Author: Mike Byrne
Date: 14:03:12 01/11/04
Go up one level in this thread
On January 11, 2004 at 16:42:15, martin fierz wrote: >On January 11, 2004 at 16:11:06, Tom Kerrigan wrote: > >>On January 10, 2004 at 16:24:59, Jim Bodkins wrote: >> >>>The US doesnt play chess really. USCF has 90,000 members out of 1/3 billion >>>people and just went bankrupt (over about $300,000 - chump change to a pro >>>basketball player) and had to sell its store to an english firm. Most of the top >>>US players (USCF) are immigrants not native. >>> >>>I'm a native American, so dont get mad. We play baseball not chess. Chess isnt >>>culturally a part of the US at all. People (Garry) come here mainly because of >>>money not chess. Chess software doesnt interest most programmers in my >>>experience. OS's, databases etc do. >>> >>>The US will get hammered, but the guys will probably have fun anyway. >>> >>>... oh, and we do Mars missions. :) >> >>I believe people on this message board have forgotten their history. :) Shannon >>was American, the revolutionary programs MacHack and CHESS were American, the >>world champions Belle, Deep Thought, and Cray Blitz were American. > >you are forgetting the first computer chess programmer - alan turing, not >exactly american :-) > >>I'd say computer chess is a fairly significant part of American culture. > >and this is the wrong way round: some americans made very significant >contributions to computer chess. but "part of the american culture"?? there are >many things that come to my mind when i think about american culture, both >positive and negative (think football, baseball, everbody having guns, free >speech, the whole idea of the american dream etc). but certainly not computer >chess... > >cheers > martin It is clear that there is much more interest in Chess and Computer Chess in Europe than in the US, but there are times that chess gets a push in the US - Fischer in '72, Deep Blue - GK in '96 and '97 - the last Fritz/GK match was reported regulary in the news ...so I think what we see in the US very latent, under the right circumstances - it could really tale off again , GK visits the US quite often and he does a lot to promote chess (book signings, simuls etc) in the US, I do like him for that. According to the Harris polls in 2001 , about 40% of Amercians own guns ...down from 48% in 1973. Contrast that with Switzerland which has far higher gun ownership since it is legally mandated for every adult male. Getting ot here - but just wanted to point that out.
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