Chess as ‘sport’ from ‘mind sport’ is a bridge too far

Rohit Mahajan

DURING the course of a chess match, Viswanathan Anand frequently makes physical exertions — he must, for instance, lift his bishop or rook from its position and place it on another square. This would require a certain amount of physical energy and motor movements — for sure, his elbow, shoulder, wrist and fingers must move in unison to effect a chess move. Sometimes, if he were sitting back in his chair contemplating a move, he might be required to move even his legs a little. Finally, sitting on a chair for hours on end can be a seriously discomfiting and exhausting business. A professional chess player always yearns to simply lie down and straighten his spine.

Similarly, when you play bridge, you must sit up on a chair, hold the cards in your hand, and frequently pick up or drop a card. This would require physical effort.  

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) says that the “most commonly accepted element of a sport is physical exertion in the conduct of competition”. The IOC has resisted efforts by the international chess federation (FIDE) to include chess in the Olympics programme.

The key, it seems, is the amount of “physical exertion” involved. The IOC terms sports such as chess and bridge as “mind sports”. The IOC doesn’t believe that the amount of physical exertion involved in playing chess or bridge is significant enough for them to be called sports in the true sense of the word.

It’s claimed that competitive chess and bridge players can burn thousands of calories a day. When Anatoly Karpov played against Garry Kasparov in the 1984/85 World Championships, Karpov lost 10 kg  of weight. That match was intensely competitive and enervating — between September, 1984 and February, 1985, the two played 48 games. In late 1985, they played another 24 games. Their health suffered greatly. A top-level chess player needs to be in peak physical condition. Anand follows a physical fitness regimen that includes work in the gym, cycling, swimming and going on long walks.

Chess players, even amateurs, say that playing the game is extremely tiring, sometimes more tiring than playing tennis. But don’t the students preparing for, say, the IIT examination, often lose weight, too? Don’t great architects or mathematicians, trying to solve intense mental problems, fall prey to tensions and lose weight?

Chess, in fact, is more akin to studying to take an examination than to any activity universally recognised as a sport. Why, pastimes such as carom and darts have a greater physical component than chess or bridge. Sport is not just any competitive physical exertion — it must involve high levels of skill in the execution of the physical exertion. There’s no physical skill or labour involved in moving chess pieces. It would be different if chess pieces were, say, 100 kg in weight and involved movement across an arena the size of a football field. Then chess would be a physical sport. 

Curiously, a few years ago, a school in New York organised a “chess biathlon” — it involved cross-country skiing and chess problems posted on trees in the woods. Now that would be more of a sport than conventional chess.

In 2003, a Dutch performance artist, Iepe BT Rubingh, invented “chess-boxing”. As the name suggests, in this sport, the competitors box in the ring and play chess in alternate rounds. The first competition was held in 2003, and Rubingh became the first-ever world chess-boxing champion. The sport now has a world governing organisation, too, and has associations in several European countries.

These two efforts to add a strong physical element to chess — more strenuous than merely the movement of chess pieces — suggest that chess on its own doesn’t pass the test of sports. This belief is almost universal. 

Victor Korchnoi and Tigran Petrosian, the two Russian chess players, disliked each other immensely. It is rumoured that they kicked each other under the table during a match in 1973 — now, that surely had elements of a proper sport! If, somehow, toppling the other player off the chair became part of chess, it would introduce a degree of physical skill and labour to the sport. We were being facetious there, but in all seriousness we’ve got to admit this — chess involves labours only of the mind. The physical aspect of the sport — sitting for long hours on a chair, moving the pieces — involves no skill and very little exertion. For this reason, chess (or bridge) can’t be termed “sports”. 

Chess and bridge are written about in the sports pages of a newspaper because that is the only space in a daily where competitive pastimes are reported on.

The IOC terms them “mind sports”, and that seems reasonable.

This argument over chess (or bridge) is an old one, and it’s not going to be settled by us. As fans of sport, and admirers of Anand, Kasparov and other great champions, let’s be content in applauding their (mental) skills.

[email protected]