Major League Chess

[jiggery_pokery]

I was thrilled to read that the US Chess League had its first week of matches last Wednesday night. If ever there were a first sentence to make 80% of you skip on to the next post, that might be it; the rest of you, who indulge my passion for vicarious chess geekery, may

Comments

[jiggery_pokery]

I'm sure there are local leagues within NY with those teams you mention and many, many more. How many of those could provide flourising USCL teams is another matter, though.

I'm not a 4NCL player myself because I'm really very poor at chess - I've played fewer than 20 games of it in my life, probably only about ten, and there are other games I far prefer. I do enjoy watching and listening to analysis of it, though, and I like chess players.

Last question: hard and interesting. Taking a quick look around, Yahoo! Games has 7,720 people playing chess at the moment, out of 138,394 players online. The MSN Games Zone has 1,064 people playing chess out of 118,728. Pogo has 1,786 playing chess out of 243,587. Those are possibly the three biggest online games sites, though I may well be out of date in my information. That said, none of those are terribly serious chess sites: the most serious are probably the Free Internet Chess Server with 445 players online right now and definitely the (not-free) Internet Chess Club with 1908 players online (fairly low considering it's 8pm Pacific), of whom 20 are real-world GMs or IMs. Compare that to 52,550 poker players on PokerStars alone (probably the world's biggest poker site?) and you have some sort of clue.

[hedwig_snowy]

Wow, thanks for the data. Don't go looking :) , but I wonder how these numbers have changed over the last two years (esp. in the US) with the advent of televised poker tournaments? Not to mention, the increase in illegal gambling around the country. It was always there, but now...instead of headin' for bars with fake IDs...college students gather in dorms and play poker on Sat night. Also, is this going to be a continuing enterprise with wide-spread appeal over time or is it a temporary fad that will play itself out when a new idea comes along???

Good luck on Sat!

[jiggery_pokery]

The increase in the number of players in the $10,000 main event at the World Series of Poker is probably as good an indicator as any. Going up to the current year, the numbers are something like (about 5 years of 250s) - 300ish - 400ish - 600ish - 800ish - 2500ish - 5800ish, roughly, off the top of my head. Hard to tell whether Internet poker or TV poker is the main driver, probably both encourage each other.

I missed one of the very big chess sites in my previous comment - playchess.com, which is advertised through major computer chess brands. Apparently they get something like 8,000 chess players there at once. Accordingly chess is doing a little better than I made it appear.