uh.. What is chess actually?

art/sport/science all?

I'm sure this has been discussed alot, I assume also in literature... so please share relevant links

Peace

So, what make chess an art, a sport and a science (field)? Similar case could be made about the sweet science and art of manly self-defense: boxing. Poker, football and probably almost every game could make same claim. Surely there is more artistic self expression in painting warhammer 40k figurine and create your own composition of armies than in chess?

Agreed

Search it @pineapplebird

It's entertainment essentially. Although I went to the modern art museum and they had a pear with a pencil stuck into it, calling it art. So I guess chess can be an art, it's certainly better than the junk I saw there.

Clearly, just a board game.

Y’all know about the banana ductaped to the wall?

Chess is self-transcendence. By learning a different way to approach complex ('wicked') problems we see that standard human ways of thinking are insufficient and we need to activate the rest of our mind to be able to think in terms of more multiparametric spaces. So yeah, it's a mind sport. But that has been known and chess has been classified as that for decades. What's the confusion?

Agree, the banana is ridiculous. But there's a lot of prejudice that a lot of modern art isn't art! But it's also about the story behind it. Now for example, Banksy, crafty and witty as it may be, is not art. Even if it's sold that way, it's nothing but vandalist graphics with a clever business model behind it. The youth buys the veil as it being art, but only the connoisseur can see what it is. Same with modern art. Hence a urinal or grey square can indeed be high conceptual art. A pear with a pencil, a banana to the wall, it depends on the concept behind it (I can't see it either).

I once was in a modern art museum and thought the emergency exit sign was part of the exhibition. In my defense, it was a very well done sign. All aluminum with a white print. But it shows the obliviousness of many who call themselves artists in knowing what art, or true artistic intent, is. The idea to show that anything can be art as long as it's presented as such is just dumb. That's not high art, that's non-art. As that may be a new movement, anything in the gallery that's not the art itself would belong to it...so yeah. This generation of idiots needs to just stop in their tracks and reflect on what it's doing.

You're right; we're just self-aggrandizing our favorite past-time activity. What it is subjectively depends on how you use it.

If you want the dry definition:

"Chess is a board game between two players."

IOC considers it a sport (not just a mind sport) as "Chess requires physical exertion as mental exertion manifests itself physically."

I think there's a truth in that but since the physical abilities aren't pushed to the limit I would restrict the definition as purely being a mind sport. Dubov who does calisthenics also attests that "it doesn't really help the chess but just makes you feel better" (about physical exercise).

Whilst this is true. I would argue that if you strip away the criminality of Banksy's work, underneath it, there is still clearly a degree of skill/talent and work that has gone into the production of often very thought provoking material. For instance, the "Game Changer" production which was in its usual practice, initially vandalism. Outside that, the work is actually good and something that if done in its usual manner (I.e, on canvass etc) would still be considered a masterpiece with a lot of information Historians of Art could draw on, cultural icons, references and so on. Especially when you consider the time period of its release and the concerns of the general public at the time. 

A banana on a wall or a pear with a pencil in it, isn't a concept. I could draw a yellow dot on a black canvass and call it "Light at the end of the tunnel" in 5 minutes. A 5 year old could. No talent, No skill, No effort, No thought. In that light, you could classify Chess as more of an art form than modern art. (Chess sets might actually be art if they are done artistically. Isle of Lewis chessmen come to mind.)

I would disagree on your last point. There are new things being discovered all the time, and many endgames remain uncertain.

If you mean that chess is not a science because you can only discover so much to the game, then by extension our real life science is also not a science.

But I am not sure what you mean in the first place.

Any theoretical novelty. Barring those you can just dig up almost any opposite colored bishop endgame, where analysis remains unclear (Example: aronian- bacrot).

But do you mean that chess is not a science because there are no new discoveries? Because if so then it must have been a science at one point. 

In fact in IM Jonathan Hawkins’s book “Amateur to IM” he makes several improvements on GM analysis in the Aronian-Bacrot endgame.

Too tired to