2018 World Championship in London

[Jonathan Bryant]

From the Guardian yesterday:

... an audience drawn by the prospect of sudden death by blitz or armageddon .....

This isn’t true, is it?

[John McKenna]

If yesterday's World Boxing Ch. bout - between Wilder & Fury were to be settled today by a cage fight - instead of being declared a draw with Wilder keeping the title - you would probably get just as big an audience, maybe even bigger.

I suspect it would be a somewhat different audience, though. The purists of pugilism would most likely refuse to attend in person but would be replaced by MMA nutters.

From the Guardian yesterday:

Magnus Carlsen's tense victory sends interest in chess soaring by Caroline Davies

....But it was the intensity of the Carlsen v Caruana world championship, held in London over three weeks, that gripped an audience drawn by the prospect of sudden death by blitz or armageddon – evocatively named speed chess games – after 12 consecutive draws.
In the end, Carlsen retained his title when the games, which can last for seven or eight hours, were set at 25 minutes, causing Caruana to lose three-nil in a playoff.
“So we didn’t get to armageddon. It would have been mildly sacrilegious if we had: a bit like settling the world cup final with a game of keepy-uppy, because, frankly, it’s that random,” said Pein.

Kemari- traditional Japanese football and the historically the province of the nobility - is entirely based on "keepy-uppy".

Participants wear full traditional court costume and the equivalent of letting in a goal is letting the ball touch the ground during passing.

For the elegant details see -

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kemari

The Mayans, Aztecs and other meso-Americans played a true ball-game of death - in its religious ritual form the losers were sacrificed to the gods. Play was therefore extremely hard!!

For the gruesome details see -

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoamerican_ballgame

[Ian Thompson]

From the Guardian yesterday:

Anyone seen the research to back up this claim on the number of games being played on the Internet - "Research suggests at least half a million games are going on at any one time."?

[Mick Norris]

I think research in this context is "research" i.e. unsubstantiated

[JustinHorton]

From the Guardian yesterday:

Anyone seen the research to back up this claim on the number of games being played on the Internet - "Research suggests at least half a million games are going on at any one time."?

I have written to ask

[Roger de Coverly]

I have written to ask

chess.com quote statistics on their home page.

As of a UK Sunday morning

Members 25,507,866
Games Today 3,060,922
Players Online 75,428
Titled Online 187

So that's probably around 35,000 games taken place presently. That's one of the top 5 in terms of numbers, so it might be around 150,000 across all servers. Same number of zeros as the claimed total as opposed to 605,000,000 which has to be out by at least one if not two zeros.

Against that the "games today" count is impressive, given that the database count since the beginnings of organised chess is around the 6 million mark.

[Jonathan Bryant]

From the Guardian yesterday:

Anyone seen the research to back up this claim on the number of games being played on the Internet - "Research suggests at least half a million games are going on at any one time."?

When anybody. cites ‘research’ to justify a claim without actually telling you what that research is, you can and I would say should just ignore what they say.

http://streathambrixtonchess.blogspot.c ... rence.html



This is a safe rule in any circumstance. Not only when - as in the guardian article - the author demonstrates very clearly they lack even a basic familiarity with their subject.

[JustinHorton]

Alex Spencer, who's quite a new player and certainly new to attending big chess events, went to see game seven and you might find his impressions interesting.

[Jonathan Bryant]

I have written to ask

chess.com quote statistics on their home page.

As of a UK Sunday morning

Members 25,507,866
Games Today 3,060,922
Players Online 75,428
Titled Online 187

So that's probably around 35,000 games taken place presently.

Where do you get the 35,000 number from?

[Roger de Coverly]

Where do you get the 35,000 number from?

75,000 divide by 2, take off a bit for those between games or just watching or browsing.

Perhaps it's something FIDE should coordinate. Contact all known servers, nominate a 24 hour or 7 day period and ask them to record activity both by headcount and games played.

[JustinHorton]

Where do you get the 35,000 number from?

75,000 divide by 2, take off a bit for those between games or just watching or browsing.

That was my guess. It might be right, but we can all think of reasons why it might also be wrong.

[NickFaulks]

Perhaps it's something FIDE should coordinate.

I am certainly hoping that working with, rather than against, the established online chess community will be one of the first priorities of the new administration.

[Jonathan Bryant]

Where do you get the 35,000 number from?

75,000 divide by 2, take off a bit for those between games or just watching or browsing.

That was my guess. It might be right, but we can all think of reasons why it might also be wrong.

Indeed. And very probably the guesstimate is a huge overestimate of the numbers playing.

[Mick Norris]

A serious rethink is needed for the next championship cycle. It's hard to believe that a single casual viewer would have been enthused by the series of draws we have just witnessed.

Chess Mind ideas

Ken Regan on the draw problem

[Paolo Casaschi]

Where do you get the 35,000 number from?

75,000 divide by 2, take off a bit for those between games or just watching or browsing.

That was my guess. It might be right, but we can all think of reasons why it might also be wrong.

On lichess, when asking to setup a new game, the server shows the number of online players and of active games. Consistently, the number of active games is about 1/3 of the number of online players. It might be very different for other servers; I suspect chess24 or chess.com ratio might be even lower given that those servers offer more activities (live games and videos, educational videos) other than playing games compared to lichess.