How Can AGON/Worldchess Improve Their Coverage For November?

[Ray Sayers]

OK, so this is meant to be a constructive question. In other words, rather than arguing about whether AGON should have the right to cover the WC match and going all the way around the houses again with those arguments, this is asking what improvements should be made to persuade you to tune in to the official site?

It has the video feed, so that ticks a big box. And it has the real time moves and a list of moves played (after some initial issues). Which is all good.
I am sure there are some technical improvements people can chip in with, but here are a few of my suggestions as a viewer:

1. Position evaluations - seem pretty flaky. So either remove them, or improve them.
2. There are too many breaks in the coverage - I know the ads are important, but some of the stuff I just found a turn off - quizzes and also interviews with people I don't care about. Please reduce the number of breaks.
3. Breaks at inappropriate times - I found it frustrating that at crucial moments in a game the commentators would say 'time to take a break'. It's a bit like a televised football match where the coverage switches to an ad when someone is taking a run up for a penalty. Can't the breaks be overridden at crucial points?
4. Similar to 3, do the interviews have to be shown live when something else crucial is going on? All hell was breaking loose in the Karjakin - Caruana game today, yet the video feed was showing the Svidler - Anand interview. Interesting, I am sure, but the most crucial part of the most crucial game of the entire event was happening at the time.

I think if the above was fixed, I would be pretty happy to stay on the official site all the time.

[Roger de Coverly]

1. Position evaluations - seem pretty flaky. So either remove them, or improve them.

Something already done by chess24 is to have three engines showing the four opinions of the best move. The number of different choices all with the same evaluation or otherwise, gives an insight into how sharp is the position and how critical or otherwise the next move.

do the interviews have to be shown live when something else crucial is going on?

The World Championship with only one game isn't going to have that problem. It could however face the problem for commentators as to what to talk about when one player is having a long think. That's been a problem ever since move by move commentary was provided.

[John Cox]

1. Sack Dylan Maclean, or whatever his name is. He's absolutely appalling.

2. Stop with this stupid whining about draws.

3. Respect the game and the players (see 1. here).

That's about it, really. If it were me I'd like a live video for each board, but then I expect that costs money, and it would only be a small improvement. No. 1 is the big one; the identity of the commentators is everything, really. That and actually having the right game s and the right round and stuff like that.

[JustinHorton]

Display the game moves properly, provide a numerical evaluation, don't operate a login (and if you must, let it work properly so people don't find themselves locked out), put the players' names the right way round with White at the top, organise your site properly so that (e.g.) post-match videos can be found easily, ask yourselves whether white-on-black is actually a pain to read rather than looking classy, try not to display simple statistical information (like crosstables) in incomprehensible form, show seconds on the clocks as otherwise 0:00 can mean sixty different things, find a less silly way to display who it is to move, don't call post-mortems "press conferences" when they're not, etc etc etc.

[NickFaulks]

I don't think that anything will persuade me to view the official site. I shall watch the games on some site that I know I like and if Agon manage to prevent this, then I shall probably find that there are other ways to spend my time than watching games of chess on the internet. At that point Agon will no doubt consider that they've won.

Regarding Dylan McClain, I came across him when his NYT column featured a game in which a Russian GM had lost with White in 19 moves. It was in fact quite interesting, but his only conclusion was that the GM must have taken money to throw the game, since such a result could not possibly happen otherwise. What do you expect?

[Mick Norris]

1. Sack Dylan Maclean, or whatever his name is. He's absolutely appalling

He'll threaten you when he reads that

I imagine that given the match will be in New York, which I assume is where he is based, he'll be on site for the match

Of course, with only 1 game to follow (in a match), you have less scope for some of the problems listed e.g. there can't be a problem with a video post-mortem running while a crucial game is going on, you can go to ad breaks while a player is having a long think

The other question is whether the Norwegian press will allow the press conferences to be meaningless, my guess is that they will insist on being able to ask questions to the players, for the benefit of all

Maybe they could go a for a post-mortem (with both players if a draw, but just the winner if not) after the game, but have a proper press conference on the rest days (a bit like the Tour de France)

Finally, the best thing would be to get Peter Svidler on commentary

[NickFaulks]

Finally, the best thing would be to get Peter Svidler on commentary

Peter is of course brilliant, but the US has some pretty good commentators of its own. Christiansen / Yermo and Seirawan / Dlugy are hard to beat as double acts. Whether they would ever work with Agon is doubtful.

[Reg Clucas]

Finally, the best thing would be to get Peter Svidler on commentary

Can I nominate Andrew Martin?

[Mick Norris]

New York venues announced

Agon, the organization with the rights to the match, will rotate all 12 rounds around New York City's iconic landmarks.

I guess the reality will be different

[NickFaulks]

The date of the article is presumably significant.

[Brian Towers]

The date of the article is presumably significant.

Indeed, although on a different date most chess players would still have asked themselves "Would Bobby Fischer have agreed to that?" and concluded that neither would any of his successor's. Shame as it would have been excellent publicity for the game. Would have needed a FIFA sized budget rather than FIDE one, though.

My favourite April fool joke is this one - http://www.shieldsgazette.com/news/loca ... -1-7827220.