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Comment by nafey | Hacker News Reader

Which makes you wonder why no one tried to get together a bunch of celebs to play chess earlier? Think Woody Harrelson vs Sting

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Some sentiments I've seen being passed around in some chess communities is that things like this makes chess less attractive to people who regard chess as something you need to spend bunch of years to learn before you get interesting enough games to be broadcast. They see the current movement of "Twitch profiles playing chess against others" as something like a celebrity-disease overtaking the sport that used to be low-profile.

Edit: just to be clear, I don't agree with this stance. Just echoing what I've seen elsewhere to try to answer the "wonder why no one tried to get together a bunch of celebs to play chess earlier?" question

This sentiment is rightly being called out as elitism.

Reminds me of skateboarding in the 90s when some skateboarders would hate on newbies who got into skateboarding as a result of Tony Hawk, X-Games, THPS, or any other reason that wasn’t deemed pure or authentic. Now they marvel at the fact that skateboarding is an Olympic sport... Yeah, no thanks to you!

I agree! For sure elitism. Judging by the downvotes, I wasn't clear that I didn't agree with the standpoint.

I think every ecosystem at points go through this "elitism" fad when it reaches a certain threshold of members. Seemingly to keep X being a niche they can identify with, instead of something mainstream some people only do for fun.

Point is, not exclusive to chess, just as gk1 pointed out.

Who is even saying this? Can you give some examples?

ninja edit: The question is there because I want to know the reasoning better. It cant just be this.

One grandmaster described the streamers as having "negative talent in life".

You mean the barely GM, 50-sub Andy?

It was Ben Finegold. I'm sure a lot of people think this but don't want to say anything to dissuade people from learning chess. Games by 700 rated low skilled players are really really boring to me but good for twitch viewers for enjoying them. Don't really care.

He definitely fits my description :)

Probably the best way to understand it is similar to the complaints that Stack Overflow is filled with basic beginner questions on the front page to the extent they drown out any questions with real technical meat.

Seems mostly casual players, although there is at least one GM (Ben Finegold) who was very vocal with this stance, until recently.

I suspect the people most troubled by this new wave are those who use chess as a crutch for their own identity. If chess is viewed as a game for sophisticated, intelligent, cultured, etc, people, then they as chess players are also sophisticated, intelligent, cultured, etc. When that image of chess is threatened then they personally feel threatened.

Personally I'm glad to see the sudden rise in popularity, and don't care who's playing as long as they're having fun and not ruining it for others. (I'm at a master level.)

Hikaru teaches the controversy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaavgNN9b4Y

The hard part is making chess accessible. One of the things that is making chess work on Twitch is that a lot of the streamers are already playing games, chess is just another one. Having compatible commentators is also hugely important.

While watching famous celebs do mundane things is a real form of entertainment, I think it's a bigger leap for those fans to follow the celebs into a game of chess.

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