Chess in America

Originally posted by vandervelde
Football (soccer) and chess resist capitalist competitive way of thinking, chess requires sacrifice and denial, while young Americans since the dawn of the nation were accustomed to earning and an to gain. Positional sacrifice is therefore an too abstract concept for Americans. Football is a game that allows 0: 0, poor coaches and locker rooms that resemble hovels from Italian neorealism from 1950s...
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I was going to ask if you hadn't seen Saturn 3 where sacrifice is a theme. I couldn't remember the exact title and looked it up on Wikipedia. Although the cast and the director were American it was a British film, specifically the screenplay was written by Martin Amis from a story by John Barry, both of whom are British. Which kind of spoils my example of Americans understanding sacrifice...

Originally posted by Paul Leggett
D-Day was a positional sacrifice.

Wow, Paul. I had never considered it that way. It's a brilliant analogy. Are there any writings that discuss D-Day (and perhaps other military battles) in those terms that you can point me to?

Originally posted by Paul Leggett
D-Day was a positional sacrifice.

!!

Originally posted by vandervelde
Football (soccer) and chess resist capitalist competitive way of thinking, chess requires sacrifice and denial, while young Americans since the dawn of the nation were accustomed to earning and an to gain. Positional sacrifice is therefore an too abstract concept for Americans. Football is a game that allows 0: 0, poor coaches and locker rooms that resemble hovels from Italian neorealism from 1950s...
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Ever hear of a sacrifice bunt or fly in AMERICAN baseball? Each gives up material (an out) in order to gain position (advance a runner). I therefore posit that Americans are fully ingrained with the concept of positional sacrifice!

Originally posted by Bebop5
Ever hear of a sacrifice bunt or fly in AMERICAN baseball? Each gives up material (an out) in order to gain position (advance a runner). I therefore posit that Americans are fully ingrained with the concept of positional sacrifice!

They have certainly sacrificed their position as undisputed holders of the moral high ground.

With tihs "theory", I wanted in fact to check the words I heard long time ago from a Yugoslavian GM who supported himself with giving lessons to amongs others young Americans.

He said he couldn't teach one American to sacrifice somethng even temporarily, because - he said - "young Americans and possible Westerners as a whole are so materialistic oriented that they cannot grasp the notion of sacrifice in chess..."

I thought then it was typical bool.sheeting about uneducated Americans and overcultured Europeans,