Humanizing chess annotations

(IN PHOTO: GM Wesley So [left] vs GM Ray Robson. Source: susanpolgar.blogspot.com.)

In any sports, the battles are most appreciated by the audience when the actions are complemented by words. For instance, NBA, PBA, football, boxing games - even poker - are best viewed when commentated.

This is the reason why some people enjoy watching the games more on TV rather than watching the games live at the venue - because of commentating.

In the Philippine setting, listening to the late Joe Cantada's killer phrase "travelling without a ticket" during PBA games made the games livelier on TV rather than watching the games in Araneta.

Or listening to Chino Trinidad's "Susmaryosep!! Kanan pa lang ang tumama sa kalaban kaya nakatayo pa. Kapag kinaliwa na yan ni Manny, di na makakatayo yan." Indeed, boxing is more enjoyable to watch with lively commentaries.

I strongly believe that chess can be brought closer to audiences if annotations are the done the way commentators do it in the so-called audience sports like basketball and boxing.

Of course, the scientific, technical, well-calculated evaluations of moves (ala chess engine) should always be there. But a "human" flavor should be added to make the annotations appeal to human sensations.

One good example of how to humanize chess annotations is to read Iskubadayb's annotation of the GM Wesley So-GM Ray Robson game in Round 3 of the 2010 SPICE Cup. See the annotation below for you to get what I mean. (Iskubadayb is a resident chess master of Barangay Wesley, an online community of Wesley fans over chessgames.com)

GM Wesley So-GM Ray Robson
Round 3 Spice CUP 2010 Texas, USA
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