Media comments on chess

[Geoff Chandler]

Hi Mathew,

I agree, the 80 million is possibly based on the number of accounts on the various chess paying sites.

Chess.com is currently boasting 77+ million https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess.com but a vast majority
will be accounts that are inactive and have probably been so for a number of years.
These inflated numbers will the same on all the other sites though not as high as 77 million.

Maybe someone can pop onto the top 5 sites and ask how many different accounts have been
active since the start of the year. That should give a good indication of how many play online.
(of course there will players like me who play on three different sites to screw up that figure.)
For all we know maybe someone has done that and that is where the 80 million came from.

[Ian Thompson]

Maybe someone can pop onto the top 5 sites and ask how many different accounts have been
active since the start of the year.

That information is publicly available for lichess if someone has the time, and disc space, to extract it from the game data.

[Kevin Thurlow]

"Now do we really believe that chess.com has eighty million indivdual members, or do we think there are a lot of duplicated accounts."

The latter, and probably quite a few people with more than two accounts. And if you add up the numbers on different sites, people might well use different names on each site.

[Joey Stewart]

If we estimate there will be many millions of people capable of playing but have no online presence then it most likely would balance out the large number of inactive and duplicate accounts of chess.com and make that 80 million figure seem pretty reasonable.

Certainly encouraging for the lowest rated players to know that they are still in the top 90% of all humankind !

[JustinHorton]

If we estimate there will be many millions of people capable of playing but have no online presence

That's a big if though

[Roger de Coverly]

If we estimate there will be many millions of people capable of playing but have no online presence

There's likely a high count of people who have a chess game installed on their computer, tablet or phone, many of whom have played against it a few times. As we tried to tell a late ECF President, it's a leap of faith to assume they are interested in coverage of World championship matches, even less in paying for it.

[Joey Stewart]

If we estimate there will be many millions of people capable of playing but have no online presence

That's a big if though

There are massively populated chess Nations like India and China which have an extreme wealth imbalance and therefore hundreds of millions with either no internet access or in the case of China state controlled access so the rest of the world never sees the vast majority of their players - it's not that much of a stretch to assume a fair few million extra invisible players based on just those two countries let alone everywhere else in the world where people can only play over the board.

[JustinHorton]

Maybe, but there's a few large assumptions in that lot. The point about China might be a good one though - can you play on, say, lichess from China?

(If this discussion is going to go much further it might be best allotted its own threat, by the way.)

[Paul Buswell]

Not a media comment on chess as such, but to-day's Times (page 15) reports that barrister Feliks Kwiatkowski, an established Sussex County player, has been fined by the Bar Council over comments he made about female barristers.

PB

[Nick Ivell]

And according to an article in today's Telegraph - but nothing to do with Feliks - chess is facing its MeToo moment.

[Roger de Coverly]

And according to an article in today's Telegraph - but nothing to do with Feliks - chess is facing its MeToo moment.

This is the link (behind a paywall)
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/ ... e-players/

The title is presumably much of the story.

The FIDE profile of the player accused
https://ratings.fide.com/profile/11601310

[Nick Ivell]

Thank you for the link, Roger.

[NickFaulks]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/ ... e-players/

The problems faced by Bibi Assaubayeva in Russia have been the subject of an Ethics investigation. That was about unfounded cheating allegations rather than sexual harassment, but I expect the two can be traced back to the same attitudes.

The abrupt disappearance from chess of the Kosintseva sisters has never been properly explained.

[Leonard Barden]

The abrupt disappearance from chess of the Kosintseva sisters has never been properly explained.

There's an interview with Nadezhda in chessnews.ru which presumably explains it, but the link doesn't work.30 Jun 2020 — Nadezhda Kosintseva has joined us on Chess-News radio in order to clear up the situation around her and her sister's refusal to play for the ...

[Neil Graham]

I don't think we'll hear the last of this from our local chess player.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-n ... e-60320434.

https://www.nottinghampost.com/news/loc ... rd-6629151

I can remember when he bet on Bruno to beat Tyson as "the odds were good".