does anyone gamble on chess?

[A_C_Slater]

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i am curious. sometimes my frends and i play 'loser goes to the store and gets the next six-pack" but i've never heard of cash chess games.

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Whooa a six pack!? You chess guys are crazy. Next time start with two thirty packs and do what me and my friends do on poker nights. First one out has to go to Wal-Mart and buy something dumb like 5 packs of granny panties. Last time it was a large jar of Vaseline, a box of Kleenex, and a Mary Kate and Ashley video. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

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That's the funniest thing I've ever read on this forum.
What did the cashier do?

[A_C_Slater]

A good way to gamble with chess is to have the ability to check or bet before every move. The person can then decide to call or fold. Therefore if it is obvious that you are behind then you can fold to the person's next dangerous move. If you're confident that you have the best of it and your opponent will make a bad move then you can raise.

Of course you would have to have two opponents of close ability as a expert player will always destroy a novice.

[pzhon]

There are many people who put a few dollars on a game of chess. If you want to liven it up, use a doubling cube in speed chess, where a double means you are giving odds of a draw, too.

People rarely play chess for substantial stakes because most good chess players are too egotistical/short-sighted/stupid to throw enough games to keep the fish (bunnies) interested. Poker players aren't any brighter, but the game itself allows the weaker players to win frequently enough. What a chess hustler should do is beat A players 60%-70% of the time while playing in the style of a B or C player, so the A player sees plenty of mistakes, and can't figure out why the hustler wins. A master I know was hustled this way by a GM, and had a perplexing and expensive afternoon. Instead of continuing, the GM revealed who he was. I guess he valued respect more than money.

See The Money Player for a good story of a world-class table-tennis player imitating a hopeless duffer who gets lucky.

[Larimani]

I beat someone at chess in one of the parks when I visiting NYC at the age of 15 ... and he refused to give me the $1 we had agreed to gamble for. Bastard. [img]/images/graemlins/mad.gif[/img]

[MicroBob]

I beat a homeless-type looking guy in a really well-played $5 game when I was fairly new to it. I felt so bad I was about ready to tell him he could keep it...but before I could he pulled out this BIG wad of bills and pulled a $5 off the top.
Deciding that he probably had more money than I did I accepted his challenge for a rematch (and somehow won again even though I think he was a stronger player than me).


I neglected to mention that I believe chess was banned in some countries a few centuries ago because it was associated with gambling.
If I can find my copy of 'The Even More Complete Bizarre Chess Addict' (or something like that) I should be able to confirm it and provide details.

[Larimani]

Hi,

I am Iranian and I know chess was banned there until a few years ago by religious extremists (as were card games...). Still Iran has its fair share of great chess players.

[MEbenhoe]

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in washington square park in NYC there are $5 speed games going pretty much all day

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Excuse my ignorance on the subject, but what is a speed game?

[kalooki45]

they do, but it's a matter of knowing which little bars they tend to hang out in.
a friend of mine used to take gobs of money off people doing this.

[slickpoppa]

it means you play with a clock and each gets player a small amount of time to make all of their moves, usually about 5 minutes

[MicroBob]

as the other poster mentioned....you play with one of those chess-clocks and get 5-minutes (or less) to complete your moves.

It's actually 2 clocks....when I hit the button on my side (after I make a move) it starts my opponents clock....and when he makes his move he hits his button to restart my clock.
If you run out of time (take longer than a total of 5 minutes) then you automatically lose the game.


Speed chess looks pretty wild...especially around crunch-time. Both players are moving as fast as possible and madly slamming the buttons on the clock.


Parts of the movie Searching for Bobby Fischer (which is actually a pretty good film that not chess-players can enjoy) gives a general idea of the Washington Square speed chess culture.


In Internet Chess Club I would play Bullet Chess. Which is only 1 minute to complete all your moves.
Bullet Chess is almost more like a video-game then real chess though. But playing enough of that makes playing 5 minute chess seem like a marathon.
Kind of like the difference between playing 8 tables of 6-max online and then going to a B&M with a really slow dealer.