Could Women Save Chess?

Every day I visit a circuit of chess websites to check on the latest news. Chess fans already know that at the Dresden Chess Olympiad, the FIDE General Assembly approved changes to the current Grand Prix chess cycle in mid-cycle! This caused much consternation and frustration, and anger, but is FIDE doing business as usual. The one thing you can always rely upon is that you cannot ever ever ever rely upon FIDE to stick to a contract or keep its word. It took a few days for the truth to surface (despite some earlier hints about sponsorship problems at some chess news websites, nothing had been confirmed). Now it has been confirmed by a letter from FIDE itself. The reason for the change in the Grand Prix cycle - introducing a whole new event of 8 players which instantly reduces winning the Grand Prix and the World Cup to an "also ran" status instead of the two players (Grand Prix and World Cup) facing off against each other and the winner of the match facing off against the World Champion - is because of money. As is well known by now, the Doha sponsor of the Grand Prix event scheduled for December, 2008 withdrew, and FIDE stepped in hastily to organize the event in Elista, Khan Kirzan's home town (and presumably put up the prize money, too). Now a second Grand Prix sponsor has withdrawn (Montreux - sp?) - allegedly due to financial problems. Well, when a certain amount of prize money is to be put up for the players' purse IN ADDITION TO 20% ON TOP FOR FIDE AND 5% ON TOP FOR WORLD CHESS, one can only wonder what the hell is going on and marvel at the fact that ANY SPONSORS whatsoever were found for the Grand Prix! Okay - fast forward to tonight. I arrived home after a long had day at the office and visited Susan Polgar's blog to see that GM Magnus Carlsen has withdrawn from the remainder of the Grand Prix cycle. Geez! So then I visit Michael Greengard's "Daily Dirt" chess blog at Chess Ninja to see what the regulars are saying about this latest development (under the topic "FIDE not-so-Grand-Prix") - but the news was too new, not enough opportunity for people to post about it much when I visited earlier this evening. But the conversation was interesting, and in particular, this post reverberated: irv replied to comment from guest December 4, 2008 3:22 PM Reply Guest wrote: "Chess needs to give up the idea that such rich tournaments are sustainble." That's the bottom line. The sick, never-ending quest, chimeric quest for perfect play has led to the death of chess. The first ones to go were the chess clubs. Online chess is doing bad: a few years ago you could get a game on the spot at ICC or Playchess; nowadays, you have to wait a few minutes for a game to materialize. Let's face it: chess at the top has become excruciatingly painful to watch. Too mechanical. Too dry. Too boring; hell, I wouldn't ACCEPT 50 bucks to watch Svidler-Leko, for God's sake. Less money and more daring, if imperfect chess, is the solution. Let players relax a bit. Win a bit more, lose a bit more, enjoy a lot more. Force players to play to a decisive result. What's wrong with a top player making $15.000 in a couple of weeks (all expenses paid for by the organizer) of leisure chess at 2 hours per game, one game per day? If tournament organizers could get half a dozen of the top 20 players in the world (along with 6 up-and-coming tigers) to enter a tournament that can be run with $100.000, many sponsors could be found. Bring life back to chess. Is chess "dying?" Well, I don't know about that - but I do know one way it could be jazzed up with the right promotion and some money to back it - just like some very smart people backed internet and televised Poker a few years ago... I couldn't help myself - I responded - WOMEN! Women chessplayers! I mean, come on darlings! Irv thinks "more daring, imperfect chess" is a possible solution to the slow death of chess and that really describes the chess that about 90% of the female chess pros out there on the circuit play today. It has often been noted by chess "fans" (99.4% male) that "women's chess" is more exciting than a lot of the games played between the elite players (Judit Polgar notwithstanding). Women's chess games generally are not too dry, too mechanical, too boring. Women play "fighting chess" and will battle on and on and on, long past the point where a male player will concede a draw against another male player. Just a few days ago at USCF's website I read about an 111 move head-banger that GM Jesse Kraai played against a chess femme - WFM Bayaraa Zorigt, a player who barely registered on my awareness of chess femmes. The point is obvious. Who IS this woman who played a GM to 111 moves before finally succumbing (probably due to physical and mental fatigue)??? That is a woman chessplayer worthy of notice. He may be right - and I may be crazy. Win a bit more, lose a bit more, enjoy a lot more.