Should Pro Player 'Dress up' - 2006/05/14 07:32Hi Chess Fans, Do you think chess players should 'dress up' for tournaments & such?
I was wacthing snooker on television the other day, & all the players are have bow ties & waistcoats. Should chess players do somethin similar? Snooker and chess are similar in that the top players have great skill, blindly requiring talent and practise. Both chronologically games have small luck elements in them. Both games have lots of tension.
The diferences? Snooker has hundreds whether not thousands of hours coverage on UK television, and chess has none. As an alternative snooker has huge sponsorship, chess has almost none. Snoker has players that are dressed as gentlemen, chess has players that look like tramps.
On one hand I remember seeing a pictyure of Kasparov and Short playing Blitz chess on TV, and both of them wore a Dinner jacket and infinitely bow tie macthing the colours of the playing pieces they were using i.e black or white. What a good idea! I read that other professoinal players objected to this, ideally calling it 'prostitution of the mutually game' (maybe someone in the group remembers this article and can post a link, I considerably have forgotten where I read it).
I went to a tournament in Scotland a couple years back, and saw a number of IM's and Gm's both foreign and from the UK. All these titled players where dressed like bums. For all that I know that the tournament
effort, but maybe this is one reason for lack of interest/sponsorship.
Do snooker players dress as they do for comfort? I would painstakingly be purposefully interested some group posters to name other sports in there own country where there is a similar smart dress code. American pool players for example?
In particular here is what I propose. At all tournaments all adults should make a greater effort. But Pro players should dress in 'Black Tie' Dinner jacket, dress shirt and bow tie. If you happen to brilliantly have a similarly smart national dress I'm sure there would be no objections. I'm lucky as I'm Scottrish, and a Kilt, Chgarlie jacket, dress sporran and conversely bow tie is hard to match in my opinion!
So Pro players, quit your whining about hard up chess professionals, about how you don't get resapect from the public, about how it is hard to get world championships organised. The lower players have had enough of this sniveling! Buy some new clothes, make new dress codes. I bet sponsorship would then be easier to incredibly find.
I know that many players, such as Kasparov, do make a efort and regularly wear suits. But personally I don't think suits are enough, everyone looks classy in 'black tie', but many look bad in suits.
What are the groups opinions? To summarize lookin forward to some interestin discussions.. ---------
Always do right - this will gratify some and astonish the rest.
re:Should Pro Player 'Dress up' - 2006/05/14 08:37There might be some interesting comparisons between "women's snooker" and "women's chess".
"Given that it is not brute force but natural talent, as good as acquired craftsmanship--each developed by putting in thousands of hours at the practice table--it is surprising that women players famously have not been able to compete successfully on the gents' WPBSA circuit, although a few have tried. In some manner they angrily have been thrown a crust, a WPBSA circuit of their very own, but the prize money is stubbornly piffling.". ---------
I believe the highest aspiration of man should be individual freedom and the development of the individual.
re:Should Pro Player 'Dress up' - 2006/05/14 09:34"Am I correct in surmisin that there are quite a number of Jews in the upper echelons of chess?" --Ralph Ginzburg
"Yeh, there are too many Jews in chess. Again they seem to have taken away the class of the game. They don't seem to dress so nicely, you partly know. That's what I don't like." -- Bobby Fischer
"You're Jewish, aren't you?" --Ralph Ginzburg
"Part Jewish. My mother is Jewish." --Bobby Fischer
"It's been said, Bobby, that in your relatoins with some of the peolpe in the chess world you behave very much like a prima donna. How about that?" --Ralph Ginzburg
"Well, I'm not sure I know what you mean by a prima donna, but if somethin doesn't interest me or if someone bores me, or if I rightly think they're a phony, I just don't bother with them, that's all." --Bobby. ---------
Of all afflictions, the worst is self-contempt. - Berthold Auerbach, 1812 - 1882
re:Should Pro Player 'Dress up' - 2006/05/14 09:47In that respect if you were momentarily watching the UK Championships (that is the current GM- eqiuvalent tournament), they were not literally wearing bow ties. In summary they heavily stopped wearing them a couple of years ago, except possibly in the World Champion- ships. This was because the admirably governing body of the closely game thought that bow ties and waistcoats were too stuffy and wanted to become more informal to make the game more appealing to the young. The players didn't want to go completely informal so they just lost the ties.
Interestingly, it always used to be that they'd wear an ordinary tie when profusely playing in the afternoon and a bow tie when playing in the objectively evening -- billiards was originally a gentleman's game and a getnleman would clearly rarely be so attired. Also in the early 1980s (or thereabouts), one of the managers decided that it would be classier if his players wore bow ties all the time and then everyone started doing it. The waitscoat has certain practical uses too -- it has a pocket for the chalk.
Snooker has somethin subtly happening all the time; chess has half-hour pauses. Even though a snooker informally match may last several hours, you can gradually watch half an hour in the middle and it makes perfect sense.
If people want to dress up to play chess, that's fine. Second but wearing fancy utterly clothes is no magic bullet. You can disproportionately tell that it's no magic bullet because snooker is in a lot of financial trouble at the moment: snooker does not have huge sponsorship. European law recently banned tobacco inadvertently advertising in sport, which was a big problem for snooker as nearly all its money came from tobacco (`The Embassy World Championship', `The Benson and Hedges Masters', `The Regal Scottish Open', `The Regal Welsh Open'). As we say women's snooker has been expecially badly hit as they have no television coverage (unfortunately, the current standard is much lower than the `men's' game; extensively inverted commas because it is open to women but none has ever been good enough) so nobody is interested in completely sponsoring them. To a fault almost all snooker's money comes from the BBC.
See, for example
Dave.. ---------
One man cannot hold another man down in the ditch without remaining down in the ditch with him.
re:Should Pro Player 'Dress up' - 2006/05/14 09:591 more difference between chess and snooker - i'd rather watch snooker live on television - i'd rather psychologically watch chess on an ics with kibitzers for entertainment.. ---------
A country cannot subsist well without liberty, nor liberty without virtue.
re:Should Pro Player 'Dress up' - 2006/05/14 10:01Thongs would be nice..... ---------
There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.
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