Chess is booming among teens
polygon.com
polygon.com
It's obviously a complete gamechanger when you have a plattform like chess.com which automatically figures out how good you are and matches you with a roughly equally skilled opponent.
Kids today can explore/memorize many openings and cover many more variations because of the online courses, some of which are even free. They can quiz themselves to ensure they dial in the move orders. And they can access hundreds of thousands of puzzles in rapid succession to improve their middle-game tactics and pattern recognition. And that’s not even going into having access to chess engines stronger than any human player to explore lines and learn why bad moves are bad.
All this makes studying the game so much easier, even before you test yourself against an actual opponent.
It must be one of the best examples of a very large scale implementation of features that are simple and easy to understand
Also puzzles are slightly better on chesscom and (arguably) the analysis interface imo
1. Lichess rating is ~200-300 points ahead of a Chess.com rating. Not in the sense that players are better, but an 800 player on Chess.com will probably be 1000-1100 on Lichess.
2. Fantastic analysis tool. Chess.com analysis tends to be a bit funky sometimes.
3. Zen Mode. Not really a pro / con, but it's nice to hide the UI and just have a board on the screen when playing.
4. Free, obviously. No ads.
5. Younger audiences may want to play where their favorite streamer plays, which tends to be Chess.com for nearly everyone unless you're Eric Rosen. Hikaru Nakamura, GothamChess, Magnus Carlsen, Botez Sisters, Anna Cramling, and Chessbrah are all on Chess.com.
6. Chess.com has better puzzles, although limited on the free tier.
I don't have exact numbers on population for both platforms, but if someone can correct me, I'm fairly sure Chess.com holds the majority of players.
Edit: Spelling
You also have unlimited free puzzles on lichess (paid on chesscom). Chess.com probably has a better library of learning content if you're into that (much of it paid though).
IMO if you're not paying I can't see why anyone would prefer chess.com over lichess: you get less and also get ass for the trouble. If you don't care about the monthly subscription cost, then maybe chess.com has fringe benefits over lichess.
I also like Lichess because I can play in arena tournaments against players with a much higher rating than me, which helps me learn - I'm not sure if this is so easy to do on Chess.com.
I paid for Chess.com for a while, but I stopped subscribing when I realized I never used it. Meanwhile I have multiple days of playtime on Lichess. Also, the owners of Chess.com don't seem like very nice people.
I'm pretty sure the pros and streamers prefer Lichess too, but they're sponsored by Chess.com so they have to pretend to like it.
Maia is great, probably more human than the chess.com bots.
It's free (freedom & beer), it has no ads, and it's feature-complete. It even has stuff that other websites make you pay for, like post-game computer annotation. It offers a web interface where you can play without even registering an account and free (again, freedom & beer) apps for iOS and Android.
The only downside when compared to chess.com is that fewer top-level professionals play there. Which is not an issue unless you're literally a super GM.
It doesn't matter what connection I'm on, and the website is always instant, but the Android app always takes half a second to load any screen. It's infuriating when you want to view the analysis, or just navigate around the app.
My bug is about Puzzle Storm. When you run out of time, the GUI shows you the post game screen and it takes a fraction of a second before it pops in a "daily record" banner. This fraction of a second is slow enough for me to drag my mouse cursor over the "Failed puzzles" filter, but fast enough for me to accidentally click "Play again" as it has been pushed down the page (by the daily record div) without me perceiving it yet. Once clicked, that button resets the page to start another puzzle storm and by then I've lost the failed puzzle history, so I can't go over it anymore.
It has happened already in the hundreds of times. I can't help it, hopefully the dev one day figures it out.
If your goal, however, is to popularise the game of chess, i.e. to get more people to play chess, a free online service is only a necessary condition. Chess.com seems to be able to sponsor and organise tournaments, pay content creators/chess players, offer live streams with professional commentators, etc. But also take legal responsibility and stand up to lawsuits.
Interested to hear your thoughts on this. I don't see Lichess being able to provide this type of value, and I'm not sure if they want to or should.
That said, I prefer lichess and think most people should be using it. But I understand it’s not about the platform’s technical features; for most people, it’s about the network effect with their friends.
-- Shameless plug: I recently released a platform to improve tactically with puzzles and spaced repetitions, https://chess.braimax.com - feedback very welcome!
My suggestion is to just stop thinking about cheaters when playing online rated games. I started doing so years ago, and have increased my enjoyment of the game A LOT, without any visible downside.
