If supporters of fast time controls kept it more real and put the accent on a)the fun factor b)TV friendliness It would be fine.But when they start to tell you there is no difference in quality between rapid and classical,then you know they are either lying or plain.....
IM Greg Shahade: "Slow Chess should die a fast death"!
Lets be completely honest people.
No one cares about what Greg Shahade has to say!
The only reason the chess community even acknowledges him is because of his sexy looking sister Jennifer Shahade.
If he was a single child no one would even bother commenting on this thread.
I see that some people are conflating blitz and rapid chess, then attacking rapid chess for being blitz chess. It's not.
Seems a lot of assumptions are made by Greg. Maybe he should test his theory by running a dozen Rapid tournaments across the United States and see the partcipation numbers and feedback? I think there is a place for all time controls and I appreciate several different kinds. I don't think we need to do away with slow chess, but surely we could entertain more tournaments with quicker time controls?
Greg Shahade says that slow chess should die a fast death. He points out that less than 1% of 1% of all online games is slow (longer than G/60), and that when people want to have fun playing chess, they play fast chess.
He argues that it's time professional chess players start playing 30+5 time controls instead of the standard 5 hour games.
I agree!
Read what he has to say. Yeah, it's controversial, but it makes great sense to me!
https://gregshahade.wordpress.com/2015/11/02/slow-chess-should-die-a-fast-death/
There are always differences between professional versions of a sport/game and the amateur/casual version that the public plays. For example, just because the majority of families play "touch" football without pads, helmets or other equipment during Thanksgiving and other family get-togethers does NOT mean that professional football should eliminate tackling or helmets. Similarly, family volleyball games typically involve fewer or more than 6 players per side and often with relaxed observance of the rules (e.g., carrying). Does that mean that the pros should play the same way?
Have there been studies on the quality of chess at different time controls?
I think I play better in a slow time control -- I certainly don't feel as pressured. But I also know I rehash my analysis a lot, so I'm not sure it adds up to better.
Though I'm thinking here of 1-2 hour games vs 3-4 hour games. Blitz is a different beast. I know I don't play nearly so well there.
Good question. I owuld also look at it this way. Give 2 people Mobey Dick to read. Have one person read it as fast as they can, and have one read it slowly. Who do you think will comprehend more of the book?
A better analogy would be if someone read a 2-page synopsis of Moby Dick. The 2-page synopsis would be quite good -- perhaps even considered a standalone work of classical literature -- but I doubt that it would compare to the original Melville work. Imagine further that -- due to complaints from young students and their parents that the internet age demands shorter works of literature because kids these days just don't have the attention span to read long novels -- schools mandated that only works of fiction shorter than 30 pages would be taught. Indeed, what if the government decreed that no author would be allowed to publish any work that was longer than 30 pages! Following Shahade's reasoning, long novels should die a fast death because the majority of young teens prefer comic books (sorry, graphic novels).
When I want to have fun I play blitz. When I want to go deeper and work on improving my game, I play classical and I try to do it in tournament settings.
The ability to play blitz well comes from working on the game at slow time controls.
Slow time controls means less 'accidents', less 'fun' by meaning randomity and pieces flying off the board. It means more responsibility, more attempt to reach the truth of a position (still in a relative sense, as the clock is still ticking and you do make compromises - just not so many of them as you make in blitz).
Im sure IM Shehade, or any player at least above 1700 knows this very well.
Nevertheless, his original statement is not bad as its intention is to catch a headline and be in the news, 'the talk of the day' - and even such a thread is thriving.
Diakonia says it right.mgoldfish have longer attention spans than many people today.
in fact, I don'tmknow howmyou can tell,the difference anymore if someone has ADD ?
It's amazing - I just about can't watch TV anymore, with all of the rapid editing of images. Even the dialog is approaching a machine gun pace. It's really disgusting.
I think that Shahade may have a point. In the tournaments that I play in, the games in the lower class sections usually finish within two hours. It's the higher sections that take 4 to 5 hours, and then only a handful of games last that long. The lower section players then have to wait for the higher section games to finish.
Assumming that future generations become more impatient, the players in the lower sections, who constitute the majority of players, will start pushing for faster time controls. The higher level players will complain, but the people paying the bills (the lower section players) usually win out.
I'm 74 years old, so I'm not going to see it. However, what I do see is time controls becoming faster so that tournaments can be completed more quickly.
I added a comment and my 2 (or 3) pennies to the blog. It's a blog filled with things that are patently false, nothing but opinion, and point blank indicative of someone with some kind of psychological disorder. I'm glad I got to meet Mr. Shahade and his inane ideas.
Diakonia says it right.mgoldfish have longer attention spans than many people today.
in fact, I don'tmknow howmyou can tell,the difference anymore if someone has ADD ?
It's amazing - I just about can't watch TV anymore, with all of the rapid editing of images. Even the dialog is approaching a machine gun pace. It's really disgusting.
About 12 years ago? ESPN did a study that showed that there viewers lose focus after 15 seconds, so they cut the clips to 15 seconds.
Have there been studies on the quality of chess at different time controls?
I think I play better in a slow time control -- I certainly don't feel as pressured. But I also know I rehash my analysis a lot, so I'm not sure it adds up to better.
Though I'm thinking here of 1-2 hour games vs 3-4 hour games. Blitz is a different beast. I know I don't play nearly so well there.
Good question. I owuld also look at it this way. Give 2 people Mobey Dick to read. Have one person read it as fast as they can, and have one read it slowly. Who do you think will comprehend more of the book?