Over on The Chess Mind there has been some discussion of the BAP point system and other means for promoting chess. In the discussion Clint Ballard proposed 6 points for Chess on TV. Dennis Monokroussos has since closed his blog, so I couldn’t add my two cents to the discussion there, so I pick it up here, by quoting Mr Ballard’s points and commenting on them.

1. Every game must be decisive, eg. there needs to be a clear winner and a clear loser. BAP does this, there might be other ways, but BAP is really easy for the masses to understand with its 1, 2, 3 scoring. Its effect on tournament dynamics is very powerful.

Agree with the point, but not that BAP (his proposed scoring system) does it. His own expectation is 25% draws, meaning one game in four will not meet this criteria by his own figures. The only way to accomplish this is to either outlaw draws as a legitimate outcome of the game (not desirable, in my view) or to institute a tiebreaker system. A blitz playoff match of 6 games, perhaps.

2. Cheating must be exterminated, probably by lifetime bans of cheaters that is strictly enforced.

Agreed, but detecting it is difficult, and, to a lesser extent, so is defining it. If two players discuss the relative benefits of various outcomes to a game, and the outcome which benefits them both arises, did they cheat to get it? Was the discussion cheating?

This is the area where the USCF needs to become more active, I think. In all other sports it is the sanctioning body that does the investigating, not individual organizers of events.

3. Stop the insanity of splitting prize money equally. Where is the drama in that? First place prizes must be at least DOUBLE second place prize and so forth down the line. Without this, there is not enough at stake to create drama.

No. This is an absurd idea, that in point of fact is not replicated in any sport I’ve seen. For example, PGA tournaments use a much more level prize distribution. In the 2006 Quinn Direct British Masters, for example, first place was 300000, second was 200000 third was 112960, fourth was 90000, and so on. The largest relative difference was between first and second and the higher prize was only half again, not double the lower. By the time you reached 21st place, 20th place was only 3% larger.

Oh, and ties for prize money in golf are handled exactly the same way as it is in chess. Add the prizes up and split them equally.

4. Tournament pairing rules need to be updated from the 1895 approach.

I’ve snipped a lot of good points he makes about swiss events, though sometimes it’s not the fault of the pairing system, such as the complaint that player’s colors aren’t balanced at the end. That’s more the fault of time controls that create a limit of 5 games in a two-day tournament. If there were 6 games, it would be more possible to balance colors, for example.

We’ve tried some variations he suggests, such as reversing the order of the lower half of the pairing group (in a table of 50, for example, #1 plays #50 and #25 plays #26, instead of #1 playing #26 and #25 playing #50). The result is that lower rated players are discouraged from playing, as they get trounced 1-2 more rounds than in the usual method. This might not be considered a disadvantage in an event like Lone Pine, for example, but for most small local swisses it would be fatal. Still, it does represent a method that might be useful for TV-eligible events (which small local events wouldn’t be). I think the biggest drawback of this system is that it discourages “cinderella” stories, which create most of the excitement in a tournament, as low players who upset their opponents would have to continually play the highest player available. A compromise would be to only pair round one that way, however.

5. The above changes need to be applied to existing tournaments as much as possible. If it isn’t, the made for TV event will have a “made for TV” flavor to it. The people will know that this is not how it is really done and that defeats the entire purpose.

Agreed in principle; At least the major events need to be run the same as TV events, to avoid the “exhibition” flavor. Small-money events can be run in any manner, but there must be a significant fraction of the larger events run by the same system as the TV ones, whatever that may be.

6. Get the best players you can playing at tournament time controls. That is what the TV audience will want to see. Nothing else will do.

While this may seem the easiest to agree with, I can’t. The reason is simple: I thnk it’s the time control that is the problem.

I think one of the problems with chess as spectator sport is that it’s too hard to mount a comeback during a game. The audience loves a comeback story, but most of the time in chess it’s a slow slide downhill into a loss. Once you’re down you tend to stay there (I’m speaking of top-level play, of course, not class players like myself).

One of the attractions of poker is that even though you have a bad hand this deal, you get to start over again in a few minutes. While the bad hand will cost you position now, you have the same chance as everyone else to come back next hand. The only way to duplicate that in chess is to put together strings of chess games, like the hands in poker or like the games in tennis. Which means faster time controls are necessary.

This also addresses what I think is the main problem for chess as spectator sport: the fact the audience can’t tell who stands better during the game. I can check the scoreboard to see who’s better in curling, tennis, golf, or almost any other sport. When the ball lands nearer the pin, I can see who stands better on golf, without knowing how to hold a club. I can tell when one tennis player is being run ragged by another, without knowing what a volley is. The average citizen cannot look at a chess position and know who is ahead, most of the time. By the time the edge is apparent to the commoner, the player has resigned.

Computer (or human) commentary can help address that, but the average TV viewer isn’t going to be willing to sit there and watch numeric evaluations for very long. One player builds his edge, the other resigns, and the next game begins, where we wonder if the loser can get some of his own back, or will the winner continue to roll? That’s where the suspense for TV viewers will come from.

I’m not presenting blitz as the ideal, or even preferred, form of chess (my students are laughing even at the thought of that). I just think game in 15 is probably the longest time control a TV audience will tolerate, not that it’s the best way to play chess.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 14th, 2006 at 11:27 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.