Chess / Starcraft and Baduk

When I first moved to Korea in 2006, I was amazed to see that my TV had two channels devoted to Starcraft. 

Two channels devoted  to video games is one thing, but two channels for a game that was released for use with Windows 98 is quite bizarre?  I played it obsessively for a time, got bored, forgot about it, went to college, and so on.  Yet in Seoul I witnessed two people challenge each other to a decade-old video game in the middle of a class, then march off to prove their egos.

They went to a PC Bang, an internet cafe filled with cigarette smoke and the sounds of exploding zerg.

PC Bangs are on every block.  It's possible to see two or three in a single building sometimes.  People play lots of video games, newer and better games even, but most play starcraft.

I asked some teenagers once why Starcraft and not Warcraft III, and they said it was about the limitations and known strategies.  It's the one game that everybody can readily talk about.  It's a national pass time.

In 2010, this year, I talked to a 12-year-old who told me it was his favorite game.  He and the game are the same age, and it is his favorite.

Those two Starcraft channels are actually kind of exciting.  They play live tournaments.

The view goes back and forth between the camera close-ups of the two players and the views on their respective screens.  Expert sports journalists comment the whole time.  The players themselves are referred to as athletes, and they have all sorts of sponsorships on their spacesuits.

Some athletes are celebrities.  In COEX Mall you can sometimes show up and watch them play.  To an American raised to always look for the next big fad, this is very strange.

There's a revolution brewing though. 

That plane belongs to Korean Air, and the advertisement on the side is for Starcraft II.   The social  implications of this really should be documented and studied.  It could be huge, or it could be completely ignored.  Blizzard, the American company that makes Starcraft, has decided to upgrade it.  Will the Korean market accept it?  No idea.

Do parents want their kids growing up with Starcraft?  Not really.  That's why they send their kids to play Baduk.

There's also a Baduk channel on my TV.  This game is huge.

In Seoul, men are forced into retirement in their 60s, and they often live very frugally.  Baduk doesn't cost anything, and these men become denizens of public parks.  They especially seem to congregate in Tapgol Park and Jongmyo.

You could include Taekwondo and a few other things in the list of Korean national sports, but Baduk and Starcraft are the only ones with their own TV channels playing in every home, hotel, and restaurant.


St. Louis seems to almost have something very similar going for itself.  What is this?

The St. Louis Chess Club has viewing areas set up to watch people play.  That laptop screen in the lower left-hand corner is of a live-streaming game.  You can see the board and the players in action.  Videos with commentary can be viewed by following this link.

The more I read of the St. Louis chess scene, the more the professional sports feel seems to be creeping in, and it's all thanks to this guy,

The king with the hat in this RFT photo is Rex Sinquefield.  He's the guy that paid for this,

I wrote about him before in astonishment at the way his investment in his hobby seemed to be playing out for the city.  He renovated a three storey building, and made one of the finest chess clubs in the world.  He hired grandmasters from around the country to move to St. Louis to work there.  He bought Bobby Fischer's Library, and convinced the Chess Hall of Fame to move from Miami to the Central West End.  He has brought many tournaments to town.  He put up chess tables around the city, like in Post Office Plaza.  Most amazing of all, he's using his employed grandmasters to teach chess to kids in pilot programs and after school chess clubs around the city.  He's even using his think tank, the Show-Me Institute, to study the benefits of chess in K-12 education.

I still think Purina (which recently made some big donations and announced an expansion of their headquarters) should jump into the action with some sponsored dog parks around the city with giant red and white checkerboards.  The boards could use standard, oversized red and white pieces or something more dog appropriate.   If St. Louis is the international capital of the chess world, then we ought to have several clubs and a few corporate sponsors. 

Just recently, Nicki's Central West End Guide posted pictures of yet another major chess tournament hosted in St. Louis.  This time for women.  The need to throw a big festival in the street outside just adds to the fun.  The RFT wrote a post with the headline Surprise! St. Louis is the Center of the Chess Universe.   The LA Times, agreed  with an article titled St. Louis, the Game's New Capital.

How does chess in St. Louis stack up against Starcraft and Baduk in Seoul though?

Kids - check
Adults - check
Places to play all over the city - check
Integrated into children's education - check
Huge tournaments - check
Museum - bonus

Awesome uniforms with corporate sponsorships - No
TV channel - Almost
Advertisement on the side of an air plane - Not yet