happen. For this reason, it is a lot easier to imagine a future where
Shogi
receives mainstream western media coverage than a future where western
chess
receives it.


Please correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't shogi also played without time
controls? Games regularly last 8 hours or more. Surprisingly to some
perhaps, this hasn't detracted from its popularity in Japan. It seems then
that reducing classical time controls isn't the key to improved acceptance
of chess. It is Western culture's thinking about chess that needs to
change, not the thinking time we give the players!

As an aside, can you imagine what eliminating time controls would do to
chess? For instance, it was a blunder in time trouble (36.Rxd4) that cost
Karpov the decisive 24th game which handed the World Championship to
Kasparov in 1985. Shogi style time controls for chess might have changed
the outcome of many games. Admittedly in many respects shogi is even more
complicated than chess because of the possibility to replace captured pieces
on the board.

--
Gregory Topov
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"I don't necessarily agree with everything I say." - Marshall McLuhan