It seems almost like an oxymoron to combine the words mind and sport especially

when the "sport" under consideration is chess. It is difficult to picture the game
as a sport when the most physical activity it seems to require is moving the pieces
across the board. Recently, though, the Olympic committee voted chess legal for
competition in "The Games." This acknowledgment of chess as a sport by such a high
council requires us to rethink our view of chess and athletics.

Although chess does not appear to require as much activity as most recognizable
sports, it does require as much, if not more, preparation and time. A study done at
Temple University found that chess drains energy at a rate that compares to
football. Some of the best chess players in history regarded athletic training as
an essential part of success in the game. Both Bobby Fischer and Garry Kasparov
lifted weights. They used other physical conditioning techniques as well, not
necessarily for their health, but because of the amount of stamina the game
requires at high levels of competition. It is not uncommon for a professional
player to lose 10 to 15 pounds during the course of a match. Matches can last as
long as a month, with one game every day, eight hours each.

Over 120 countries officially consider chess a sport. The Unites States is not one
of them. That may be because we seem to have a very narrow-minded view of what
exactly a sport is. Ask any random person if chess should be considered a sport,
and the most likely response will be hysterical laughter, yet more people play
chess competitively than any other game in the world, and more books have been
published on chess than any other subject. Most of those players and authors firmly
believe that chess is harder to be good at than any other game or sport. The
thought of chess as a sport probably just never occurred to most people.

Playing in a chess tournament is akin to taking a test that has not been studied
for but that will decide something important, except that chess also has the added
problem of time. Imagine taking that test with a time limit, like the SAT’s for
example, but that the clock that is keeping the time gives off a faint ticking
sound. In a large room that is completely silent the only thing audible will be
that noise, it is extremely nerve-racking for any inexperienced tournament player.