Sure but these same people think they can beat pit games

There is a ton of short term luck in poker which gives losing players false hope

There is no luck in chess

Poker will never be a prestigious game nor should it be

this.


ive literally never seen chess on TV. chess is beyond dead.

There is luck in chess. If you moved a piece 12 moves ago and it so happens to be supporting a rank which you didn't intend it to. You got lucky. It's insane to think every single move you come up with, is deliberately going to effect every path of the tree of all moves in a chess board.
But the human brain can't do that. Professionals do it on a much, much smaller scale. And sometimes they get lucky, one of their pawns is blocking a bishop 20 moves in advance.

By your logic, Bo7s will be useless, as it's entirely skill and the next 6 games will be obsolete.

Maybe you play w/ headphones on and don't hear what the other players say. Many will tell you straight up that poker's mostly luck and they mean it.

I think this is a pretty cool idea and a great way to bring (positive) attention to the game.

Now time it with legalization of (most states, cuz a few will never legalize it and fudge 'em) poker in America and BOOM we got a true winner on our hands.

I also don't want to get into a big discussion but there certainly is luck and variance in chess.

check out agadmator's chess channel, it's been filling in for me for the missing poker streams. suddenly I'm playing one minute blitz on chess dot com.

It can be extremely difficult for most people to wrap their minds around the fact that the luck factor is so apparent in poker and yet it is still a game of skill. I forgot where I was going with the rest of this post.

My first reaction was to LOL when I read the thread title. Poker will never be "prestigious" until such time as cheating is eliminated - and I don't ever see that happening.

Will use this as an excuse to plug agadmator:

https://www.youtube.com/user/AGADMATOR

EDIT: did not see innyrav’s post till I added mine.

I watch two or three games minimum per day. Good stuff.

Also - this wasn’t on Agadmator’s channel but this blew me away:

Vassily Ivanchuk Post-game interview:

I would like to hear some chess players chime in on this, please and thank you.

You already have. It's a completely uncontroversial statement among chess players.

I have seen chess on TV.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelby_Lyman

I was too young to see his shows on the 1972 match, but he also hosted some episodes covering the world championship games between Karpov and Kasparov in the mid 80s. But the internet is a far better medium for chess. Chess is becoming absolutely huge on Twitch, for example.

It's just too hard to measure who's the best in a reasonable time frame.

My fav metrics for who's the best:

Tournaments- highest MU on Pokershares

Online Cash games- Who holds lobbies the most

Live cash games- Whoever people hate the most

Just check out https://www.twitch.tv/gmhikaru

He has 50k viewers beating any poker chan, DrDisrespect or CS:GO stream easily

How much luck is there in chess relative to poker?
What chance does a bad player have against a good player in chess?

It's all luck. How come every time I make sure to raise it huge with JJ, 95o still calls and beats me? Explain that Mr. Science.

Are you sure that this isn't just happening roughly 15% of the time?

Not dissing gmhikaru at all but on YouTube he has 231k subscribers to agadmator’s 670k.

Both are great and their styles so different (think Doug Polk for hikaru while I can’t think of any poker game breakdown person as calm and matter-of-fact as agadmator) it’s really not like they are rivals.

No because I raise enough so that only AA, KK, and 95o call me and they all beat me 100% of the time. imo.

Fair enough, prob is just luck-based then

My fav metrics:

Tournaments- Sauce

Online Cash games- Deffo Sauce

Live cash games- Probs Sauce


P.S. Will you ever stream again?

Way off topic but agadmator has a great dry sense of humor thats more effective since English isn't his first language, combined with a first rate knowledge of the strategies in play.

I suggest making chess more gambly like poker, as I already do with a good friend. Every twenty moves, both players draw a card that forces them to change the position of two random figures on the board (only the king is excluded).

I like Monopoly, too.

Since you asked nicely:

First off if both players evaluate a position as "unclear" then basically anything can happen within reason (win/loss/draw are all more or less equally valid) and there is an element of chance with the result. I've heard top players talk about this in videos on chess.com / youtube.

There is also something called "trends" in chess, that GM Jonathan Rowson talked briefly about in his book 7 Deadly Chess Sins. That one side could have the initiative and be making progress and then suddenly for no apparent reason he runs out of good moves / moves that make tangible progress and then it's a sharp turn for the other side and he/she makes progress. The other side now has the advantage and it's a peculiar thing that has been described as "getting lucky" by strong players that again I've heard on chess.com / youtube videos.

Also there are things like you study the Sicilian (A very popular and counter-attacking defense to 1. e4) for XX hours in preparation for your upcoming chess events and in the next 5 tournaments no one plays 1. e4 vs you.

I also don't think chess is that "prestigious". If it was genuinely prestigious then we'd see a lot more company sponsorship, endorsements, and even media attention for the top players.

The word I would associate more so with chess would be "honorable". Sure there's the little bit of engine analysis based cheating that goes on here and there but for the most part chess is an honorable endeavor.