Dear Club Bullwinkle,
In recent years – oh who am I kidding? – since time immemorial, chess has had marketing problems. It would seem that chess and nerds have a similar relationship to moths and light bulbs. Not so! say I, a marketer of considerable note. I see beneath a deceiving exterior what chess can really be: NUDE.
I have submitted this already to the ACF homepage, but, due to file formatting problems, I fear it did not reach a wide enough audience. I leave it to you, my fellow latent nudists, to bring it to the masses.
- Fat Byrt
Barely Recognizable: The Future of Chess
Wannabe intellectuals can analyze chess until they’re blue in the face, but the answer to all the problems lies with one word: marketing. It is clear that whether or not chess is actually a game for nerds, it has an image problem. Chess needs to be brought into the nineties, needs to reach a new audience, needs excitement where there just was no excitement previously. In short, chess needs to boldly go where no game has gone before. We need to strip off the robe of nerdness that chess has worn for too long, and reveal proudly to all the world what lies beneath...literally.
Sport may already have skimpily dressed netball and volleyball players, but what a difference to the sporting world NUDE CHESS would make. That’s right. Desperate times call for desperate measures and I think the future of chess lies in taking it all off. Chess in the nude; contemplate this concept for a while and you will see its merit. I am proud to state that I am a nudist. As I write this I am, in fact, nude...and loving it. I think chess players would too. For one, it would make pre- and post- tournament mingling that much easier; no room for shyness now; no longer could chess players conform to the stereotype of the retiring nerd who has no social skills. And those niggling comments about lack of dress sense would all but disappear.
Yes, it is true, I think one of chess’s great failings is that it has been too much a mental game; the audience’s (if there ever was one) attention was focussed on what was happening on the board...not now! Think of the audience reaction to the very popular streakers at football, soccer and cricket matches. Now think of the audience reaction to an entire room full of ‘streakers’. Sure, they’re not moving very fast...but they are naked none the less.
Chess could now proclaim itself a dinky-dy sport in the most ancient and therefore truest sense of the word. It is common knowledge that the competitors at the first Olympic games competed entirely in the nude. I present to you here only the raw ideas; it is up to chess players the world over (with the possible exception of those in the colder climates) to refine my suggestions.
If my plans ever get off the ground, the only squares involved in chess will be on the board!
- Fat Byrt