I was thinking the other day, how to make chess entertaining for public. Actual games between Grandmasters are often protracted positional wars where both move pawns to control space and take on average 5 minutes to think on every move. Few have patience to watch that. Unless you are professional or semi-professional yourself, that is hardly entertaining. Which is a shame as chess is an interesting game.
So here is an interesting way to spice the game up: make professional play against the amateur but with a handicap.
To give both a fighting chance, a pro has to give up a few of their pieces as handicap, an amateur will play with the full set. The more pieces pro is willing to give up, the bigger the prize pool will be, thus they have insensitive to play with as few pieces as possible. However, if they underestimate their opponent and give up far too many pieces, they might just lose. A pro will have a few minutes to chat with their opponent to determine their skill level and then decide how many pieces they will sacrifice for the prize pool in a game against them. Finally, there will be blitz or ultrablitz rules to speed up the game and there will be no tied games unless referee agrees that neither can win.
A game like this can produce some very interesting and diverse games. An amateur can be of different levels, from someone who barely even knows how to play to someone who plays with friends regularly and watches pro games in free time. So, we may see games where pro tries to win with a king and three pawns or something similar to maximize the prize. At the same time some games will be more complex and instead become a church-fest where both sides will struggle to come up with moves in limited time.
Compare to regular chess it will be fast paced with lots of pieces taken at any given time. That will get ordinary people who normally do not like chess interested in this version of the game. It might as well be profitable as a TV game show.
Most importantly is to pick right pros for the game. They have to be risk takers who can think outside of the box and enjoy tricks. Perhaps one can judge this by their interest in chess puzzles and unusual games, or trick checkmates.
