I think the current chess world championship teaches the Go scene a lesson in marketing & promtion. This single tournament is driving more people towards chess then anything. I see it with a lot of my friends that do not care about chess, but talk about it suddently because of this tournament and its coverage. If Go would have such an ultimate event, I bet it would soon overtaking chess in the Western world, because Go is superior to chess in almost any (comptetitive) way. And needless to say it would be more fun too, instead of having zillion tournaments where you don't know their importances (e.g. what's more valueable...to win Honinbo or LG Cup?). That's my opinion.

What do you think? Why is the Go scene in Asia so splitted, why is there not a big firm that'd sponsor a world champ jubango? Or do you even like the current system in Go?

1. A few months ago there was a superhuge jubango finishing
2. The chess world has a gazillion tournaments

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Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

Between two players past their prime. It's like if Karpov would play against Kasparov nowadays. Yes, there are many tournaments in chess, but it all peaks in the World Championship. That is missing in Go - at least for me.

I don't see the chess World Champion title as overwhelmingly important. The winner of the world championship just won some tournaments and a match. As we have seen, the "world champion" might not actually be a dominating player. A lot of popularity in the competitive chess world comes from politics, IMO. At one time, sixty years ago, I was a big fan of chess. Then there weren't very many grandmasters so you could keep track of the top competitive players. Back then there was still too much politics, though. As for Go, there are so many pro players it is hard to keep track of what's happening in the top three go countires. I'm sure it has been raised before, but the West does not have a world politics or war enemy for which becoming at go connects with somehow defeating a national enemy.

Kasparov and Karpov are completely retired, not only "past their prime." Gu Li and Yi Se-tol even if not the best at the moment are probably still top 10 players. Say, Nakamura vs Caruana, for instance. And like gowan says, Carlsen was thought to be #1 at least a year (probably 2) before becoming World Champion. And like gowan says, winning the WC is "almost" just a simple tournament. The recent Sinquefield cup was actually considered "harder" than the Candidates tournament was/is, at least by opposition.

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Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

Do you have some proof of this? I haven't even heard of a chess tournament going on now.

Is the world chess championship currently being played? Is so, are people flocking to it. I would not have a clue when or where it takes place, and I doubt I know anyone who does. Or is all this hypothetical?

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Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).

Magnus Carlsen vs Anand Viswanathan in Sochi (Russia) round 7, Magnus is 1 pt ahead. Best of 12.

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Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

Never heard of either of them.

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Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).

Did they hold a candidates tournament? Last years WC match was kinda boring, as Carlsen just dominated, but the candidates one (I think it was in London) was pretty close and produced some nice matches.

It's not their fault. Anand has been world champion or candidate since 1997 or around that time.

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Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

This year's was mostly a sweep by Anand to get back the title, but I don't know much more, didn't check the games. Everything seems to tell next year Fabiano Caruana will be the challenger: he kicked ass in the Sinquefield cup (it was the tournament with highest average rating ever)

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Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

As far as I can tell, if you like chess, you know when the big chess events are.

If you like go, you know when the big go events are.

Having a 'world championship' hasn't really helped either game get into the news in the West lately.

Well, I realize that, but the point I was making was that if chess is so big then I should have heard of them. I don't care one wit about soccer, baseball or basketball but I would recognize the names of one or two of the top players.

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Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).

The largest, mostly soccer-focused newspaper in Spain has live commentary on the matches online. I doubt the US can be worse, given that chess is way bigger there than here.

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Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

I'n guessing it is worse.

Let's find out!

1) New York Times has nothing about it. if you search for chess on their website you get this page:

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference ... index.html

Which has no articles since october and no mention of the championship.

2) The Wall Street Journal ran one article at the start of the match:
http://blogs.wsj.com/dailyfix/2014/11/0 ... ORDS=chess
a few paragraphs, no game records or updates.

3) My local paper never (Denver Post) never ran anything about chess, nor can I find anything about the match on CNN.com, fox news, USA today, the huffington post, or the LA times.

Searches on these sites usually link to NFL articles or cold war comparisons (e.g. articles about Putin and Ukraine). So chess is a metaphor for strategic thinking, but not a spectator sport in the United States.

Surprising Spanish media is much, much better.

Marca.com (the sports newspaper I told about) has as I said live comments. elpais.es (largest general online newspaper, one of the biggest in paper) has a section for the tag "chess" with updates after the games. Lavanguardia.com (largest paper newspaper in Catalonia, close to elperiodico, one of the big two online in Catalonia) also has match updates. They probably come all from the same place, the EFE news agency, so this feeds easily all Spanish newspapers at once. But worth noting, most of the bigs talk about the match.

I checked a random foreign (European) newspaper (Le monde) and it has only generic articles when it started. The Frankfuter Allgemeine has match reports, though. Bbc.co.uk has nothing. All in all, weird mixing of news and no-news over the world.

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Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

I found out the Chess WC was going when I logged onto twitch.tv and happened to notice Chess was like the #8ish game or so. It was one of the chess streamers following the match with live commentary (Jerry? not the official FIDE Sochi stream).

I think the Lee Sedol - Gu Li match got pretty good exposure within the Go community, but probably didn't draw in new people. Maybe it's more of a keep existing people and maybe get them energized again thing.

You cannot say sports like American Football or Baseball are badly marketed (in the US). Yet in Europe nobody cares about them. Marketing is not everything.