From: DANERUD MARTIN TELIA COM> Date: 13 nov 2002 Subject: Re: A cultural difference? Dear Marc and others, > I agree, but just for the point regarding the differences to chess my > opinion is another. > In chess, there has been a mainstream trend to decrease the playing time in > recent years. Maybe to try to make chess more compatible with commercial > exploitation. > Many of the good players, even me as a good amateur, criticise that with > passion. > If you think of a chess game as a work of art, its hard if you have > collected a little advantage through the middlegame and don't have the time > to play the endgame with the same strength. Even very little positional > advantage is decisive at a higher level, but except for technique and > proficiency it takes ...time... and thats the tribute you have to pay. In > pro's chess you are most of the time far away from mate and I don't think > of a race for pawn promotion. I also agree with you. My comment was not about any preference for short thinking time in general, but rather it was a comparison between the difficulties of handling a closely upcoming sudden death in chess compared to shogi. The comparison was valid for quick games, and those will hopefully continue to be the choice of the players themselves, concerning their participation, and not the choice of FIDE. I mean, if you choose to play a five minutes blitz game of chess, then you cannot complain about not being able to use a small advantage. However, of course you should be able to choose for instance a total seven hours game in order to be able to finish a positional game without having to throw the pieces around. There should simply be a free choice of players which type of tournaments he/she wants to participate in. Then it is up to the organisers to supply that market of tournaments. On the other hand, the artistic value in an ordinary game of chess is very limited, according to me. I rather regard it as a fight between two individuals, where the sport rules should be as fair as possible. Then there are certain games or moments of games with a very high artistic value, but you do not run into them too often in a normal tournament. I also agree with Edi that it is technically more difficult to move extremely quickly in OTB shogi games (at least for a Westerner who has grown up with chess pieces). Best regards, Martin