This page contains a Flash digital edition of a book.
Personalities / Maurice Ashley


don’t have that additional “it” factor that compels the public to want to watch, to want to follow them. And I think that chess is that kind of sport that the indi- viduals at the top draw in the fans, and therefore draw in the sponsors, and if you don’t quite have that “it” thing then you don’t bring in the money. I think part of the problem is that the top players don’t have to survive yet ... they’re getting the highest dollars. There could be ten guys making money off chess for the next ten years, and it would be no prob- lem for those guys. They’re in a good situation. Why change it? But for the large group below that—man, those guys are leaving chess in droves! You find everyone playing poker these days, and rightly so. It makes a lot of sense—a lot of financial sense. People have got mouths to feed. So, I think because of that entrenchment at the top, the difficulty in changing that path, and in terms of the sponsors feeling like they just want the best players—so they’re willing to pay and just continue on a standard road—I think that is really to the detriment of chess [and] potentially to its demise ... It has to address the funda- mental problems of the length of games, draws in the game, and also the problem of communicating those games in a dynamic interesting way. Have you kept track of some of the proposals to [reduce the frequency of short draws and] make the game more exciting?


Absolutely. I think all these proposals shouldn’t just be proposals—they should be tried. Every sponsor should say, my tournament is going to be different from a standard tournament. We're going to have, maybe, Kasimdzhanov’s proposal of no draw possible. If the game is drawn you start with the time remaining on the clock, you switch colors, and you play again. Maybe that part’s not rated, but you go to the finish and you see what happens in the event. The world’s not going to come to an end because of it ... And if it worked and it was fun, then you say, hey, maybe we’ll try that again. So all these kind of ideas have to be tried for the survival of chess. There’s this interesting clash between the long traditions of chess and the demands of the modern age ... You have to try to find something that pushes it in the direction of moving more commercially, but doesn't necessarily alienate all of your existing fans. Or, do you think, to hell with your existing fans because there are too few of them anyway? Yes, the latter. I mean, look, actually alien- ating or—lets put it even in more crass terms—pissing them off—is a good thing. Controversy is not a bad thing. You want to have people talking. You want to have people engaging in a discussion about chess. That’s better then what we’ve got now! What do you have now?! You saw two of the finest gentlemen in chess, Anand


32 November 2012 | Chess Life


and Gelfand, playing in a world champi- onship match. They’re fighting. They’re probing. They’re trying their best. They happen not to be able to win games early, and what happens? Everybody’s still crit- icizing them anyway because of these draws that, frankly, were boring. There might be a lot of interest for the real tech- nical guys at the highest level, but those guys don’t count! There’s millions of dollars spent and nothing. What was the point of the invest- ment? So, to me, you piss off the base. I


ACHIEVEMENTS 1993: First black master in U.S. history 1993: Marshall Chess Club champion


1997: Lead ESPN commentator for Kasparov/Deep Blue match


1997: Tied for first at Bermuda Open 1999: First black grandmaster 2000: Tied for first at Foxwoods Open


2001: First back-to-back winner of Foxwoods Open


2002: First black player to qualify for U.S. championship in 157 years


2003: Named “Grandmaster of the Year” by the USCF


2004: Named “Community Educator of the Year” by City College of New York


2005: Organized the HB Global Chess Challenge in Minneapolis, Minnesota


2005: Named “Organizer of the Year” by the USCF


2005: First book published: Chess for Success: Using an Old Game to Build New Strengths in Children and Teens


don’t think they’re leaving—they’re fans! They’re gonna be a part of this ... The point is you need to try things regardless of what the base says, or thinking only so much about what the base says. I think, for example, that the title of world cham- pion ... particularly world championship matches, are overrated as money mak- ers, as attractions, as draws to the game. What that title is, and what those matches are, is they prove to us in some way who the best player in the world is at the time ... But as far as being a money maker, as far as attracting a massive crowd, as far as getting people excited about the game, as far as people hanging on the edge of


their seat watching with open-mouthed amazement as the game is being played, feeling the dramatic tension infused in every single game and every single moment, the world championship doesn’t do that. The strategy, the game, the interesting parts of the game, are really in the minds of the players, and it’s not possible to get into their heads to explore during the game. So first of all the premium is on com-


mentators. The commentary has to be fabulous, it has to be engaging ... You’re cutting to historical bits. You’re cutting to previous games. You’re getting interviews. The entire presentation has to be first class, otherwise fans are not going to be hanging on the edges of their seats. And also, it’s better to have a tournament than it is to have a match, because with a tour- nament you can follow six games ... The problem of the weight of a single game is, it has to be interesting. Those players have to be ready to punch each other in the face every single game, or every other game. The moment you slide into this draw, then draw, draw, suddenly it’s like, what the heck is going on? ... I like exper- iments, experiments are great, they should experiment, but I think you’ve got to be more progressive with what you’re trying to do and see where it goes. People were very unhappy when Kasimdzhanov won the world title, [and] when Khalifman won the world title. It was like: This is a joke—the system must be a joke if those two guys can win the title. And what’s funny is that in other sports, that would be amazing. It wouldn’t be a joke, it would be fantastic. You look at poker when this guy Chris Moneymaker broke through and won the World Series of Poker. That’s an awesome story, right? That’s like, “wow!” You see Wimbledon when somebody breaks through—some- body you’ve never heard of—and they get to the finals, they even win the thing. That’s like, “woah!” People are interested! How did that happen? Other sports love the underdog. Chess hates the underdog. Chess is like: We don’t want the underdog to win. We only want the best player to win. And in that way the world championship title is so skewed, and situations are so skewed for the bet- ter player to win that we lose sight of the entertainment value, and the public rela- tions value, of the unknown person or the underdog coming back and winning. We don’t want that to be a story, we just want the strongest player to dominate. And that’s not that interesting unless that player is incredibly compelling as a personality. You’ve said that the process of returning to playing has been deeply rewarding, and you've had to “rethink everything that you know about chess.” What do you mean by that? How can you rethink everything you know about chess, after you're already a grandmaster?


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76