Is Chess a sport?

Is chess a sport??  Answer me and give reasons for your answers pls. Best answer gets 3 trophies(in a month)

How many is multiple people though?

We say things like football are physical sports, and we call them SPORTS, but chess is a mind sport(instead of exercising physically you're exercising mentally), so it is a different type of sport that we do not have a name for, and because of that we say it's not a SPORT, which is true, but it's also true that it's just a different type of sport, so it IS a sport, just one that we have not named.

The meaning of the term, at least in English, has changed over the years. It used to be used for things that were fun or entertainment. Then it switched to activities that were physical in nature. Lately, it has been trending back to things that are not necessarily physical (i.e. e-sports).

So whether chess is a sport or not depends a lot on who you ask.

Personally, I'm old enough that I think of sport as being a physical activity. I'm not old enough to go back to the old definitions of it being fun/entertainment. And I'm not young enough to think of things like e-sports as real sports either.

Language is not a static thing. Much as some people who like to say that the definition of a word is immutable, that is simply not how language works.

If enough people start calling chess tiddly-winks, it IS tiddly-winks, whether or not that is what you think of the term.

but again, what is enough??

Chess is a game not a sport. Chess is as much a sport as poker is.  Is Monopoly© a sport?. 

This will fall into the tl;dr category, but here are my thoughts.

Firstly, a preface statement.  Whether or not something is considered a sport doesn't make it more or less important, more or less difficult or more or less worthwhile than activities that don't meet my standard of what is a sport.  Things that I don't regard as sport, are commonly more demanding, require more dedication and skill and more physically challenging than things I do consider sport.  In my thinking, an activity that can be considered a sport doesn't automatically rise to the highest point in the hierarchy of all competitive activities, as I don't think any such hierarchy legitimately exists.  Sports, in my view, are just distinguished from other competitive activities by these traits.  

I've always held the idea that for an activity to be sport, there are a few things that must be true about the activity.  

• The stakes musts be equal between participants. 
  • As an example, this eliminates activities such as hunting and fishing (whose participants in the US are commonly referred to as outdoor sportsman).  If the stakes involved for one party (the animal) are to die or not and the stakes for the other party (the hunter) are to shoot some animal or not, the stakes between participants are not equal and therefore the activity falls outside of my definition of sport.
• The competition must have clearly defined rules for scoring which are clearly determined within the play.  i.e. you win or lose by some value system inherent to the game.  Anything that is judged to determine a winner or place standing is not sport.  
  • Diving, Gymnastics, Figure Skating for example are separated by this requirement.
• The competitors must be actively opposed.  There must be active defense as part of the competition in my view for an activity to be a sport.  If not, the activity is a skills competition but different from sport.
  • Golf, Track and Field, Swimming are examples. 

Whether or not an activity has to be primarily kinetic to be considered sport is beyond me.  I will say however, that I consider chess to be more in the category of sport (as I've defined it) than I do other very strenuous activities that are widely considered sport.

None of this is meant to offend enthusiasts of items I've said are not sports.  I'm making no claim that sport is a higher classification of competition, just different by those attributes listed.  My thoughts anyway...

It's only a game until somebody loses an eye.

Then it's a sport.

Yes chess is a  sport..

 In my school physical education text book they always say that 

  "sports divides into two groups ,as indoor sports and outdoor sports..

     and CHESS comes under INDOOR sports.

And also the book says ..

  "There are 4 types of fitnesses known as 

         Physical fitness  

         Mental fitness

         Spiritual fitness

           and something else which I do not remember...

There CHESS is said ti be a SPORT which helps to improve Mental fitnesss......

THERE IS A LOT ABOUT CHESS BEING A SPORT ACTUALLY ......

  so I hope you found this info useful..

(the info in the book is written in my word)(For further knowledge THat physical educaton book is printed by the education department of my country )

I ment you might know that sports divided into two

yes. If you throw the pieces

Chess is a sport. FIDE (Fédération Internationale Des Echecs) is the 3rd biggest sporting federation. Logically if FIDE, the governing association of chess, is a sporting federation, chess must be a sport.

@vital_gimion 

WOW!! You must really want those 3 trophies 🙂

I'm new here  and don't even know the value of getting trophies.  I've just had this discussion before with friends and thought my idea that chess is more aligned with 'sport' than some other activities might find some more sympathy here than I typically find with other crowds.

Zero. 

So, is collecting trophies a sport?  

On chess.com no because there is no physical activity involved in it.