English Chess Forum

MJMcCready wrote: ↑

Sun Mar 04, 2018 9:12 pm

Everyone knows how to run, its a question of fitness like all endurance events are. There is some skill involved but the same could be said of chess seeing as you have to touch the correct piece and move it to the correct square before releasing it.

This is all semantics. I don't care whether sport is defined as "something that isn't like chess" or chess is defined as "something that isn't a sport". It is just unfortunate that chess funding depends upon this nonsense.

MJMcCready wrote: ↑

Sun Mar 04, 2018 9:12 pm

Everyone knows how to run

No they don't, not like athletes do. You think there's no technique, in running? What do you think "skill" is, anyway?

MJMcCready wrote: ↑

Sun Mar 04, 2018 9:12 pm

There is some skill involved but the same could be said of chess seeing as you have to touch the correct piece and move it to the correct square before releasing it.

The idea that a top-notch marathon runner is exhibiting no more physical skill than I am when moving a chess piece is manifestly silly.

1% of my tax went on Culture (e.g. sports, libraries, museums). I cannot see any reason to fund chess even if it was a sport.

Nick Grey wrote: ↑

Sun Mar 04, 2018 10:12 pm

1% of my tax went on Culture (e.g. sports, libraries, museums). I cannot see any reason to fund chess even if it was a sport.

I might agree with you, but there are pastimes no more worthy than chess which do get funding. I would certainly include "winter sports".

Nick Grey >I cannot see any reason to fund chess even if it was a sport.< There are two reasons
1. Many of us think chess is culturally desirable and thus deserving of some encouragement from the government.
2. As Nick F more or less said, if other activities get support , why not chess?
I was having a discussion in Miami with an Olympic Gold Medallist in Yachting. He got £150,000 a year funding a that time. The BCF got £65,000. He thought it ridiculou we got so little. Now we get nothing.

JustinHorton wrote: ↑

Sun Mar 04, 2018 10:07 pm

MJMcCready wrote: ↑

Sun Mar 04, 2018 9:12 pm

Everyone knows how to run

No they don't, not like athletes do. You think there's no technique, in running? What do you think "skill" is, anyway?

MJMcCready wrote: ↑

Sun Mar 04, 2018 9:12 pm

There is some skill involved but the same could be said of chess seeing as you have to touch the correct piece and move it to the correct square before releasing it.

The idea that a top-notch marathon runner is exhibiting no more physical skill than I am when moving a chess piece is manifestly silly.

Justin is spot on. Although the last marathon I ran was the 1981 London Marathon (864th in 2:51:09 in case you were wondering) I'm still running/jogging in my early 60's. That this is possible (that I haven't succumbed to knee/ankle/calf injuries) is down to the fact that I quickly developed an efficient technique. My technique is far better than somebody who's running is limited to trying to catch a bus and I know that that of elite runners is at least that much better again.

"I was having a discussion in Miami with an Olympic Gold Medallist in Yachting. He got £150,000 a year funding a that time. The BCF got £65,000. He thought it ridiculous we got so little. Now we get nothing."

I did tell BCF meetings that funding would probably dry up. The company I then worked for received lots of Government (i.e. our) money for research into scientific matters related to food and health etc., but increasingly, there were long and (probably unnecessarily) detailed reports needed, plus warnings that the money was supposed to help us start research, not to just pay for it. This was for very useful work. Funding melted away. Also, when they looked at project proposals, they demanded that the people examining the proposals answered the question, "Will the research work?" I did ask if they knew what "research" meant. So it was clear the writing was on the wall for chess. More recently a good hard look was taken at expenditure, for example discovering that there was a committee being paid to decide what wine to have in the House of Commons restaurant, when it seemed reasonable to tell the bar manager to do it. Schools and hospitals are not funded properly... So why fund sport etc.?

I do wonder why yachting, show-jumping and dressage, and winter sports inter alia are funded at all. It's nice if people win medals for themselves, but all those activities are predominantly done by rich people. Funding to help sports participation, especially for the young, would be great. However, increasingly school playing fields are being sold or turned into car parks.

Kevin Thurlow wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 05, 2018 1:18 pm

I do wonder why yachting, show-jumping and dressage, and winter sports inter alia are funded at all. It's nice if people win medals for themselves, but all those activities are predominantly done by rich people. Funding to help sports participation, especially for the young, would be great. However, increasingly school playing fields are being sold or turned into car parks.

I don't know about yachting, show-jumping and dressage; but winter sports seem to be different. The UK has a programme where established athletes transfer into winter sports to compete in those - many of the physical attributes they possess are transferrable into them. You could argue that if they were good enough at their original sport, they'd probably be involved in it still. So it's more of a recycling programme.

I remember in Sochi, the Scottish curling commentator was waxing lyrical about how you could take up curling wherever you are in Britain, even in the south! Because apparently they'd now got a facility in Sheffield...

"I remember in Sochi, the Scottish curling commentator was waxing lyrical about how you could take up curling wherever you are in Britain, even in the south! Because apparently they'd now got a facility in Sheffield..."

Well at least it's a change from the North starting in Watford. Mind you. I know Yorkshiremen who say Sheffield is in the midlands.

Incidentally, in that saying, the Watford referred to is not the Watford everyone knows about, it is the village of the same name in Northamptonshire, after which the Watford Gap services are named.

Kevin Thurlow wrote: ↑

Tue Mar 06, 2018 9:22 am

Mind you. I know Yorkshiremen who say Sheffield is in the midlands.

Somebody needs to tell Yorkshiremen that the north begins at Scotch Corner.

Kevin: The government decided to fund sports that were in the Olympic Games in preparation for when they were hosted in London. They then got into the habit of funding and probably never think about it.
In Barbados chess is part of their Olympic movement. Therefore the game gets government funding.

When I was speaking to that yachtsman, I said, 'At any rate yachting is a spectator sport'. He said, 'No it isn't. Only in the Olympic Games is there satellite tracking so that it is possible to know who is leading.

Stewart Reuben wrote: ↑

Wed Mar 07, 2018 12:55 pm

Kevin: The government decided to fund sports that were in the Olympic Games in preparation for when they were hosted in London. They then got into the habit of funding and probably never think about it.

Don’t think that’s true at all, is it? There were some sports that got funding in the run up to 2012 only BECAUSE they were Olympic sports (things like handball, basketball etc) and the funding for these disappeared immediately after (which naturally resulted in some criticism). The overall background to funding Olympic supports (almost exclusively and as a priority) dates back to the disastrous Olympics of 1996 and the founding of the National Lottery which moved sports funding outside of taxpayer funded government expenditure

If you have to take the law of gravity into account, it's a sport.

If you don't, it's a game.

Chris Wardle wrote: ↑

Tue Mar 13, 2018 8:46 am

If you have to take the law of gravity into account, it's a sport.

If you don't, it's a game.

OK I'll bite; everything anybody does takes the law of gravity in account, but in your analogy that means Mo Farah doesn't compete in a sport because he is only running