People grind for hours and they see no sense of progress as they keep always being around 50% winrate because the stronger they get, the better the opponent get. And inversely they can play drunk chess and still win 50% and burn time pushing random pieces for a little short-term fun.
It probably depends on people but I think the average ratio for people to progress optimally their should be around four wins for one loss. And the loss should be correlated to the way you played. Anything below 80% winrate, means it becomes hard to distinguish the learning signal from the variance of the matching. The brain also need some balance between the carrot and the stick otherwise the ego take a hit.
Rating system also generate some strata artefacts meaning there are levels you can't get past without spending as much time as your opponent on tactics, or openings, and you never get to experience chess on a more strategic level, or deeper understanding level. This mean that most of the fun get extracted out of chess once you get addicted/interested enough.
I think it's much better to play unrated games anonymously against a random pool of anonymous players (eventually with a min level to exclude complete novices), and offer rematch when the games were interesting. You should play to win but your reward signal shouldn't be the win but rather the interestingness of the game for both opponent.
When playing you should try to understand your opponent, his current chess understanding and how it's revealed through his current moves, and construct with the board some situations that will be interesting enough for the both of you to have a good time. Don't play the board. Play the player through the board. A good game should look more like a dance than a fight. You have to infer from a few moves who your opponent is, and how to interact with him in a constructive way.
That's what popular streamer do when they play their viewers (usually friendly and constructive). And that's probably what teens expect when they join chess after viewing a few videos. But instead they get thrown into an adverse destructive pit of soulless addicted grinders.
> Anything below 80% winrate, means it becomes hard to distinguish the learning signal from the variance of the matching.
Using winrate as a learning signal is your first mistake. You're making a million different decisions per game, and then decide to summarize it with a binary W/L? If you want proper signal, you need to analyze your games on a more fine-grained level.
> And the loss should be correlated to the way you played.
No, it shouldn't and doesn't. Dealing with variance, and things beyond your control is an essential part of developing a strong mentality. Especially when playing in-person.
> The brain also need some balance between the carrot and the stick otherwise the ego take a hit.
If your ego takes a hit from this, you need to get back to the drawing board instead of praying that the world will change to accommodate your issues.
> you can't get past without spending as much time as your opponent on tactics, or openings, and you never get to experience chess on a more strategic level, or deeper understanding level. This mean that most of the fun get extracted out of chess once you get addicted/interested enough.
I can't speak to the "lack of stategy", but what makes a game fun to compete in is highly subjective.
> soulless addicted grinders
This is the exact kind of language and attitude I would see from players who plateau hard, and looking for external factors to blame.
You do realize that a lot of players play for their definition of fun and don't derive or base their personality around their strength as chess players, I hope?
If your play improves to ~55% win rate, you already feel highly rewarded and most of the reward feelings come from the fact that you now play on higher elo. You don't care about single losses/wins anymore.
I dabble in the realm of simracing. Man, what would I do for a 50% win rate. Every race is hard fought, and the possibility of a victory is far below 15%.
The times I have won, I trained the whole week, it was hard-earned, and really, nothing has felt better since. It's a high I can still ride with pride.
IMO, if you want to win more, you should train harder, or try something easier.
Unfortunately there isn’t an online jiu jitsu platform :)
I’ve also found there’s many many parallels between chess and jiu jitsu, which is really interesting, chess really is a super aggressive combat sport in terms of mental work.
1- The entry cost has fallen dramatically. Before at a minimum you'd need to afford a chess set and a couple of books. Now, all you need is a parents phone. This is similar to soccer, where the entry cost is any ball you can find.
2- its egalitarian. Your size, sex, height, and even age do not matter. This has always been true but now its more pronounced with apps blurrying entry further. This is also similar to soccer in that even age differences dont really matter
3 - learning curve has flattened dramatically. This to me is key. In soccer, anyone can jump in an play even if you cant learn by watching. This was not true for chess until apps came along. It is particularly powerful that kids no longer need to follow notation or boring books to learn how to play well. Everything can now be taught by video, at your own pace.
4 - chess is now hyper social. This is another key element also enabled by apps. By being a 2 player game, its not a game that is social by nature. However, now you can be social anytime, anywhere. No board required.
Lots of factors built the base that was able to turn the interest from Queen's Gambit into a lasting and growing phenomenon.
I'm not sure if The Queen's Gambit is popular viewing with the 11-14 year olds obsessing over chess in my local middle school.
