…It says right there that chess is not a Sport. You literally produced the screen shot for me.
Being “LIKE” a sport (and that is pushing it) and actually BEING a sport are not the same thing.
Chess on its own is not a Sport.
What Sportacus does is incorporate chess playing into gymnastics. Gymnastics is a sport in its own right. Chess is not.
You can hardly even call chess a game if you play it against yourself as Sportacus does.
This is nothing less than Sportacus being extra and showing off as usual.
Also? I gotta little bone to pick with Magnús Scheving. His main/intended audience for his show is pre-school aged.
Tell me, …what kind of preschooler understands or wants to play chess?
Checkers would’ve been a more assessable strategy game for his target audience. Many more preschoolers know how to play checkers compared to those that know how to play chess.
The reason he had Sportacus play chess instead? It was more show-offy. Because the culture around chess-playing has always had an aura of pretentiousness around it. People think it’s classier and more sophisticated than most other board games.
The same type of pretentiousness that would make one believe that moving a wooden horsey two inches across a wooden board is a sport.
“Oh, but he said that chess is a sport of the mind.”
People say that because it’s a game that demands more strategy than luck.
You can say the same about countless video games but I highly doubt you’d see Sportacus or Magnús call video games a sport.
In the original lazytown play, Ithrottaalfurrin even tries to get Goggi to ditch video games, which may very well require the same brain power as chess, to play sports outdoors.
“Oh, but there is such a thing as competitive gaming, which is starting to get treated similarly as sports competitions!”
1. People who call video games, professional poker/card gaming, etc, sports, are also wrong.
2. Just because something is competitive does not automatically mean it is a sport. Would you say the contestants on masterchef are competing in a sport? Cooking requires some strategy but literally no one thinks of it as a sport.
3. Also, something doesn’t have to be competitive in order to be a Sport. Take for example, martial arts, dancing, and cheerleading. Even when not in competition, these things are still sports.
As long as it’s an athletic activity requiring skill or physical prowess (as stated above), it’s a sport.
Call chess a “sport of the mind” all you want, but that does not make it a legitimate sport.
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