does anyone gamble on chess?

[bholdr]

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.

[ElSapo]

Often. There are guys in D.C. who wont play you otherwise, and I'm sure the same in NY. I dunno about online, since the possibility of cheating is so much bigger.

[Beerfund]

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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]

[Iceman]

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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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In some of the parks in New York City, there are guys who hang around chess tables and play blitz games for cash.

I once knew a guy who was a serious chess player, and he talked about tournaments that pay out cash prizes like this one:

http://www.chesstour.com/wo04.htm

[slickpoppa]

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

[MicroBob]

When I lived in Maryland very briefly (before I played poker) I would go to DC and play the $5 speed-games at Dupont Circle and usually make money. Same table-selection skills I would use in poker basically....avoid the solid players. And also keep an eye out for anyone who looks like they might try to stab you (or, more likely, pick your pocket).


The chess-tournaments are fun too.
Go to USCF.com (or whatever the website is for the US Chess Federation) and you can click on the tournaments link and you will see all kinds of tournaments on most weekends in virtually every state.

Newcomers are welcome btw. Everybody started as an 'unrated' player at some point. And, if you're half-decent, you should probably enjoy it. There might be a few 10-year-olds there for you to whoop-up on if you lose to a couple of experts in the first 2 rounds.


Some of the chess tournaments only cost $20 or so and only take a day.
Others cost $200 or more to enter and can take a whole week.

In some you are playing within your own rating-group and everyone pretty much has a shot at the money.
In others you could end up playing a grandmaster in the first round...but there are still prizes for each ratings-group.

There are some who will 'sand-bag' their rating by losing unimportant games to keep their rating low....in order to stay in a lower chess-rating group and pull off a big score in a bigger-paying tourney.
Ratings sand-bagging are REAL problems in tournament chess.


A few years ago I won the first 4 rounds of a 5 round tourney in my class (which is under-1400...which means I am not terribly good).
If I won the final round I was going to get $1200 or so...but I lost and finished 4-1 so I just got my $100 entry-fee back.
I had played 4 grueling matches in that tourney over the weekend....each took 5 1/2 hours or so.
I was seeing bishop's and checkered squares when I closed my eyes.


In general...most of the top U.S. chess players can't make nearly as much as a half-decent poker player.
It's a really tough grind.


I don't believe there are cash-money games on the Internet Chess Club yet (which is the premier online-chess community). But I've been out of the chess-loop for a couple years.
The USCF was just starting their own online-chess community a couple years ago....and there were supposed to be some real-cash tournaments on that site eventually but I don't know if they really came about or not.

The problem with cash-games on the internet is that chess-bots are really good and the better chess computers would beat most human opposition and therefore would be quite profitable.
Chess-bots can sometimes be identified by their style of play....but like poker-bots, you can't REALLY be sure.
So I don't know what measures the USCF was going to take to ensure the fairness of their games if they really were going to allow money-games on the internet.


If you are really interested in this I seriously encourage you to go to the USCF.com site and check out all the live tournaments that are available.
I think the Internet Chess Club is ICC.com but maybe not, do a google-search on it. Some of the best chess players in the world are on ICC. Tourneys are running there non-stop.
Probably costs $5/mth or so to join I think.

[ElSapo]

[ QUOTE ]
When I lived in Maryland very briefly (before I played poker) I would go to DC and play the $5 speed-games at Dupont Circle and usually make money. Same table-selection skills I would use in poker basically....avoid the solid players. And also keep an eye out for anyone who looks like they might try to stab you (or, more likely, pick your pocket).

[/ QUOTE ]

I can't imagine either of these things happening in Dupont these days, but I don't know when you lived in D.C. There are some excellent players out there, a couple of master-level guys including Tom who routinely gives 5-2 odds on time -- he gets 2 minutes, you get 5, predictable result.

[mosta]

I've played for small stakes in Dupont circle in DC, Wash Sq in NY, Philly off of N. Broad a couple blocks above Market, and San Francisco on Market at Union Square. I never got an official rating, but I'm pretty confident I kept pace with A players in slow games. I was bad at blitz and never practiced it and didn't like it, but I could always find players I could beat--and could always find players much better than me (at any speed), expert level and up. These places generally had plenty of homeless guys or old Asian men who were primitive but still decent and always game. I've also played against Jude Acers in New Orleans in the quarter a couple times (most memorably threatening to swing my queen to a8 and force mate in 3 or 4 (except that his forced mate was first and he killed me again)), and in Berkeley at Strada and the place up the street on Bancroft, which all had the highest level of median play by far I'd say. I wish I'd found a place I liked to play live during the year or two when I studied a lot of books. I haven't played a half-way serious game in 5 years (never got into online). incidentally, I'd be curious to hear opinions--does anyone not agree that chess is somewhere between 10 and 100 times as hard to get decent at as poker?

[MicroBob]

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I'd be curious to hear opinions--does anyone not agree that chess is somewhere between 10 and 100 times as hard to get decent at as poker?

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No, I don't not agree.

Errrr....that is, chess is tougher.

But if the chess-world was similar to poker in that a bunch of a drunks show up at a casino and all think they were good then I would do well at chess.


Even with my piddly 1400 rating I am around the 50th percentile perhaps of all chess players (with ratings).
But if you were to factor in ALL unrated players...that is, anyone who knew how to play, I would likely be in the top 1-2% in the country in chess.

I was the best player at my high-school afterall and finished 8th in Ohio my senior year.
So...even though I'm nowhere close to world-class...I am still decent.


Now that I think about it, I suppose I am similar in poker.
I am nowhere near world-class...but just the fact that I am a consistent winner probably puts me in the top 5-10% of all poker players (maybe higher....there are a lot of bad home-game players out there too of course).


I played Jude Acers once as well.
He made certain that I sat with the sun in my eyes.
I hadn't been playing a lot though and didn't give him much of a game. Sounds like you had him on the ropes though.



I was in Maryland briefly in 1994.
It wasn't THAT sketchy...but it did have a bit of a reputation. And if you wanted some crack I suspect you wouldn't have to work very hard to get it.

[mosta]

just to keep the record straight--I very much did not have Acers on the ropes. He is a world class player. I am not very good to say the least. the fact that I had a forced mate (and had it with Qa8! (as black)) is kind of amusing because it sounds like he was in a little trouble, but he never was at any point. (If I recall, he was ranked in the top 10 or 20 in the world at I think a 20 minute speed. I'd bet I could never beat or draw him as long as I live.) (as I can vaguely recall it, I was trying to fool around with closed and hypermodern openings at the time, and I figured, to see his game, I wanted to get him off book quickly, so I flanked my queen bishop before I moved a center pawn. He got d4 e4 and f4 in right away and then went to work doubling his rooks on f and maybe swinging one over to the h file. I do remember very clearly that all of his mate threats kept ahead of mine. Though I did spot a little combination he had with a knight sacrifice in the early middle game and quietly moved my king to h8. that felt good, better than the Qa8 threat, in fact.)

In trying to make a comparison between learing chess and poker, what I came up with was it seemed to me like the comparable point where you start to understand the game is--in poker expecting to make money in any 20-40 game in any casino, and in chess making expert/ candidate master. I think it's impressive but far from jaw dropping to reach that point in poker in one year; I don't think even future world champions made expert in chess in one year. and as far as good players go, who become masters let's say, I'd think it's 3-5 years to get to expert, and that 3-5 years will feel like a lot more work per year than in poker.