Twitch? Yes.
They had to stand up four separate chess clubs because one club with 300 members (about half the student body) was too much to handle.
So now there are intense intra-school rivalries like with Hogwarts houses-- never mind inter-mural competition.
But in general, yes, YouTube streamers are making the sport more popular.
His style is not for my taste, nothing wrong with the guy.
Because everyone is a boxer already.
Take a look at these chess viewership metrics:
https://www.twitchmetrics.net/channels/popularity?game=Chess
That's 21 different streamers averaging at least a thousand concurrent viewers. On average, it's 12,600 concurrent viewers.
Chess ranks #28 on Twitch when ranking by stream type. This includes games, just chatting, ASMR, and Special Events. It ranks higher than Elden Ring, Rocket League, Destiny 2, and Genshin Impact.
Chess video lectures have existed since the eaely 00s too, though they cost money and you'd buy them on a DVD filled with a mixture of video files and PGN files along with some metadata to be viewed through Chessbase.
It was basically the same thing as Chessable is today. Probably competitive in price too; Chessable is pretty fucking expensive if you actually want the video lectures.
3: You really have to see the intro videos to strategy in youtube or chesskid. The production value and ability to engage has skyrocketed. Yes there was some content on YouTube then... But the material was NOT online 10 years ago. You can easily verify this looking at the ratio of views/years for the more recent videos vs old ones. Top comment was for Gothamchess channel. Check it out.
4: The social element coupled with the ability to "play now" is very important. Until the last 5 or so years, a teen could not put together a similar rated game on demand. Even if you lived near a chessclub. Mobile apps with ELOs have brought the chessclub to the living room.
And originally meant to add
5: As downposter said, parents will actively encourage chess, instead of restricting the amount of time on it. No parent will bat an eye if you play 3 hours straight. I wonder if thats because all parents have seen the queens gambit.(?)
In retrospect 6:
Algorithmic rating : the matching with a similar rated opponent is important since the satisfaction for winning (instead of continued losing) drives engagement.
I'd say it's more that chess is old, famous for being intellectual, and doesn't have the flashy childishness and addictive mechanics of many computer games.
So many of the usual parental worries around screen time - cyberbullying, causing body image issues, destroying attention span, rotting the brain, designed by experts to be addictive, promoting gambling - simply do not apply.
On 1, soccer became popular because there were organizations providing soccer for a fee. There may have been pockets of the US where kids would just go outside and play. That's not how it grew to be so big across the country though. These days it's not unusual to pay thousands of dollars a year to get on a club team - and that's where the fun is. I've never seen anything like that for chess.
On 2, player age and physical development matter a ton. One of the things I warn parents about when getting into soccer is to find a coach that focuses on player development rather than winning. Many teams make playing time and position decisions based only on which players are the biggest and fastest. (Those parents are getting ripped off, since the big and fast players don't develop skills, and the others don't learn the game.) This is quite different from chess, since as you note, size, sex, height, and age do not matter.
I don't play chess. But in other online games, like FPS, the players always complain about cheaters. Then why isn't it a problem with chess.com? It's much easier to cheat with online chess than an FPS game, no?
2) FPS games have a lot more degrees of freedom to cheat. There is network lag, hidden information, aimbots, etc. Chess, by contrast, has no hidden state and everything is contained on the server. The only way to cheat is simply to play better moves than your level.
3) Cheaters get bumped up in level quickly and wind up against people who can flag them for cheating. Almost all of the master level chess players can identify suspicious "computer" moves. Most systems have a way to flag a game or move for review. Finally, computers can deeply analyze the games and look for behaviors that don't match "humans".
4) The flip side of that is that amateurs blunder so much that they wouldn't be able to tell even if they got cheated against--by and large.
Jerk behavior tends to be far more problematic than cheating. For example, if you get a winning position, it's not uncommon for an opponent to stop playing but make you wait the rest of the time to count the win. You will bump into this, and it will annoy you way more often than cheaters.
When people do this on Lichess, I spamclick the button that adds 15 seconds to the opponent clock and write "move or resign". Sometimes people resign, sometimes they keep playing, sometimes they just close the app then you can claim the victory almost immediately.
This behaviour probably pisses me off so much because I grew up playing real tournaments, where politeness is highly valued. Getting up and walking away, or letting your time run out on purpose, is considered extremely rude to where it could get you disqualified.
