Chess is A Sport and No One Can Say Otherwise

by Arthur Leung

Is chess a sport? Or is it not because there's no physical exertion? This is a controversial topic. I’m sure the fellow chess players out there have stumbled upon this question or even debated it with friends. I’ll be going over why I think that chess is a sport and to end this controversial topic once and for all.

My first reason is that chess is very competitive. Like other sports, chess players also go through the thrills of losing and the agony of defeat. They still strive to improve their game, learn new strategies, and try their absolute best to beat their opponents which in my opinion makes it no different from other sports. However, people may argue that Monopoly, Uno, etc are also competitive and it isn't argued that those are sports which leads us to my next reason as to why chess is a sport.

My next point as to why chess is a sport is because it requires immense strategy, planning, and lots of thinking required to make the best possible decisions and to ultimately beat your opponent. In my own experience of learning and playing chess, it takes immense concentration to learn and play the game. It also has a slight learning curve between being an ok player to being a decent player as I took hours of lessons and memorizing strategies to become a “decent” player. This concludes that chess requires lots of skill which is a common ideology with sports.

Another point as to why chess is a sport is most likely how well known the game and the rules are all over the world. Chess is one of the most worldwide known board games and according to the statistics, there are three times as many chess players in the world as soccer players which means that the game is very well known and the rules such as good sportsmanship, shaking hands, and standard game rules are also commonly associated with sports which further proves my claim that chess is a sport. However, like many other things, Dining in restaurants also has a lot of rules you must follow and is also a place that almost everyone has gone to at least once in their life which leads me to my final argument.

Chess requires a lot of concentration which means that it requires a lot of mental and physical exertion. The oxford dictionary states, “an activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or a team competes against another or others for entertainment.” This creates the argument that since chess players sit in a chair and play chess, that therefore it's not a sport. However if you have had any experience with chess, you would understand that not only is it mentally exhausting, it is also physically exhausting. If you have ever experienced an intense moment in chess where every single move counts and one wrong move could cost you the game, you would know that adrenaline would rush through you which means that your heart rate will increase and you will start sweating. World champion chess players such as Bobby Fischer and Magnus Carlsen both keep a strict exercise routine and diet because they believe that better blood flow and athleticism are needed to keep an unwavering concentration throughout an intense chess game. Pro chess players that lose sometimes even blame it on their physical fitness.

In conclusion, people may say that since chess players sit while they play therefore they aren’t physically exerting themselves enough, but I think that during an intense chess game, the mental exertion is far greater and more significant than a universally known sport as well as the high physical exertions that come with it as well. In addition to this, some countries pay a large sum of money to support their chess players which is almost like a sponsor just like any other sport. To end this debate once and for all, the International Chess Committee had officially stated that chess was a sport in 2000 but despite all the disagreements, I still strongly stand by the fact that chess is a sport and requires as much concentration and energy as a worldwide known sport does.