Should Chess be considered a sport?
By Lars Thomesen
This November the World Chess Championship was held in Sochi, Russia. For the second year running Norwegian Magnus Carlsen was crowned World Champion, but on home soil, the 23-year-old’s achievements are debatable on a sporting level.
In Norway, chess is not recognised as a sport by the official federation. It has become an undefined game, even if Norwegian sports journalists voted Carlsen as Norway’s 2013 Sportsman of the Year.
That was the first time a chess player had ever received that award and it was a questionable decision because chess is not a part of the The Norwegian Olympic and Paralympic Committee and Confederation of Sports (NIF).
On a global level however, chess is recognised as a sport by the International Olympic Committee (IOC). The World Chess Federation (FIDE) has in fact been a part of the IOC since 1999.
So why is there a debate in Norway, the home of the best chess player of recent times? Even if the IOC considers it a sport there is still widespread scepticism across the globe on whether chess can be defined as such.
The answer is simple.
Call me nerdy. Call me patriotic. Call me whatever you want. When Magnus Carlsen played India’s best chess player, Viswanathan Anand, for the World Chess Championship earlier in November I was watching vigilantly.
It was the same battle as the previous year (Carlsen was the defending champion) and obviously, Norwegian as I am, I was rooting for him.
It was exciting. At times it was long. But first and foremost it was impressive, inspiring and exciting. In my humble opinion, that is what sports is all about. It is meant to excite people – the viewers. It is meant to inspire, impress and leave you thinking; “I wish I could do that”.
The main arguments against chess being a sport are that “there is no obvious form of physical skill involved” and “it is just a board game”. Neither is it actually included in the Olympics; it has its own separate Olympic event.
To dig further into this debate I decided to look into the word “sport”. The Oxford Dictionary defines sport as “An activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment”. Digging further into this definition, the “physical exertion” aspect becomes key to understand why chess in fact should be considered a sport.
Defining “exertion” gives us the answer “physical or mental effort”. Chess is definitely a mental effort. I would also argue that it takes a lot of physical effort sitting in a chair for anything up to 6-8 hours day in day out for two weeks analysing the millions of different options available on a live chessboard.
In the World Chess Championship the athletes even have rest days to recover, much like the cyclists of Tour de France. Chess is a different type of effort than cycling, but it is still an effort that in one way or another is draining and, at least for the top players, requires them to get enough rest to perform at their best in the following match. Surely that alone would indicate that there is a physical exertion, as well as a mental exertion, aspect to the game?
Full article here.
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