Mind Sports :: essays research papers

It seems some like an oxymoron to combine the words mind and athletic competition especially when the "sport" under consideration is chess. It is difficult to picture the game as a sport when the just about physical activity it seems to require is moving the pieces crosswise the board. Recently, though, the Olympic committee voted chess legal for competition in "The Games." This point of reference of chess as a sport by such a high council requires us to rethink our view of chess and athletics.      Although chess does non appear to require as much activity as most recognizable sports, it does require as much, if not more, preparation and time. A vignette done at Temple University found that chess drains energy at a rate that compares to football. Some of the best chess players in explanation regarded athletic training as an essential part of success in the game. Both Bobby Fischer and Garry Kasparov lifted w eights. They used some other p hysical 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 fall asleep 10 to 15 pounds during the course of a match. Matches can last as long as a month, with one game e really 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 both random person if chess should be considered a sport, and the most apt(predicate) response will be hysterical laughter, yet more sight 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 o ccurred to most people.      vie in a chess tournament is akin to taking a test that has not been studied for but that will decide something important, extract that chess also has the added problem of time. Imagine taking that test with a time limit, like the SATs for example, but that the clock that is tutelage the time gives off a faint ticking sound. In a large room that is completely silent the only thing perceptible will be that noise, it is extremely nerve-racking for any inexperienced tournament player.