The dictionary definition of sport is not the definitive authority when it comes to parsing what qualifies and what doesn't. The superficial notion that a sport must involve a certain amount of physical activity is insufficient. Who's to say how much it takes, must you break a sweat first? That is quite a loose argument.
The real differences between a game and a sport aren't so obvious as to which involves more bodily movement. No, the real difference is whether or not the game within it's rules is limited i.e finite in expression. Checkers has been solved, it is limited and is therefore relegated to merely a game. Chess is near infinite and is for the moment a sport, the 64 squares is enough.
It can be argued quite well that everything is finite. Furthermore, are you saying that chess is a sport now but will cease to be if it ever gets solved? That's sorta ridiculous.
Well what happens during a basketball game isn't "finite" and everyone agrees that its a sport. The number of possible chess games is for all intents and purposes infinite, and that doesn't even matter considering for the context of two people playing a game there is no point at which the ideas will run out. There is no sense in pointing to the abstract and saying something like "well if a supercomputer comes along and solves chess"-then it would be a merely a "game" to the supercomputer because an end has been reached. To us humans that point is moot. The possibilities for us wont ever be exhausted.
Actually the number of possibilities in a basketball game is finite, just incredibly large. I could get into the physics of it, but you wouldn't appreciate it. From a practical standpoint, however, there are also probably only several hundred billion different possibilities. I was basing all this on your saying that checkers is now a game because it was solved. It too, is only solved for the computers, and human players have vast different possibilities, not too different from chess.
Well then TheGrobe you don't understand what a sport is if you think there must be sweating involved. If there is an end to the game were it becomes repetitive as checkers has been proven to be then you cannot call that a sport. If there is room for endless express within the rules of the game then it's a sport. Parroting the vague physicality argument doesn't pass the test.
I'll try another simple disqualifier: If you can still play it while your are grossly obese it is clearly not a sport. I don't think I'm the one who doesn't understand what a sport is, sports are physical in nature -- it's as simple as that.
There seems to be a lot of emotion involved in the "chess is a sport" camp that I think is rooted in the feeling that if chess doesn't make the grade as a sport it is somehow inferior to other activities that do. I think this is the reasoning flaw that is causing people to make outlandish and ridiculous justifications for an unsupportable position. Just because chess isn't a sport doesn't diminish it in any way. It's a game -- ganted, the best game ever and superior to many sports in my opinion, but still just a game.