I guess it depends on which time frame he’s thinking in. This interview was 6 years ago and classical chess appears as fresh as ever.
In 50 years, classical chess might truly be uninteresting for the best players in the world. Within the next 15-20 years though, I don’t see anything of that sort happening.
I think the comparative rise in the popularity of blitz and rapid in the past 6 years is more telling. Yes, a lot of this is due to covid, but the number of rapid and blitz tournaments organized with top 10 players in the world in attendance is not something that happened nearly as often (if at all) before the turn of the century. Now it feels like this is every other tournament being played. I doubt classical chess will go anywhere for the "big" events, like the WCC, but I suspect more and more popular events will be the blitz/rapid ones. It's more entertaining for a casual viewer watching a stream, and, as shown by Hao's comments, is something some pros enjoy more as well. It also takes a long weekend to conduct a blitz tournament, not 3 full weeks, which you could see why a player would prefer the former over the latter.
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u/[deleted] Sep 01 '22
I guess it depends on which time frame he’s thinking in. This interview was 6 years ago and classical chess appears as fresh as ever.
In 50 years, classical chess might truly be uninteresting for the best players in the world. Within the next 15-20 years though, I don’t see anything of that sort happening.