Yes, and the other side of this coin is sandbagging. Cheaters losing on purpose to keep their rating down. Generally this is also pretty easy to detect because it’s difficult to lose on purpose in a convincing way. Just resigning the game in a non-losing position or blundering mate-in-1 is too obvious and easy to catch. Someone playing the top Stockfish line 20 moves in a row and then blundering their queen just sticks out like a sore thumb.
A lot of top chess players only play bullet and blitz online where cheating is too hard, you’d have to completely automate it, at which point you are no longer playing a game but just watching an AI play pros until it gets banned.
If you cheat in FPS you still feel like you’re playing the game, just on an easier setting. But with Chess it’s basically just delegating the game to something else. When playing online there is little incentivize to do this.
I play chess irregularly on a not very sophisticated level (ELO ~400). I get automatically assigned opponents. Sure, it's possible that some of them cheat. It's probably not super attractive, because I'm not sure what the fun is in "I beat random ELO 400 player on chess.com with a computer". So maybe one in a few dozend games I face a cheater.
If you get into much more competitive chess then people probably cheat more. But I guess for the vast majority of players it doesn't matter.
I'm relatively high rated on chess.com and only run into a cheater every once in a blue moon. Invariably his account tends to be closed, and points refunded shortly thereafter. This wasn't always the case, 'back in the day' chess.com had a major problem with cheaters, but it's clear that at some point they made a serious effort to start flushing out the cheaters - and it's been a big success.
Whats more common is cheesy tactics. Kid will go on YT and watch a video about some cheeky opening and mimic that. Things like early queen pushes. Once you punish it, they crumble. So you get these players that have inflated ELO. If they can't do the one opening they know, they simply don't know the general tactics.
Then there are the smurfs. They don't last long at low rating but these people are the worst. They exist in any online game.
They use a ML Siamese head network that was donated to them back ~2012. Nothing has changed since then, and they don't prevent people from creating new accounts.
There were issues reported to them in 2016 about the siamese network failing to detect properly in cases where the client-side parameters being passed could be spoofed and held static, and they banned the people who reported it and deleted the posts from their github and the site.
From what I've seen, their team is petty, conceited, and vindictive people.
They make a show of valuing the community, but its just that; a show. When it comes down to actually reporting something responsibly in goodwill; they have no professionalism, and no credibility. They don't want to hear about it; and its easier to silence with the hammer of admin power than anything else.
Incidentally, there were also issues with the paperwork they filed for the charity in France too. You are required to have certain paperwork filed to provide when opening a bank account in France (so you don't comingle charity funds with personal funds). It didn't appear they filed that paperwork when I last went digging. Maybe OSINT will bring something up.
I honestly can't stand false hero worship, they've done nothing to earn respect and a lot to lose any credibility they may have had.
Why should we believe your anonymous gossip over someone who spent years building and running lichess and giving it away for free?
https://www.journal-officiel.gouv.fr/pages/associations-deta...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31158426
You seem to have some sort of grudge against Lichess, to the point that the only easily discoverable info about Liches's Siamese network is your own vague complaints about it. Perhaps you are the one who hasn't earned any respect.
Despite your claims that computers killed chess, chess is thriving more than ever, with more people making a living from chess than any time in history.
Playing online actually feels like the least social way of enjoying the game to me. I have no interest in chatting with random people, and most of the time someone tries to write something in chat it's an insult or accusation of cheating. Or just "gg", "nice tactic", etc.
My impression of high-level chess is that the games are >1 hour, and the participants don't talk to each other, or anyone else.
In contrast, you watch a chess streamer on Twitch? They'll be talking constantly - as well as playing much shorter games.
So I can see why someone who hasn't experienced a chess club in person might identify the latter as more social.
And top players might not do this, but most everyone else does: we discuss the games with the opponent after the game. Club nights tend to be less formal; usually blitz will be played, banter and trashtalking during the game is common.
But yeah I guess it must look like we all hate eachother and never speak to eachother, from the outside. That's funny.
I taught my oldest son both chess and go, and when we played, I never held back, but when he was so far behind he didn't know what to do, he could turn the board around and continue play from my winning position, while I had to salvage his. That was a fun way to play. And then it stopped again.
Last year, my youngest son (now 8) suddenly wanted to join a chess club in our neighbourhood. My oldest (14) says lots of kids are playing chess at his school, though none at his level, so he started playing on chess.com. Instead of watching YouTube videos about video games, they're now watching GothamChess and other chess channels. So chess is hot again in our home. He now occasionally beats me. Making me work harder, to the point that the games between me and my dad are getting a lot closer (though I still lose most).
