There was a story in a UK Sunday paper about the sudden increase in the popularity of online chess has made the E-Sport community unhappy. (The story is here, but behind a paywall). The two main points are about the amount of money being paid in prize money, and whether chess is an 'E-Sport' as it is the same sport whether it is played on a board or via a computer.
I suspect I find this funny, mainly because people all getting 'butt-hurt' over things outside of their control is almost always funny. I also saw a retort to the second point, which argued the same standard could be applied to e-sport versions of games like FIFA or NBA, although the e-versions of these sports usually require less skill to play, which is why they are 'E-Sports'.
But having read the article, it also shows that FIDE really did miss the boat when it came to capturing the online chess market. The fact that has taken less than 6 months to catch up to other 'E-Sports' shows that with the right amount of planning (and foresight) chess could have been well ahead of the field 5 years ago,
1 comment:
It's also funny because it's the old "Is Chess is a sport?" in space^H^H^H^H^H the Internet
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