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Currently chess is spectated entirely through the work of commentators. They play out possible further plays from the current board and discuss them. We as viewers may doubt to what extent the commentators really catch the thoughts of the players at the table.
This could easily be changed. Suppose each player has a private touchscreen that has no chess AI or databases (the players still have to figure everything out on their own), but allows the players to play out theoretical positions as they think about them.
There should be at least two advantages to that. First, if players can physically visualize their theoretical positions and not just mentally, their depth of analysis should be able to increase a bit, leading to even higher level of play.
Second, the viewers will be able to follow the actual players' thought processes as they consider positions and reject them. And commentators will provide further explanations on why the player is thinking about those positions, instead of only theorizing what he could want to play.
I think this could help making chess look much more dynamic and exciting for the viewer.
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It would be a nice touch! But it's something that the players would have to do basically as a favor to the audiences as they're used to reviewing options in their head already. As their secondary concern is clock management, players might scoff or pushback at this because it could just get in the way. Refreshing post though, I expected something along the line of "needs moar cheerleaderz!"
As a spectator it's hard to establish drama or conflict in the moment. While I don't think a shoutcaster personality would help persay, perhaps someone with more of a sense of conflict over the long term. The presentation has to establish an ebb and flow of conflict. Your idea would help an announcer in this regards as it would be interesting to see the player's conflicting strategies change as they react in real-time.
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i always thought the beauty of chess is that it's a long winding cascading game being played by "mere" humans and played out in several possible instances in the players head. adding something like that would have players using their fingers and eyes to go through the possibilities rather than just the brain.
it's like the worker counters being displayed in SC2 instead of players having to manually box select and count them; it detracts from the mechanics of the game that aren't visible to the audience.
one day in the future maybe they'll be able to plug into people's brains as they're playing and visualize their thoughts on screen. to the audience.
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Admittedly, this might be helpful to some players, but I think at the highest level players can already run through all relevant possibilities in their head. Pretty much, I think Kronen said it nicely. It would be somewhat of a chore for some players. Think of it like self commentating for SC2 streamers. Yes, it is possible but a bit harder for players to show thought process / play at the same time.
All that being said, I would still love to see this though.
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I certainly don't expect players to show all moves as they think about them - that's physically impossible, or would slow them down drastically. But if they are spending 5 minutes thinking about possible developments of a certain line, they could at least put that initial position on their touchscreen so we know they think about it. Then later they could think about another line etc.
Moreover, if both players do that simultaneously, regardless of whose turn it is, we could follow them both simultaneously and take note if one of them is taking more time on a certain line than the other, and comment about why that may be.
But I was really hoping this could help at least a tiny bit the players themselves. If it really doesn't, at all, and is only a hindrance for them, then I guess it can't really happen for the highest levels, only in special exhibitions and such, for fun.
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actually a lot of high level players don't even look at the board at all. Most players prefer to just calculate in their head instead. Great calculation skills are actually a factor that differentiates players so I don't think the idea is very amazing.
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Foolishness
United States3044 Posts
Alternatively (though this isn't really addressing the issue) there is correspondence chess, which is basically postcard chess...you mail moves to each other. For this format you're allowed to make moves on the board as much as you wish, since you typically have days to make a single move. Usually it's forbidden to use computers but I did hear about one tournament where the players were allowed to use computers/databases as they saw fit.
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I think professional Go players tried this in the last century (Go Seigen argued it would enhance the quality of the games), but the results could not really establish this, when I'm not mistaken. So, like others already said, I also think it's more a service to the viewer and possibly leads to distracting the players.
Sports like Chess and Go, with more downtime than action and no information hidden to the opponent but presentable to the audiance, are simply not suited to successfully broadcast. Don't get me wrong, I also had the stream of the WM matches open almost all the time, but I did look maybe every half an hour or so.
Even with commentary it's pretty boring most of the times because they might show a lot of possible moves and plans and ideas, but I never could shake the feeling, that this is always done to primarily fill the downtime. The education or getting-into-their-heads value seems pretty low to me. Seeing how many times they actually got the players ideas would make a nice statistic, I guess : D
You can only lower the time settings to bullet (or something like that), to make up for that. Although this inevitably lowers the quality of the games.
For me, I'm content and actually looking more forward to after-the-game reviews from e.g. GM King. Very precise, to the point, short and educational - sometimes also with nice trivia.
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It would be awful. This idea would pretty much destroy the point of chess: to outwit the other guy with your analysis.
However, giving the spectators a chance to play this out against each other as they watch the stream or the game live in the playing hall would be a nice. Then, the commentators could show the global stats of how many wins White and Black racked up from this very position.
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I totally agree that if chess wants to become a spectator sport for a wider audience it needs to be a little more accessible.
The screen would show the tactical thoughts of the players, but not their strategic goals. They might have elaborate strategic plans without specific lines yet worked out, and this is often the most creative and interesting part of chess. For that, for the story of the position, you will still rely on commentators.
Making the game more interactive through tablets or something is a great idea.
Another big problem, though, is how long chess games are. There's no reason why Classical Time should reign forever. It obviously produces games that are tactically more precise, but then, correspondence chess is superior to Classical Chess in that sense. Indeed, correspondence chess between computers would be best of all. But it would have 0 entertainment value.
Playing SC2 or BW on slowest time settings would produce more precise games - so why do we play on fastest? I'm not sure if Blitz is too fast for chess, but I think classical is too slow for most tournaments.
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EPT