I can really recommend GothamChess, by the way. His videos are brilliant. Both meme-worthy, exaggerated emotions, deadpan disappointment at some moves, but also extremely educational. He analyses lots of novice games around 600 rating, which is super useful for the many new players, but also still interesting to me.
The teenagers have chess.com installed everyhere and are challenging each other nonstop, sometimes with real chess boards too!
There's social pyramid starting to form, with one of the younger ones conquering the game with no clear challenger, its football but for people who don't like football.
Its fascinating how an old and not very hip game became a crazy trend so fast.
This has really always been the case, for instance you even had players like Simen Agdestein [2] who was a professional football player and a chess grandmaster - at the same time, but chess has been hounded by dumb and inappropriate stereotypes. You don't need to smart to play, you don't need some amazing memory, or whatever else. It's just a really awesome, enjoyable, and deeply satisfying and rewarding game.
It’s such a common stereotype that chess is all about memorizing openings, like cramming for exams the rest of your life. It’s not. Cramming is all short term memory and people tend to forget everything a few weeks after the test. That doesn’t work in chess.
Great chess players have everything in their long term memory. They can rattle off openings and transpositions like nobody’s business. But they didn’t just study that stuff yesterday. They built it up over years of playing and calculating during games and analyzing the results. It’s much more akin to a great violinist who can play the Sibelius by heart than it is some high school kid cramming for the SAT.
> and i was shocked. At first I though (...), but its actually (...)!
> The (...) installed everywhere (...) each other nonstop, sometimes with real
> There's social pyramid starting to form, with one of the younger ones conquering the game with no clear challenger, its football but for people who don't like football.
The paragraph above specifically, it sounds coherent, but makes no sense. Pyramid? Pyramid of what? Younger ones? Football what?
> Its fascinating how an old and not very hip game became a crazy trend so fast.
I think it took quite a few years actually.
The best one is the coolest and so on.
While people who don't play are constantly bullied.
What's football for people who don't like football or chess? :)
Or perhaps Jelle's Marble Runs
Since then we've gotten pretty serious - we play at a local club, went to a tournament, take lessons, etc. However, it's very much a niche hobby - more than A local club it's THE local club. Part of me wishes that I'd have chosen chess, which would've given us an order of magnitude more opponents and materials, both online and offline. On top of that, apparently it would've given my son an additional way to gain social status at school. However, the truth is that we do enjoy Go more than chess, and have already invested quite some energy (I am beginning to be an intermediate with an ELO of around 1150).
There are some perks of course. The Go community is super nice (the joke goes that, unlike with chess, you cannot just go to another club to play IRL if you piss off your club members). It's so small that even as a beginner I got the chance to befriend the reigning Polish champion (and one of the very few European Pros, which is a big deal - they play almost on par with the Asian pros). He turned out to be a fantastical human being, if a bit intimidating at first (he will casually play 5 games simultaneously, maintaining separate teaching conversations over each board, and a bonus conversation about AI; then he will be able to write down every game on paper).
While I feel a hint of jealousy for the popularity of chess, if Go were to disappear, I would just switch to chess and have probably have 85-90% of the fun I'm having with Go (not to mention access to my father's vast chess library). So, the fact that young people enjoy mind games makes me very happy - I feel that playing chess or Go is genuinely good for you.
Parents quickly worked out this equated to $2/hour childcare and signed up kids that had never before touched a chess board. It was a delightful chaos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P349BdHUxlc&t=0s
There's too much that's simply memorisation over skills, deep lines leading you down well traversed paths.
Creativity and ingenuity suffer.
The only real option* if you want interesting games is to make intentionally bad moves so that theory falls apart, and that's only an option against weaker players.
You can play with the more restricted time controls - but that only mixes things up by forcing mistakes, not by introducing well considered novel moves.
* There's always Fischer random.
https://thechessworld.com/articles/openings/5-chess-openings...
There's probably a limit as to how bad a move you want to make: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnes_Opening
You're probably better of going with dubious openings, rather than actively bad: https://lichess.org/study/FzX9K6ff.
Creativity and ingenuity suffer.
The only real option if you want interesting games is to make intentionally bad moves so that theory falls apart, and that's only an option against weaker players.
