Thanks to Fischer there came Big Money to Professional Chess. Karpov,
Kortchnoi,
Kasparov, Short, Anand, & Kramnik were able to benefit from it. Now
with
Kasparov gone will any of the remaining Chess Professionals be able to
draw such
high wages.

I for one don't think so, however I know that this remains to be seen?

wrote in message
oups.com...
Thanks to Fischer there came Big Money to Professional Chess. Karpov,
Kortchnoi,
Kasparov, Short, Anand, & Kramnik were able to benefit from it. Now
with
Kasparov gone will any of the remaining Chess Professionals be able to
draw such
high wages.

I for one don't think so, however I know that this remains to be seen?

The departure of Kasparov may be the straw that breaks the proverbial
camel's back. For that, combined with the increasing number of early draws
in games, the inexorable increase in the abilities of chess
software/computers, and the failed attempts at a reunification match will
all contribute to the decline in popularity of professional chess. I'll
certainly follow it far less, if at all.


-JT

"Omega Wolf" wrote in message
...
wrote in message
oups.com...
Thanks to Fischer there came Big Money to Professional Chess. Karpov,
Kortchnoi,
Kasparov, Short, Anand, & Kramnik were able to benefit from it. Now
with
Kasparov gone will any of the remaining Chess Professionals be able to
draw such
high wages.

I for one don't think so, however I know that this remains to be seen?

The departure of Kasparov may be the straw that breaks the proverbial
camel's back. For that, combined with the increasing number of early
draws in games, the inexorable increase in the abilities of chess
software/computers, and the failed attempts at a reunification match will
all contribute to the decline in popularity of professional chess. I'll
certainly follow it far less, if at all.

I disagree, and think it will have the opposite effect. That the several
million dollars that the very top players can command will now be shared out
more equitably in a greater pool of players, indeed, in allowing lower level
sponsors to get into the game.

There is lots of precedent for this, and not all top chess suffers
draw-death, WAZ was not boring - and in fact chessically at least equal to
what we saw at Linares - and very much better reported.

One measure of dealing with draw-death is to reward players with the same
points for their results as currently, but to vary their rewards, so that a
win achieves more money than two draws, and a win with black even more
money...

Now that the top flites of chess are cleared of the dominant player of the
past two decades, lets reorganise chess so that we do not repeat the
situation that any incumbent world champion has an enormous advantage over
all other players, and to increase the number of players who can make a
living from chess.

These things have been discussed before - and here is an opportunity which
is only a disaster if you plow ahead regardless

Phil Innes

-JT

On 11 Mar 2005 04:55:00 -0800, wrote:

Thanks to Fischer there came Big Money to Professional Chess. Karpov,
Kortchnoi,
Kasparov, Short, Anand, & Kramnik were able to benefit from it. Now
with
Kasparov gone will any of the remaining Chess Professionals be able to
draw such
high wages.

I for one don't think so, however I know that this remains to be seen?


It is simply not logical to conclude that an event such as Kasparov
retiring will therefore lead to low wages for all. That is like
saying, when Jean-Marc Bosman leaves football, will there be no more
Bosman rulings? If the players do not stop getting paid as well as
they deserve, you can be sure that players like Anand, Kramnik et. al
will not take that lying down.

--
'The philosophers have interpreted the world, the point
however, is to change it'. - Karl Marx

I am happy to admit that the problem of high or low wages for chess
professionals neither affects my own luxurious standards of living nor my
sleeping soundly at night.
HansJ

Essentially, this is a problem of media penetration. There simply needs
to be an understandable and concise "narrative" that can be created, in
order to spark Media interest, and thereby get sponsorship $$.

In 1972, the Fischer--Spasskey match was notable because it became a
proxy for the Cold War. Fischer beat "The Russians" at their own game.
Ironically, that same year, the Soviets beat the Americans at their own
game: Basketball, in the Munich Olympics.

The Karpov-Kortchnoi matches had their own Cold War narrative, the
fight between the Loyal Communist Icon (Karpov), and the politcal
dissident (Kortchnoi) which was the inspiration for a film about chess,
"Dangerous Moves"

The Karpov--Kasparov matches started off with the theme of Perestroika
and the advent of a charismatic prodigy. The five matches became
indicative of a slugfest between two nearly evenly matched pugilists.

Kasparov exploited the advent of strong chess engines to promote, and
profit from, the "Man vs Machine" matches, leveraging IBMs corporate
publicity machine.

The only real narrative that would have "bite" is "The Battle of the
Sexes" match, featuring Judit Polgar vs. a Top male GM. It would be
helpful if the male contender was American or Western European (and
probably, to be of Northern European heritage, as well). I lament that
reality, but I think that having a Russian or Ukrainian, with an
"unpronounceable" name, would adversely affect the marketability of
such a match. The players should be able to speak fluent, nearly
unaccented, English...

Of course, such a World Championship match is unlikely to occur, but
there you have it.

On 2005-03-11, knucmo wrote:


It is simply not logical to conclude that an event such as Kasparov
retiring will therefore lead to low wages for all. That is like
saying, when Jean-Marc Bosman leaves football, will there be no more
Bosman rulings? If the players do not stop getting paid as well as
they deserve, you can be sure that players like Anand, Kramnik et. al
will not take that lying down.


The question might be what, exactly, could they do about it? In the
absence of an old-fashioned Soviet-style state sponsorship of chess,
masters getting paid well for chessplaying, or even getting paid at all,
becomes once more a traditional matter of corporate sponsorship and
patronage by amateurs, not all that different from what it was a hundred
or even a hundred fifty years ago. If the potential sponsors aren't
interested in a particular event or player, there is no leverage that a
professional player can exert to make them cough up so much as a dime.

Even a famous, money-generating dynamo like Kasparov couldn't raise enough
funds for a match that everyone, particularly potential sponsors expected
to be a one-sided wipeout, like the cancelled Kasparov-Shirov encounter of
the late '90s. Nor could FIDE do it when they could produce no better
matchup than the lackluster Kasparov-Kasimzdhanov affair. Ugh!

A century ago, Lasker drew a short training match with Janowski to make a
world championship encounter with the Polish master an interesting enough
proposition to lure Janowski's patron into putting up a match purse. I
don't see anyone among the petulant and pampered members of the
post-Kasparov ELO-elite who has sufficient showmanship to pull off
something similar. Certainly not Anand, Leko, or even Kramnik, whose
personal surly brand of entitled anticharisma has rendered even his
nominal "World Champion" title nearly worthless. The only one of this
group who seems to excite some enthusiasm is Topalov; and he couldn't do
it by himself, even if he were to realize what needed to be done.

So if, and this is a really big "if", Kasparov's retirement is genuine,
then I believe we'll see things get an awful lot leaner financially for
top-level chess before they begin to get a little better.