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| Posted by ccmcacollister play-chess-online.com 3/22/2008 06:28:45 play online chess |  Subject: The Social Stigma of Playing Chess ...?!? Message: Have you been playing any tournaments or clubbing around at all this year? I ENVY players in the Netherlands much, as I hear they have a CLUB in nearly every good sized city there. And even play intra-club matches for them! How great. A Chess Mecca it seems. [Where I live; I had thought things were pretty dead around here, but on another site i saw a Nebraska player saying he played in a tourney just in the last couple or few months. Maybe there IS more going on that I knew of. Seems I must renew the old USCF membership and see what is what, sometime here. Unless maybe someone can tell me ... what is going on around Here?] I've GOT to find a club at least ... or a coffeehouse or such where people are meeting to play ... er that they have not been kicked out of yet. THAT seems to be a problem here. EG, often some of the players don't want to pay for coffee or such from a business "site" ... or got too rowdy, or took up too many tables, etc. One time at a convenience store ... I had to buy and eat FOUR microwave dinners, so they would let us stay and play ... while eating. :) Usually Donut shops are pretty cool, but Winchells went out of nighttime business, where we would play after the Church-club hours, where we played on West Center Street in Omaha. Till the Key man left the door unlocked once too often and got booted. Sigh. A funny one ... we even managed to get kicked out of a nighttime coffeeshop that enjoys catering to gay patrons just fine. But we got sac'd for taking too many tables :( Or maybe for not being gay?! Anyway ... it seems Chessplayers are pretty much on the bottom of the social ladder ~!! haha Bringing up the Question: DO YOU face THE STIGMA of being a Chessplayer ?! Or is it totally cool where you are? How do you DEAL with it, if you find you and your friends are being deprived of a respected place in society? }8-D Well hope to find something. |
| Posted by chessnovice play-chess-online.com 3/22/2008 15:50:24 play online chess | ... Message: I found that the nerdy stigma of chess was null by the time I was in college, and people were able to acknowledge that they wish they knew how to play, themselves. |
| Posted by pgroenborg play-chess-online.com 3/22/2008 16:22:44 play online chess | Mecca in decline Message: The town I'm in has a pop. of about 150.000 and there are many clubs here to choose from, actually it's sort of the capital of chess in Denmark. Of course the real one is Copenhagen. So the talk now is how to turn around the decline in members of the union that organises the clubs (you are automatically a member of the union when you join a registered club). Many clubs are closing down these years, it's sad really. But chess in clubs is still strong in Denmark and like you said about Holland, there is a great deal going on in the clubs and between them: Team chess (National and regional) and other interclub tourneys. A few years back my club Skakklubben af 1968 (www.sk1968.dk) had 7 teams of 8 players, this season we had only 4. We play in a part of the university, where we rent the room, really cool, especially since for the postanalysis etc. we are able to choose from an adjacent room - or the bar downstairs! |
| Posted by cascadejames play-chess-online.com 3/23/2008 20:50:31 play online chess | Chess in Portland Message: very long history. See www.pdxchess.com There are small tournaments and a weekly casual chess night. I am a member, but have not been active. Seattle has a club, and I think most larger cities in the Pacific NW have a club of some kind. Chuckling, my grandfather would have said that if you and your friends are being thrown out of coffee houses you either need to get classier friends or spend your time in classier places. :-) I doubt if it is a problem directly related to chess. Non-chess players that I know tend to have the misconception that chess players are all intellectual scholars. But I can see a business owner being peeved if your friends are discouraging paying customers. |
| Posted by ionadowman play-chess-online.com 3/24/2008 00:31:29 play online chess | In this idyllic... Message: But the Christchurch Square has a giant chessboard (the king stands maybe 3 foot high - about 0.9 metre) which gets frequent use. I used to hang out there quite a bit in 1989-90, and occasionally since. Here's a game from the heady days of playing in the sunshine with a giant chess set: White: N.N. Black: Self (c.1992; Wilkes-Barre) 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Nf6 4.Ng5 Bc4 5.Bxf7+ Ke7 6.Bb3 Rf8 7.0-0 h6 8.Nf3 d6 9.d3?! (9.h3!) 9...Bg4 10.Be3 Nd4 11.Bxd4 Bxd4 12.c3 Bb6 13.Nbd2 Qd7 14.Qc2 Rae8 15.h3? (This really is a hard luck pawn!) 15...Bxh3 16.gxh3 Qxh3 17.Nh2 Ng4 18.Nxg4 Qxg4+ 19.Kh1 Qh3+ 20.Kg1 Rf5 21.Qd1 Qg3+ 22.Kh1 Rh4#. Not exactly Holland or Denmark, though... New Zealand has a few IMs but only one GM - and he had to move to England to get the necessary experience. |
| Posted by wschmidt play-chess-online.com 3/24/2008 11:36:31 play online chess | The Denver area has a few active clubs... Message: * Craig, your coffeehouse memories are very similar to mine from several years ago in St. Louis. A group of about 6-8 of us his various Wendy's, donut shops, libraries, etc. one night a week until we were banned and had to move on. It didn't help that one of our crew was the most anti-authoritarian, anti-social crackpot in mid-America. I was at his house one night to play chess and he ended the evening holding a machete to my throat demanding that I acknowledge him as my guru. Needless to say, our relationship ended at that point. I know he's still around though, hasn't been institutionalized yet. ws |
| Posted by ccmcacollister play-chess-online.com 3/24/2008 21:59:00 play online chess | haha ... Message: WS ... I'm still your Guru, right! yahahahaha .... Sorry couldnt resist. That is significantly worse that being Kinged in the head~! Maybe I should be living in Denmark !? I recently heard it called the best place on earth to live. Or NZ? Sounds good with the big set. |
| Posted by kansaspatzer play-chess-online.com 3/24/2008 22:53:30 play online chess | Message: Omaha has a really active chess scene, and I am actually considering moving up there after I graduate for that reason. I like to go there for tournaments. In the college town where I am, there's a downtown club that's really informal. About a year ago, one of the star basketball players from the college came and played with us. He's in the NBA now though. Stuff like that really dispels the "nerd" stereotype. |
| Posted by steverand67 play-chess-online.com 3/29/2008 16:29:15 play online chess | Kansas City Missouri... Message: Regarding the social stigma of playing chess I can only speak from my own experience in the US, but I think that the "nerd" stereotype kansaspatzer mentioned is annoyingly prevalent. I've met a lot of people who fit that stereotype, but I've also met a lot of people who don't. I think chess is so stereotyped in the US because of the lack of national attention it gets. Relatively marginalized quasi-sports like bowling, poker, pool (and even the absurdity that is NASCAR) appear on national television frequently, but to my knowledge chess is limited to a 1/4 page column in the sunday edition of the New York Times. To make chess more popular in the US, the nation probably needs another iconic figure like RJF. Nakamura and other americans are great chess players, but they've yet to become national heroes like Fischer was (and it's hard to see how they'll become such heroes without another "Cold War-esque" event). Perhaps televising chess games with lots of scantily-clad cheerleaders celebrating after strong moves would attract more attention? :-) |
| Posted by buddie play-chess-online.com 3/30/2008 09:56:01 play online chess |