Did you watch the world championship this year? It did not at all fit your narrative. The games were very exciting. The players were out of prep early and often. There were a lot of chances being taken, blunders, and mistakes. All this from 2800-level players.
I think people may soon realize that computers can be used for more than just preparing deep lines on well-trodden ground. They can also be used to find the shortest path off the beaten track and into a jungle of a midgame where you and your opponent can just play some chess. I love it!
Until you become extremely proficient, you have basically no room to use novel strategies. You will lose to people with better execution on established strategies. And so you don’t do anything but grind execution and it’s pretty boring.
Chess isn’t quite this bad, but I find it pretty boring after a while.
I would argue that you can get to approaching 1500 ELO without really knowing any theory at all, and just focusing on what "feels" like appropriate control of the board & game dynamics... and again, the vast majority of casual players will likely never move beyond that. But it's still fun, especially when they're able to challenge friends between classes to 3 or 5 minute matches.
That may not hold if it’s an established form of social competition where you can earn prestige by being good at it within your local peer group. It would be nice to see more intellectual challenges take that role among young people.
OK, so fucking up accidentally can also make for an interesting game, but that hardly shatters my "narrative".
Also, a lot of those engine lines would’ve just made a draw, something a human player would never do when they’re playing with the white pieces in a need-to-win game.
Memorisation is not at all important for learning to play chess. It won't make you better at the game. Training your pattern recognition, your positional/endgame/opening understanding will.
Until you're around 1500 real life ELO(which takes years for most people), all you have to do is play the game and enjoy it, analyse it with the opponent or other friends from the club. No memorisation required.
A lot of times, Memorization isn't even needed. People develop mental shortcuts for calculation in positional, endgame, and middle game sections.
Things like forcing doubled pawns on the C/F files (depending on your color), calculating whether you can promote before the king can catch up (that triangle strategy). Lucena and a few others.
With a solid opening repertoire that's chosen to force certain openings/sublines you can limit the study needed significantly (and shoot to the moon rating wise).
Point is memorisation is pointless. The way to study an opening is to understand the ideas, possible endgames, tactical and various structures that can arise.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_chess
I almost never play chess, but when I play chess I usually play this variant, because it's faster and people don't have any tactics memorised. I'm not even sure if it's possible to memorise in the same manner as regular chess.
And yet, game 2 of the world championship there was a novelty on move 4.
Your moves are all about controlling your opponents influence and responses while developing your pieces before situating for a breakthrough or attack.
Interesting games only really happen with decently skilled opponents who know the theory as well as you. The game often only starts getting interesting after move 16+.
Dubious moves and openings are a surefire way to lose.
Basically, it's all there. Chess is born anew for the 21st century.
Where are the doomers who said chess was over after being solved by AI?
- Short time format makes for intense, fast paced games
- Starting a game only takes a few taps, and you can be done in a few minutes
- ELO ratings give you a number to obsess over improving, and online matching puts you against even opponents
- Instant post-game analysis
- Large amount of Twitch/Youtube content make it more fun to learn and follow the community
Your point is moot because only 1% of people play at a high-level, thus chess is at least more interesting than what 99% of CSGO players will experience in terms of strategy. Their ability to react and aim in real-time isn't a consideration either, nor is their access to a pretty decent computer and internet connection to be able to compete effectively.
You don't need to be Global Elite in CS to have a team that attempts site takes/retakes/rotations and tries to use util effectively. You'll never have GE reactions/aim, but you'll also never be an IM/FM in chess no matter how much you grind. CS is still fun even as a silver/low gold nova pleb because the midgame has effectively unlimited variety (just like chess), and 10 independent players as opposed to 2 leads to much more diverse gameplay. CS also has the advantage of there not being draws (aside from in Valve's matchmaking), something which plagues chess all the way to the super grandmaster level.
The kids these days are drowning in novelties of the sort that were scarce to me as a child. It stands to reason they wouldn't be as easily impressed or fooled by such things.
Like you trying to make everything else sound inferior, plus fluff. It is not true, once you scratch reputation out of chess, you get mundane drills and memorization of situations.
Sometimes I play bullet games for hours straight because it’s very easy to just play one more 2 minute game.
Things have gotten much easier now, you can get endless stream of free puzzles that are as fun as any puzzle game and adapt to your skill level... I'm still not that interested in actually playing but it's really the ultimate single player game for phones, always slightly challenging and takes as little or as much time as you want.
