Is it just me or chess isn't the same anymore?

Agreed

Let me guess: this was the only one you've ever watched.

How could chess "revive"?

1 - Magnus should return.

He quit chess because "Chess got boring" for him and he is true.

---- Your particular hero is Magnus, it is not the same for all people. Personally I find him distasteful at best. We lionise those we grew up with, for me it was Kasparov, Tinman, Short et al. Just as there is the cliche denigrating modern music "oh you don't know what real music is" etc, there seems to be the same issue in chess.

2 - Rapid should be the main time control.

Classic chess is for real getting boring these days.

--- these days? For those, like myself, who don't have the ability to even understand that level it has always been a little boring. But again another analogy.... cricket. Different forms of the game attract different people. What would be boring is everyone liking the same thing.

3 - Chess sites should find a way to stop cheaters.

Cheaters are ruining the true chess experience.

--- agreed on this one, but it is never going to be completely clean, it will always be a battle. Pretty much the only thing in the sites favour is the sheer idiocy of the cheaters.

4 - Chess sites should get better.

Lichess is free, not laggy, but full of cheaters and arrogant staff members. Chess.com is laggy, not free and I see more ads than the chess board itself. There should be a new opponent.

--- again personal taste. I come from a site called Gameknot, more correspondence chess really. I can see issues with chess.com, but I can also recognise the things I dislike about the site (for example the lack of support for daily games, the rather 'thrown together' tourney system) are things that others like. I've enjoyed exploring a couple of the variants. I haven't enjoyed blitz, I'm old and my mind simply does not work that fast.

Long and short of it. I think it is you. Sorry, but being realistic I think you have fallen out of love with the game a little and are looking for reasons. I'm not saying there is nothing in what you are saying, but throughout most of it, twas ever thus. The things that bring us to a hobby tend to move on and we look back with rose tinted nostalgia. Find what you do like, bemoan that which you miss and let everyone find their equilibrium.

Hasn't it always been like this? The early coffee-house players were brash, fiery chess-hustlers who enjoyed tactics - the finer points of positional chess hadn't been developed. And then came the early masters who thought it through and did things properly - like Steinitz. Maybe the coffee-house players thought Steinitz was boring and too professional, too?

There have always been characters, as well as those who play in a way that is dull but excellent. It's the same in tennis; the world needs McEnroe's, and will always look back at them with pleasure, celebrating their personality and the vivacity that they brought to their game.

But there are three things that stand out in chess. Firstly, professional chess has been an utter fiasco for so many years, completely dominated by politics and the manoeuvering of people and countries with enormous egos. The public can't really take professional chess seriously in the way they might take football, swimming, diving, cricket, or curling seriously. Secondly, it's very slow to watch. And thirdly, it does seem to be bad for the mental health of those who do it. It seems to be quite hard to be very good at chess without also being unhappy.

I'm not sure about the future of professional chess; maybe it is a game better in the hands of amateurs, enjoyed casually; it's too slow and specialist for TV. It's really only captured public fascination twice: the moment when big blue was surpassing the great masters (an act of overtaking that will only happen once), and when chess was being used as a proxy for the cold war, which was hardly a healthy situation. But by the fireside of a cold winter's evening, chess is very much alive.

No. The games of players like Fischer or Tal or Kasparov were never called boring by anyone.

But when the world's best player is a boring guy with a boring style, there is always talk about boring games, too many draws, the death of chess.

Kasparov was the world's best player for two decades, and he had an interesting and inspiring style. Karpov or Carlsen are similarly great players, but not inspiring at all.

I think it could be argued that it is circular in nature. Steinitz was the first, Karpov likewise, very small incremental advantages..... Against more explosive talents like Fischer and Kasparov.

Gukesh is juts boring to be honest. His games are all the same

Chess has never been the same, it is constantly evolving.

Hmm

But it's unrealistic to only play classical games - rapid, blitz, and bullet have their own merits as well, and I definitely wouldn't call them "lesser" than classical. I definitely agree that classical should be the default for professional play (and it mostly is), but it's certainly still possible to play blitz at a high level.

I also would add that watching classical is much more interesting than watching blitz or bullet, as the time control is too fast to allow for any commentator analysis.

Stop crying about it! Quack, quack!

To be honest I'd rather watching rapid instead of classical.

sorry omar please forgive and unmute me in franchesco club

@OmarVahidov Go watch rapid no one is stopping you. To be honest your opinion is not important. Mr. self proclaim professional chess player. Wahahaha.

nice

I'm not going to say anything, you're just emberassing yourself by making your 3rd toxic comment here. 👌

hi omar my man hey hey! you did forgive me right? yeah.

The worst thing that has happened is Rating, it ruins everything. Also Chess has got boring for me too literally all my games are the same, I play OTB because it's fun and different and when it comes to online chess... well...I stick to variants. Also i don't play that often anymore because of my study's on wild cats and my success in life makes Chess less fun nor important.

everyone just cheats as chess now so.