Answers.Body: <p>It's for entertainment, plain and simple. (And there are a lot of people entertained by Nepo's shirt choices and superstitions.)</p>
  <p>Following serious chess analysis is often too hard for casual fans. If you watch/read coverage of the match you see statements like &quot;Black's compensation is not enough for the pawn&quot;, and it's often not apparent to viewers that it is not enough compensation. But going into extreme detail on why Black's compensation is not enough is likely to be too dull for many viewers. In a similar way, we see coverage articles talk about facial expressions and nerves of both players, because those things are easily understood and empathized with.</p>
  <p>Just consider, why don't you watch engine chess instead of human chess?</p>
  <ul>
  <li>There's no argument that engine chess is of higher quality than human chess.</li>
  <li>You can get the playing engines to analyze whatever line you want (just play it on your local computer and see what they say).</li>
  <li>You can watch the playing engines analyze in real time. In response to &quot;Did you see XYZ?&quot;, you examine their principal variations and see if they saw it.</li>
  <li>If the playing engines didn't see some critical continuation, you can even see them &quot;see it&quot; for the first time, when their evaluation booms or moobs (this is engine chess lingo for &quot;eval explodes away from 0.00&quot; and &quot;eval implodes towards 0.00&quot; respectively).</li>
  </ul>
  <p>And yet engine chess fans are maybe 0.1% of the chess community. The <a href="https://www.chessdom.com/the-other-world-chess-championship-stockfish-vs-lc0-live/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">&quot;other&quot; World Chess Championship</a> was running at the same time as the World Chess Championship, and yet there was usually no more than a few hundred concurrent viewers. Even during peak engine chess drama (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TCEC_Season_14#Superfinal" rel="nofollow noreferrer">TCEC Season 14 superfinal</a>) there were still no more than a couple thousand viewers. Most people like shirt choices and superstitions. They watch the match for the chess, <em>and also</em> for the sporting drama.</p>
  <p>PS: Even among engine chess viewers, much of the time, we don't talk about the position on the board and instead talk about the opening books, the scam (e.g. when the engine you want to win somehow fails to convert a winning position), the upcoming elo-gaining patch, and so on. It's a common joke among engine chess fans that we are eval chart watchers. Like the viewers of the post-game press conferences, we are highly interested in things other than the actual chess.</p>
  
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2023-04-28T06:56:39.607Z
Answers.Text: The reason we watch engine chess is that engine chess is boring, predictable and drawish. I don't think many chess fans care about shirt colors. After all, what kind of casual fan would follow a 5-hour long game if they don't understand what's going on at the board?
Answers.UserDisplayName: David
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2023-04-28T01:14:59.067Z
Answers.LastActivityDate: 2023-04-28T02:55:24.237Z
Answers.LastEditDate: 2023-04-28T02:55:24.237Z
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Body: <p>If you saw the post-game press conference live after round 13 in the Nepo vs. Ding, world chess championship 2023, then you would have seen Nepo getting frustrated about being asked tedious or annoying questions about his choice of shirt and whether or not he is superstitious, and the players being asked if they'll spend a few extra days to teach chess, as if they're not extremely busy, part of a team of people, and don't have flights already booked.</p>
  <p>It seems like a much better format would be to simply give the players a board, and ask them to analyze the game.  I feel like the players would give more in-depth replies, and a lot of natural questions I would have are &quot;did you see XYZ?&quot; or &quot;why play ABC?&quot;, which would get answered this way.</p>
  <p>This makes me wonder...</p>
  <p><strong>Question</strong>: What/who are post-game press conferences for?</p>
  
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2023-04-27T23:40:18.860Z
Comments.Text: Like most other sports, they're primarily for the hosts/network
Comments.UserDisplayName: L. Scott Johnson
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2023-04-28T06:38:11.743Z
Comments.Text: Exactly the same as sports media conferences. Mostly about getting a quick quote or something that can be used in a story.
Comments.UserDisplayName: Steve Bennett
Tags: <press-conference>
Title: What/who are post-game press conferences for?
ThreadText: # What/who are post-game press conferences for?
  
  (Asked by: username_0 on 2023-04-27)
  
  If you saw the post-game press conference live after round 13 in the Nepo vs. Ding, world chess championship 2023, then you would have seen Nepo getting frustrated about being asked tedious or annoying questions about his choice of shirt and whether or not he is superstitious, and the players being asked if they'll spend a few extra days to teach chess, as if they're not extremely busy, part of a team of people, and don't have flights already booked.
  
  It seems like a much better format would be to simply give the players a board, and ask them to analyze the game. I feel like the players would give more in-depth replies, and a lot of natural questions I would have are "did you see XYZ?" or "why play ABC?", which would get answered this way.
  
  This makes me wonder...
  
  **Question**: What/who are post-game press conferences for?
  
  **Tags:** press-conference
  
  > **Comments:**
  > **username_1**: Like most other sports, they're primarily for the hosts/network  
  > **username_2**: Exactly the same as sports media conferences. Mostly about getting a quick quote or something that can be used in a story.  
  
  ---
  
  ## 1 answers
  
  ### Answer by username_3 on 2023-04-28. Score: 6
  
  It's for entertainment, plain and simple. (And there are a lot of people entertained by Nepo's shirt choices and superstitions.)
  
  Following serious chess analysis is often too hard for casual fans. If you watch/read coverage of the match you see statements like "Black's compensation is not enough for the pawn", and it's often not apparent to viewers that it is not enough compensation. But going into extreme detail on why Black's compensation is not enough is likely to be too dull for many viewers. In a similar way, we see coverage articles talk about facial expressions and nerves of both players, because those things are easily understood and empathized with.
  
  Just consider, why don't you watch engine chess instead of human chess?
  
  * There's no argument that engine chess is of higher quality than human chess.
  * You can get the playing engines to analyze whatever line you want (just play it on your local computer and see what they say).
  * You can watch the playing engines analyze in real time. In response to "Did you see XYZ?", you examine their principal variations and see if they saw it.
  * If the playing engines didn't see some critical continuation, you can even see them "see it" for the first time, when their evaluation booms or moobs (this is engine chess lingo for "eval explodes away from 0.00" and "eval implodes towards 0.00" respectively).
  
  And yet engine chess fans are maybe 0.1% of the chess community. The ["other" World Chess Championship](https://www.chessdom.com/the-other-world-chess-championship-stockfish-vs-lc0-live/) was running at the same time as the World Chess Championship, and yet there was usually no more than a few hundred concurrent viewers. Even during peak engine chess drama ([TCEC Season 14 superfinal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TCEC_Season_14#Superfinal)) there were still no more than a couple thousand viewers. Most people like shirt choices and superstitions. They watch the match for the chess, *and also* for the sporting drama.
  
  PS: Even among engine chess viewers, much of the time, we don't talk about the position on the board and instead talk about the opening books, the scam (e.g. when the engine you want to win somehow fails to convert a winning position), the upcoming elo-gaining patch, and so on. It's a common joke among engine chess fans that we are eval chart watchers. Like the viewers of the post-game press conferences, we are highly interested in things other than the actual chess.
  
  > **Comments:**
  > **username_4**: The reason we watch engine chess is that engine chess is boring, predictable and drawish. I don't think many chess fans care about shirt colors. After all, what kind of casual fan would follow a 5-hour long game if they don't understand what's going on at the board?  
  
  ---
  
  