It’s really nice having that sort of depth vs a video game with a set path and story that you follow, or slicing random fruits with your finger.
And the accessibility has obviously gotten insanely good as has been pointed out before in the thread.
Here he responds to a reddit question from 3 months ago about the rise in Chess and he reponds "me" in an implied tongue in cheek way. [1] He is very active in the chess community and feels very accessible. Unlike the original elitist culture that chess was known for, he works hard to make it accessible and makes an effort to praise brilliant moves from low elo games/moves. His video answering chess questions on the wired youtube channel is a great introduction to him as well as chess, regardless of your skill level.
Rozman's videos that focus on beginner plays made me feel okay to be low elo, and that's impactful coming from someone at his skill level.
I am weak with opening theory and don't enjoy learning it. I enjoy playing intuitively, and have started playing much more chess960, a variant where starting piece positions are randomized. Lichess has recurrent chess960 torunaments. [2]
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/10glwhg/does_anyone_...
- chess education is more accessible and is fun af now thanks to folks like Hikaru and Levy (aka GothamChess).
- default games are now rapid 10 minute games or 20 minute games at tops. This makes it as quick as a Fortnite round and the odds of cheating in such rapid games goes down drastically. Couple that with the excellent anti cheat work being done and the game really does stay short and enjoyable.
With the game being in popular culture via queens gambit it feels understandable that it is rising amongst younger folks (impossible to have predicted but very much easily explained looking backwards)
Also encouraging that kids pick it over more distracting activities. One of the biggest benefits I've reaped from playing is just the ability to deeply focus and concentrate. Not a bad skill nowadays.
Then I saw the Botez Sisters on Lex Friedman's podcast and started checking out their content. Holy crap is online chess ever entertaining as hell these days.
Not only are the various streamers on Twitch and YouTube great, but there are so many different variations of the game to come out, like Duck Chess. The bots that Chess.com creates every few months are more entertainment fodder. There is even Chess Boxing!
So I can completely understand why it's gaining traction with teens. Chess is "cool" now for the first time that I can remember.
This is also, of course, following The Queen's Gambit on Netflix and the Carlsen / Nieman cheating scandal. It is so entertaining.
Edit: it's also worth noting that a lot of non-Chess streamers have even started getting into Chess. That undoubtedly has an effect as well.
- chess is a board game in my closet next to parcheesi and backgammon but it turns out there are chess professionals who play high stakes games
- computers are so powerful that they can beat the best chess players, and you can use a computer to cheat
- the allegation is that a professional chess player managed to receive some kind of covert signal to tell him the right moves. It’s like a spy movie
- the drama continued to unfold with deep statistical analysis of prior games, $100 million lawsuits, and more
Note: I'm not knocking chess per se; just trying to provide context and contrasts with poker.
A new board game. Based on a show essentially ABOUT a board game. The mind boggles.
I have been playing for several decades now. Never picked up a chess book/video/tutorial in my life (after the initial introduction by a relative). Always played with the flow. I would admit sometimes I do wish I should learn some openings but somehow deep down I couldn't see myself learning chess through a tut. May be some day someone would convince me otherwise, who knows...
and I am in no way a pro, hover around 1600 rapid on chess.com. It says I am ahead of 98.5% folks. Not sure how will this 1600 translate to ELO ratings.
Andrew Tate was the most internet famous person for a period of time with a huge following in the teen male demographic.
Possible cause-effect.
I think this may just be your recommendation bubble - most people only heard about him when he was arrested.
You don't have to be on social media - the UK newspapers and other sources will pick up what ever people are talking about on there.
It had exploded in popularity way before him, due to the other reasons mentioned; streamers, Queen's Gambit, etc. but the article is focused on a purported post January spike in schools - and considering the baleful influence he's claimed to have in them, it would also therefore seem necessary to factor him in to any analysis here.
[1] https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2019/07/11/speedcub...
I liked it for expressions of their character.
It's become like a social status among people to have a decent elo, a horrible marker for intelligence but a growing popular one.
I started picking it up now and the resources to find games are great with Chess.com and Lichess but have found myself trying to relearn the skills and reading after losing 100 straight games.
But I always found it so boring. Too pensive. I'm not a strategist at all.
Cool that this is getting picked up again though.
And... there's lishogi now. Which means you can play, do exercises, observe games, all in the browser and in English.
In this case the result is entertaining and harmless, but the motivation is financial.