Sociology

A Sport can be defined as an organized, competitive and skillful physical and mental activity which should be dedicated and played fairly. As per oxford advanced learners dictionary, definition of sports is that it is an activity that is done for pleasure and requires physical effort or skill, usually done in a special area and according to fixed rules and standards. They started long back as a means to revitalize the body and mind and range from physical fights that were used to show individual power and exuberance in front of the king in the previous times up to the current generation online games.

Entertainment and pleasure is a basic necessity of life and human mind has always been sharp enough to develop an activity that could soothe him from the physical and mental pain that he has gone through. No doubt that in previous generation, human was involved in more physical tasks then the mental task and therefore physical fitness was one of his prime concerns. So generally more of the previous sport included tougher physical actions like wrestling, bull fighting etc. The Olympic Games were founded by the son of Zeus, Heracles. (Rosenberg, Jennifer).  The very first written records of the Olympic dates back to 776 B.C. and it is believed that Olympics had been already going from many years already by then. It was the first time ever that various countries of the world sent their representatives to participate in an event to develop and mutual cohesiveness and an ambience of harmony and peace.

Chess is one of the very popular sports and has been played from the medieval times. Chess has been used by psychologist like Alfred Binet and psychoanalyst like Sigmund Freud in order to study the mind development. (Dr. Ferguson, Robert. pp 1). Sigmund Freud stated that mastering chess was like learning psychoanalytic techniques. It is one of the most powerful sports which develop concentration power, exceptional visual memory, speed of calculation and logical thinking.  (Dr. Ferguson, Robert. pp 2).It is said to be originated from India and used to be played by kings in order to hone their mental skills with the name of Shatranj.   From India the game became popular in Persia and in Middle East. (Absolute Astronomy, Shatranj).The game is being played on an 88 square board having a sum total of 64 squares.

The game of Chess includes these pieces on either side-
A king
A Queen
Two Rooks
Two knights
Two Bishops
Eight Pawns

The game in too much senses represent the warfare in previous times in which the aim of both the sides is to capture and seize the King of other side at any cost. The person losing his King ends up losing the game. Queen is the next most powerful piece which is allowed to do horizontal, vertical as well as diagonal movement. Players while calculating individual positions in the middle of the game, calculate 10 points for survival of their queen. Rook is considered as the next powerful piece which is considered as possessing 5 points and is allowed to do horizontal as well as vertical movements but not the diagonal movement. Bishop is allowed to do diagonal movement and is considered to be possessing 3 point. Knight is considered almost as powerful as Bishop and is also said to posses 3 points. The pawn is the last in the hierarchy and is said to have one point. It can do only vertical movement and captures any piece in diagonally the very next square. However, a pawn can get promoted to a level of queen when it reaches the last square on the board which is also the very first square on opponents side. On international standards, both the players need to complete at least 40 moves in the allocated time of 4 hours- two hours each and if a person is not able to complete 40 moves in his stipulated time of 2 hours then that person loses the game, without hisher king being captured.

The game is considered as the game of only intelligent creatures and involves a very high degree of mental exercise. Individual needs to apply their brain to the fullest and heshe needs to apply a series of permutation and combination and mental vision of the board in his brain after every set of these moves in order to come up with the best possible move at any point in time. Grand masters in the game of chess are believed to think as far as 22 set of forward moves and imagine the complete board in their mind when every single move can have hundreds of various different moves emerging at every single stage of the game

As per current World Chess Federation FIDE ratings TOP five players in March 2010 are Magnus Carlsen, Veselin and Vladimir Kramnik, Viswanathan Anand and Levon Aronian.

A much difficult version of the game has also been very popular which is called as blind folded Chess. In this both the players have their eyes covered and they have to imagine the complete board only in their mind and have to speak out their moves only orally. A person then plays the move for them directly on board and is easily one of the most toughest exercise for the brain. Chess is taught to children in many schools around the world and are used to sharpen the minds of army officers and cadets.

Long time people have argued for the fun and recreation activities that could qualify as sports. Some of them believe that only the activities which include physical labor are good enough to qualify in the ambit of sports. They therefore argue that board games like Chess which involve only mental labor and no physical labor should not be considered as sport. However I have a different opinion on this. As per me any particular activity, be it as small as throwing stones in the river can qualify in sports as long as it serve following advantages to the human race-

Develop a fighting spirit in an individual and the trait of competitiveness.

Foster an individual to develop winning attitude in life and the mental toughness to accept loss from time to time.

Serves as a good way to develop harmony and peace between the participating nations.

If it is a good way to release body and mental pressure.

If it can provide pleasure and entertainment and a good means for socializing.

Children, who are not that good in academics, get inspired by this mind game and show their best results throughout.  There is an immense power in Chess to transform young minds. (National Scholastic Chess Foundation, NSCF). Therefore as per me, Chess should be qualified as one of the most important and powerful sports as it is one of the very few games that refreshes the most used part of the body in the present generation- the brain. It revitalizes the entire body by refreshing the mind and does include the full intellect of the involved layers. It needs an immense practice to develop mastery on various possible combinations of opening moves and the right move in every situation. It also includes a great work to take advantage of opponents single mistake in the game and does reveal that human is undoubtedly the most intelligent creatures on this earth. I therefore am in a strong support of Chess as one of the most important games in the present time. I thus consider the claims of Chess not being a sport being baseless and flimsy and can very well say that- Chess is not at all a Mess its a good sport

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