Abirdwithinternetyt wrote:
Also, I feel compelled to ask considering the fact that you seem to contradict a lot of things practically everyone posts here, is that what you are in forums to do?
he keeps hijacking many threads lol while it isn't a malicious intent it's extremely annoying and @long_quach i know you dont bother but it'd be nice if you could stop. somehow you manage to steer every topic to 'cHiNeSe CheSs' and in a span of 5 mins you've somehow jumped from basketball to goats to rambo III to chess. please stick to the topic or dont comment at all.
Or, is this simplistic question a distraction?
Can a game be a sport? Are all sports games? Although it lacks the physical demands of athletics, are there ways that chess exhibits the essence of what we call sports?
pretty much every single "is chess a sport?" thread devolves into one side saying "chess is a sport because some federation said so" and another side saying "chess isn't physically demanding, so it's not a sport by definition" with neither side coming to any sort of resolution.
But not all sports are games, no? Is running a game? I think we would call cross country a sport. Similarly, mountain biking is surely a sport, but we would not say that it's a game of any sort.
Most sports involve some sort of competition, whether against other people, or against yourself (but mostly the former). Chess surely exhibits this aspect. Sports also generally demand some sort of coordination between mind and body. A nice example would be esports. Although it may not appear physically straining, being able to coordinate what you see on screen and how you move your devices physically is an example of coordination. Lots of competitive players spend a lot of time training their aim for this purpose. I do not see chess exhibiting this sort of thing at all. Perhaps if you are playing online in a 3 minute game at longest, you will have to occasionally demonstrate a little bit of coordination. But hardly enough to make it competitive.
Another pattern you'll find in sports is that you will have bursts of speed. For example, if a midfielder lobs a nice pass to a striker and suddenly you have a chance on goal, after many minutes of passing to hold possession. In chess, this is quite backwards. The instances of nothing happening usually pass by quicker than when the instances when the game tenses up. Obviously, since you have to think more when critical positions appear.
Perhaps online speed chess can be called a sort of "sport". But generally besides the competitive nature of the game, chess doesn't really have much in common with other sports whatsoever.