@nicbentulan said in #11:
> actually i was wondering about this seeming catch-22 in 9LX. which is it more of?
>
> A - there aren't many tournaments BECAUSE people aren't really interested
>
> B - there aren't many tournaments AND SO people aren't really interested
>
> i'm leaning towards B. but you are thinking A?
@nicbentulan That's an excellent question! I'm definitely for B. The only point is that the tournaments must employ a slower (preferrably classical) time control in order for chess players and fans to be able to realise the genuine beauty and profundity of this complex game. Otherwise, many would indeed find no harmony in chess960, or not enough time to solve the problems it poses during games, and feel no need to take it up altogether.
It's similar to complicated music which needs a thorough repeated listeting in order to be appreciated and admired while sounding like a cacophony or uninteresting if listened to on-the-run. But when it comes to chess, historically the game has been seen as a complex mental activity which made people think. That is what has been making it so attractive and giving it an aura of something that improves intellect, personality etc. So why should we agree to shrinking it all down to rapid, 3-minute and 1-minute? Because the 'fashion setters' say so? 'The time is different now, there's no place for slow events and we must comply with the demands of our time'? Well, who exactly has the authority to decide what is characteristic of the current time and what isn't? Does this overwhelming speeding-up of the game really benefit many people - aside from the organisers who are now able to conduct more events in a given period of time and thus collect more money?
BTW here's what Magnus said last year (see
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer_random_chess#Views_of_grandmasters):
"I would love to see more Fischer [Random] Chess being played over-the-board in a classical format. That would be very interesting to me, because I feel that that particular format is pretty well suited to classical chess as basically you need a lot of time in order to be able to play the game even remotely decently. And you can see that in the way that Fischer [Random] Chess is being played now when it is played in a rapid format. The quality of the games isn't very high because we make such fundamental mistakes in the opening. We don't understand it nearly enough and I think that would increase a lot if we were given a classical time control there".
