I don't think what you're saying is technically untrue, but this tournament is just one of many CCA (Continental Chess Association) tournaments; dozens every year; I think Bally's is just hosting the tournament as they would any number of conventions or competitions. You say, "privately run", which I guess is true, but it's just another chess tournament that anybody with the entry fee can enter. There's no prestige to it, relative to any other chess tournament. No real comparison to WSOP.

I played this North American Open once. The night before round 1 I played 1/2nl with a couple of friends and a Russian-American GM until like 6AM. We're having a good time, drinking, etc., and I get stacked like 3 times, then finally go back to my room ... get up after about 3 hours sleep, drag myself to the playing hall, and look at my pairing ... the black pieces against that very same grandmaster.

Did he resign?

This legitimizes my idea that the WSOP should create the WSOC (World Series of Chess).

Currently, what the chess tour thing that Bally's hosts is probably a 1/200 of what it can become if Bally's flexes is money and marketing muscle to promote it. And that would be just for the first year.

FIDE has 350,000 members.

Many chess players are sub-21 and should therefore become a good base for future poker players.

Chess players are game players. Perfect fit.

And people say poker is boring to watch? At least poker players understand the game and even casual card players can pick it up. Very few people have any idea of how to play chess at higher than an elementary level.

What's the commentary?

Curling suffers from some of the same problems as poker in that it's boring. WSOP is in the business of poker though, and as such it is in their best interest to make their product less boring and more entertaining just as it would be for those involved in the sport of curling. WSOP is obviously not going to get into the sport of curling.

Unlike poker, curling also has the problem of accessibility. I've never curled in my life. I've never known anyone that's curled and I've never even seen someone curl in person. Curling seems like a terrible sport to get into given that most of the growth in the US is happening in the southern half of the country. Most of the growth outside of the US has been occurring in China, India, and Southeast Asia. Most of the growth over the next century will come in Africa. Lagos Nigeria will be home to 88 million people, and no matter how hard you try to sell them the sport of curling, not 1 of them will have a good reason to get into it.

While in present day both curling and poker have boring products, poker has the big advantage of being highly adaptable. Not only are there hundreds of variants of poker but since it is a game of the mind you don't even need a poker table or physical cards. You could literally have competitors in pods if you want. There's really no limit to the ways you can present the game. It's not even pigeon holed into being a sport. For instance it could also be presented as a game show. Curling, as I see it, is limited to being sports content. It could never be an annual mainstay on ABC/CBS/NBC/FOX. The sky is the limit with poker though.

Live content is in high demand by networks. It's the rare form of content where people actually watch the ads. Still, they aren't going to air something that isn't entertaining, such as the WSOP Main Event. As you illustrated with examples like curling, the bar that poker needs to clear isn't necessarily all that high.

Curling is the most popular Olympic sport of the last decade, according to research by FiveThirtyEight.

https://www.tmj4.com/sports/olympics...-popular-sport

https://ftw.usatoday.com/2014/02/cur...urling-a-sport

I lol'ed, bravo

I think backgammon would be more exciting to watch. Since there are some poker players who played backgammon like Dan Harrington, Erik Seidel, Gus Hansen and Paul Magriel (Deceased), they could do commentary. Theres a mix of luck and skill in the game and plays faster than chess.

On top of that, backgammon is a game that people actually are willing to play for money.

would need to promote the f out of it, the real money backgammon community is so small they all know each other and almost never see random casuals sign up but just people within the community who went specifically for the event

How does this make the casino money? Some "maybe spillover" from the WSOC to WSOP? There's already plenty of crossover between chess and poker worlds; those chess people that want to play poker either already do, or don't have the money to do so. Several really high profile people in the chess world have played poker at high levels for years such as Grischuk and Browne, or in Canada Dan Smith.

And there will never be a Moneymaker in the chess world; the very nature of the game makes it impossible. You hold a big money WSOC and guess what's going to happen: Carlsen is gonna win.

make the wsoc a tag-team event. one chess player and poker player per team.

one format could end up having all the chess players in a poker mtt. how sick would that be?

If Carlsen plays Dan Smith, Dan Harrington, or Jennifer Shahade without a Queen and a Rook (or whatever the appropriate handicap is) then the fight will be close. And yes, Shahade would be a Moneymaker, in both the female appeal and the chess appeal.

And Carlsen or Kasparov winning even a minor WSOP title could send shockwaves that would reverberate throughout the chess world.

This thread used to be good, less chess more poker plz

still?

With sister properties like the Flamingo and Planet Hollywood so proximate, what roles could these places play?

Based on what In saw on summer nights in Berlin, it's still pretty popular with the Turkish/Arabic population. Not many younger players though.

Both got rid of their poker rooms in 2021.

Both PH and Flamingo can open temporary rooms located where there is a lot of foot traffic. Basically, near the sidewalk in the case of the Flamingo.

They can call them outreach tables whose purpose is to advertise the stuff that is going on at Bally's/Paris....just a few minutes walk away.

They can make spectacles out of them by giving the look of "final tables".

FIDE has 350,000 members. How many members does the top backgammon organization have. Both Negreanu and Polk are into chess as the latter admitted to Jennifer Shahade.

No dealers needed for chess.

Chess is very global with deep historic roots. WSOP should own it. No dealers needed for chess. Great for railing too.

No movie has ever been made about backgammon. Fischer, Karpov, Kasparov, are all global icons. WSOP should take over chess. It won't cost much and would make poker stronger.

Yeah, the WSOP should buy chess so that they can bury it too ensuring that it never regains mass appeal.

STTs and small megas would be easy logistically. Overflow for the big events might be a bit more difficult.

The discussion about Chess is ridiculous. No chess player is going to put up serious money in a tournament with the best in the world. They have a zero % chance of winning as there is no luck in Chess. In my younger days I had a respectable rating of around 2,000 and if I play the highest ranked player in the world a game every day for the rest of my life I would win a total of zero times. I might draw a few but i would never win. By its very nature the element of luck allows an average poker player a chance to beat a pro in any single tournament.

If you played a chess tournament under the same rules as the main event($10 000 entry and no extra money) the over under on number of players who would play would be around 100 and if it was I would take the under.

The only way Chess would work would be some proven way to handicap matches. But then you get sandbagging and other nefarious stuff that would dissuade top players from participating.

Same with Snooker. Outside of maybe 200 guys nobody else has a chance of winning an open event.

Interesting thought - I am a lover of both games, but I'm struggling to picture it.

Chess is a terrible spectator activity. It moves much slower than poker, and 99% of players won't really know what's going on in a top-level game. Anyone on the rail who breathes loudly gets glared at.

With cards shown, amateur poker players can enjoy watching top players, and each hand lasts only minutes.