By Sian Clarke, Second Year Ancient History
If I asked you to think of sports in your head, I'd lay money that chess wouldn't be one of the first that comes to mind - if at all. Undoubtedly a test of skill, intelligence, and strategy, it has however been classified as a sport since its standardisation in the 19th century. Yet the same can be said for sudoku puzzles - so what truly makes chess a sport?
My own fascination with chess grew from a particularly hard-to-follow Greek class (archaeometric analysis will be the death of me), where in desperation I found myself on chess.com against a randomly allocated bot with zero knowledge, understanding, or experience. In fact, my chess knowledge was so abysmally poor that I spent 90% of said first match thinking my King was my Queen and vice versa. I found the truth out the hard way - where my 'King' was taken and I had just my actual King against 6 opposing pieces. To this day I have no clue how I won that game - but the sheer idiocracy of both my actions, the bot, and the fact I was playing a chess match in the far fetched hope it might allow my brain to focus on my 9am seminar (average ADHD experience), cemented the website into my favourites folder.
As the weeks passed, I turned to the pawn icon incessantly, from study breaks in the ASS (being approached by the Revolut man mid-match), to more Greek seminars, to plain coursework procrastination. As TB2 drew to a stressful close I was able to beat a 'basic' bot with actual skill, rather than an inhumane amount of luck. However, unlike most traditional puzzle or logic games I am still below the global average regardless of my weeks of practice.
See chess isn't just a sport because of its difficulty. Yes, both the necessary knowledge of strategy and general intelligence is undoubtedly an element of its classification, but sports demand competition. And with the ever-growing base of chess players, with sets ranging from the Simpsons to Ancient Egyptians, there is something for everyone. Its gameplay mirrors the military tactics of long forgotten empires - appealing to the aristocratic elite for centuries, whilst subversively allowing even the most societally downtrodden a glimpse of power.
It is no wonder then, that the game was forced into boxes of strictly enforced rules and regulations, no surprise to see its accessibility fading right before your eyes.
So the real question is not 'Is Chess a Sport?', but rather 'Why has it been classified as such?'. Origins of sporting traditions are not to be ignored - highlighting social values from hundreds of years ago that still uphold today. The notion of 'Sport' itself is a purely subjective category based around Western elitism and conversely, communal activities of the global working class. If fox hunting can be called a sporting activity, although resulting in the inhumane deaths of innocent creatures, then why does an entirely peaceful activity garner so much backlash for the exact same classification?
Moreover, unlike Gaming, chess is one official game with a sole set of rules - blending in seamlessly with the strict sports broadcasted on Sky. Like other sports, there is still room to push the known boundaries, to discover new moves, to birth new prodigies. And, as a Sport it holds prestige and respect, not just for modern athletes, but for players throughout time and deserves to be treated as one.
Featured image: Chess.com
