Watch some minutes of the videos below, and try to say which is better?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyJaggb7f7g&feature=plcp
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8HAHfcmiEs

_________________
North Lecale

Chess wins due to kickin' 80s soundtrack.

Loved that chess video. Never seen anything like it. How did they get those player comments? It almost seems as if they acted the whole thing out after the game.

That's exactly what they did do as I understand it, with voiceover

_________________
North Lecale

Malkovitch TV!

_________________
Patience, grasshopper.

I'm glad we don't have so many draws in go, it seems to dull the game somewhat. Anand won the World Chess Championship not to long ago with 2 wins, 1 loss, and 13 draws!

Draws are part of the game, unfortunately, but they don't necessarily dull the game. There are some draws that are exciting, but they're usually longer games. It's the short grandmaster draws in like 20 or less moves that dull the game.

_________________
My plan to become an SDK is here.

The American's chess commentary voice is just like how a friend of mine used to say what my cat might be thinking at any given moment. This...does not do wonders for my viewing experience.

_________________
Occupy Babel!

Draws are not inherently boring. Football (soccer), indisputably the most popular sport in the world, has a very large proportion of draws. I'm not sure of the proportion, but I would guess somewhere between 30 and 40% of all games end in draws. Personally, I'd be in favour of more tournaments that permitted draws.

I was slightly surprised by the apparenty superficiality of their thinking process. They look maybe 1 or 2 moves ahead, think, naah, that's too complicated, I'll go with this simpler move. I presume this is to keep it simple enough for a wide audience, but even so, it gives the impression that they're near beginner level.

Many big football tournaments use the 3-1-0 point system specifically to discourage drawish play. Looking around online it seems that a few chess tournaments have adopted this practice in the last few years (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilbao_Chess_Masters_Final). But at least for now the 1- 1/2 - 0 system seems most popular still.

I wonder if go tournaments started playing with 7 komi instead of 6.5 or 7.5, what percentage of draws we would have. My guess is that it would still be smaller than chess or football.

According to these statistics: http://senseis.xmp.net/?Komi%2FStatistics

The number of 6.5 komi games won by black by 0.5 (which would be draws if we changed the komi from 6.5 to 7) was 70, out of a total of about 1900 high level professional games. So that would be a little under 4%

The number of 7.5 (or 8, which is Ing rules for 7.5) komi games won by white by 0.5 (or 1) was 15 out of 410, again a little under 4%

The chess commentary was very simplified for the audience and do not reflect what they actually would be thinking in the game.

i am surprised to say that, but i liked the chess video better. i think it is due to the game board shown most of the time, with diagrams of considered moves, the commentary more to the game (directly from the players, nice) and generally a better audio. and youtube commentaries, those made me want to hear the best lines on my own

obviously the videos are not 100% comparable, because the go one was a real-time broadcast (i suppose), while the chess were shortened (i hope they'd spent more time thinking than they showed) and could get a better commentary. and i am 1d KGS and 20k chess player, not sure how does it affect my view

on the other hand, from the perspective of the games alone, the videos again demonstrated why i like go better. chess:
up to move 13, one player is playing a game he's already played once before.
on move 18 the other player first mentions that the position is probably drawn.
on move 25 they agree to draw

_________________
Spilling gasoline feels good.

I might be wrong, but probably not.

I think they say Walter spent about 45 minutes on the first ten or so moves.

_________________
Occupy Babel!

This was, by all accounts, the most successful exposition of chess on TV. I believe the format is just about perfect for mainstream. SAWMG had the chance to present Go to the world, I wish they'd chosen a better format.

_________________
North Lecale

Hmm, but my understanding is that go professionals are good at avoiding unnecessary complications where the outcome is unknown. Maybe something similar was happening here (though the actual explanation was simplified for a novice audience).

this is a bit of an unfair comparison. if you've ever watched a live non-blitz chess match, they are about equally boring.
i recommend comparing the chess video to one of bat's go series.

This is off topic, but here goes anyway.

There is a related video from the same event in China at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqQyC9fa ... re=related

At about 8 minutes in, you can see the end of Joanne Missingham's game
with Li He. At 9 minutes 30, an elderly guy interviews Joanne in English.
He seems to think her (English) name is Messenger, and asks some pretty
crass questions which she answers sensibly and politely even though she
was sick and she just lost a game. Later on, the same guy names a Chinese
chess player from Singapore "Wood" when he is really "Woo".

Conversely, I learnt that Li He's second name rhymes with Ben Hur
(for a non-rhotic speaker).

Looks on topic to me

Again, pretty amateurish coverage. I don't know who this guy is, he sounds Irish. Maybe he volunteered to do something?

_________________
North Lecale