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Subject: Re: Agreed, Bob. Kinda like our "world" series of baseball?

Author: Russell Reagan

Date: 11:43:18 11/19/03

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>Agreed, Bob.  Kinda like our "world" series of baseball?

As I'm sure you know, sports life is not even remotely related to real life.
Professional atheletes live by a completely different set of rules than the rest
of us.

The MLB, NBA, NFL, and NHL can call their championships world championships
because the leagues and owners of teams make every effort to get the best talent
in the world into those leagues.

If you are a good baseball player, basketball player, or American football
player, then you will have people begging you to come live in the US or Canada
and play their sport for millions of dollars a year. Even a player who is
decent, but not exceptionally talented can make many hundreds of thousands of
dollars each year if he chooses to work hard and get his name out there to
teams. In other words, they make sure they have the best talent. I don't think
you'll ever hear any US soccer league's championship called the world
championship, because there are lots of other leagues in other countries that
have far superior talent in that sport. The fact that sports like baseball,
basketball, and American football were started here probably has something to do
with it also.

That same situation doesn't apply to computer chess. It is true that the top
handful of chess programs are from Europe, but I don't see the ICGA knocking on
Bruce Moreland's door, offering to pay his way to the event and giving him
millions of dollars because they really want him to take part, and they want to
make sure all of the best programs compete in their competition so that they can
legitimately call their event the world championship. That's the difference.



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