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People can play on the web indeed and maybe they prefer to prepare at home and visit the club only for tournaments, but since I found internet chess killer a program used on the web for cheating, I lost a lot of interest. In a club one can train with a strong player and specific variations or share experiences and knowledge. Today, I confess that I am again in the direction of the club at least for some specific training and of course for classical chess tournaments.
There are already semi-rapid ratings. I guess with ratings or without ratings, with GM´s/IM´s there someone will end up somewhere in the same field. I guess there are a lot of amateurs that will disagree on the blitz vs classic and in my view, people who really want to improve will need to play a lot of classical chess. See for example Grandmaster Alex Lenderman event history! http://main.uschess.org/msa/MbrDtlTnmtHst.php?12787646
I see blitz in the same superficial actual way of life and thinking but is just my way of seeing. There are positive points about blitz, like preparing openings etc, but In reality both ways will always be together. For beeing a good blitz player someone will always need to be a strong classical player and someone who understands chess. Sometimes players claim that they train blitz to train time trouble in long games but I prefer to train not to be in time trouble! 
I remember Kazim in one of his videos saying: "We do not play chess for money or titles or whatever, we play for war memories...".
In tennis ( a well organized sport), competitions are divided e serious tournaments and more fun events at clubs for amateurs like some step tournaments were someone can challenge another member and exchange positions in case of victory. I think in chess there are now several option in rapid events for amateur players who like only that kind of chess. Clubs only need to organize all kind of events taking on account the number of participants.
In a more serious level, FIDE announced a calendar for 4 years and this could be a boost for chess in Europe on a par with the schools program wich I think could be an option like music etc, but when parents saw that chess will help students with math and concentration, imagination and above all children results at school etc, chess will gain much more visibility.

I think if more than two players are sitting at the same computer cluster in the same room, perhaps that might deter cheating, unless of course all of them cheat by helping each other with their respective games...

And it depends on how big the country is. The longest motorway route in the UK is probably only as long as the Highway 401 connecting Windsor, ON and Montréal, QC in Canada. So a small country like the UK one can travel to another city that is hosting a chess tournament fairly easily, especially by train. One can get from Manchester to a tournament in Glasgow by train in about three or four hours, so there would be no need to play internet slow chess against someone who is using their own computer to play and is at a location less than 100 km away. Not all countries are so expansive that the nearest major city is more than 500 km away.

Uhohspaghettio wrote on 03/07/12 at 00:04:52:


That casual players would struggle is a really lousy argument against chess in schools. If the number of players increases, obviously the number of players who can beat you, or me, will increase too! That's just basic statistics, and a small price to pay for making the game more popular.

A small percentage of those who are exposed to chess as kids will continue playing. Out of dozens in a school chess program there will always be one or two real talents, or at least future club players who will have a fun hobby for life.

I'm less sure about programs that make chess mandatory. Show them the game, fine, but let them self-select to further playing/courses if they\re interested. That's basically how schools treat most sports and musical instruments.

I agree there are many negative sides to the internet, but let's not forget that it's also an arena for meaningful discussions on a lot of intellectual and cultural topics (for example this very forum!). Every cloud has a silver lining...

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Completely agree and understand your points of view. A serious debate on this issue will take us to many subjects: Crisis in values, less time for family and friends outside jobs, cost of life. Chess improvement do not work well with egos and that represents a wrong path because to improve someone needs to try and to fail and that is a common trap. If someone sees his game as a quality and not so much the result, he will improve faster. Just look at top GM´s after their losses and after the games in post-mortem. They are not mad. Sometimes they smile too! At clubs when I ear player A beats player B, I always prefered "White beats Black" etc. Chess is an internal growth and could indeed help in real life choices.
I cannot believe in real debate of ideas only at home, because that always reminds me of Plato cave! A guy who thinks he knows the world inside his cave? Nah! That in itself is the problem of computers too and youngsters completely at home using chat and not living the real life or other times playing computer games the entire summer without going to the beach. In Japan society they call that desease something like "Ikikomori" (do not know if the name is wroten this way), where some guys live all nights in their bedrooms playing Playstation and during the day they sleep and see nobody! Their parents put the food near the door! 
World is becoming more and more superficial because people give importance to what someone have and not what someone is. All these magazines of what stars do and eat is a nonsence.
On the positive side, chess is the number one game on the net and this week with Kasparov help and votes of several euro deputies, could have a big boost on european schools and that is great news.

GeneM wrote on 03/06/12 at 18:39:54:

In the Netherlands several clubs do synergize with the web. I started recently a blog (unfortunately for most of you in Dutch) which promotes this relative new approach, see: http://schaken-brabo.blogspot.com/2012/02/clubschaak-en-of-internetschaak.html

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Bla bla blurb - YOU can make the difference if you want to. Or waste YOUR time lamenting.

Seth_Xoma wrote on 03/06/12 at 02:15:15:


There are probably more people playing now if you count the Internet, but these people seldom make it to the clubs. Organised chess seems to be declining rapidly. At least here in Sweden the team series pyramid is falling apart at the bottom, fewer and fewer clubs, further and further apart...

I doubt it's just chess though, most sports are probably affected by more and more people staying at home playing WoW etc on the net and using all the different social media platforms there instead of actually meeting people.