What Is Chess, Anyway?

Many years ago, a young aspiring chess player was planning to play a big tournament abroad, but there was one problem: money!

Just like many young players, he couldn't really afford the travel expenses, so he decided to ask for help at the department of youth affairs. He scheduled a meeting with a top official there. The meeting didn't go the way our lad had hoped. The official was complaining about the shortage of funds, and it was clear that he wasn't willing to spend money on a board game.

At some point, he even asked, "To allocate money for you, we need to decide under which budget category to classify it. So what is chess anyway: a sport, an art, or a waste of time?" The kid already realized that he wasn't going to get any money, so he couldn't keep his frustration anymore and answered: "When Mikhail Tal plays chess it is art, when I play chess it is sport, and when you play chess it is just a waste of time."

I remembered this old story when I saw the following picture GM Oleg Korneev posted on his Facebook page:

If you don't speak Russian, the caption is the exact translation of the following movie's title:

He explains his post with a very short statement: The metamorphosis of high-level chess:
ART – SCIENCE – SPORT – SHOW.

This is the game that made Korneev so enraged:

I absolutely understand Korneev's frustration. When you devote your whole life to our favorite game, it slowly becomes something sacred. And when two elite players start their game this way, it feels like a spit in your face. Many people were amazed when GM Rauf Mamedov started his game vs. GM Magnus Carlsen in Titled Tuesday with 1.e4 and immediately resigned upon seeing Carlsen's reply 1...g5.

As you can see, for many people, openings like this are offensive. Readers of my column are well aware of my opinion about the so-called "Bong Cloud opening" and similar junk.

Nevertheless, Korneev's post made me think. About a year ago, I wrote an article in which I claimed that chess is art. But some 30 years ago, chess for me was first and foremost a sport. And who knows how I will answer this question in the future.

I agree with Korneev that elite chess frequently becomes a show these days, but maybe it is not a bad thing? It is a well-established fact that today chess is more popular worldwide than ever. Is that because of the smashing hit series The Queen's Gambit? Or the unbelievable success of Chess.com and the resulting proliferation of online chess? Most likely, it is a combination of numerous factors.

One way or another, we cannot argue with success, and whatever makes chess more popular is a good thing. My guess is that professional musicians are probably not too happy about the following performance:

However, such clownery may attract people who otherwise wouldn't listen to classical music at all!

Back to chess. Carlsen indeed is trying to create some sort of chess show, which would make our beloved game even more popular. Whether it is by playing "meme opening" or Freestyle Chess, his approach is frequently unconventional, which is naturally not to everyone's taste. Nevertheless, it will undoubtedly bring new fans to our game.

Moreover, people will choose what they like most. For instance, as a coach, I personally have big doubts about Freestyle Chess. How are you going to teach beginners how to play it? Most probably, the only way is to start with good old classical chess, and therefore most people attracted by Carlsen's Freestyle Chess series will end up playing regular chess anyway, but with some twists. Here is a game played recently in our local tournament. White is close to US Chess master, and Black is close to US Chess expert level.

As I already mentioned, I am not a big fan of "meme openings," but here White is just trying to play Freestyle Chess in a regular tournament! Moreover, after just 20 moves, White already had essentially a winning position with no obvious blunders by his opponent!

This peculiar way of playing, which completely ignores any traditional opening rules, is not new, of course. Way before meme openings were a thing, and Freestyle Chess didn't exist, British IM Michael Basman had them in every single game. Judge for yourself:

GM Mikhail Botvinnik once expressed an opinion that Basman had the potential to become an elite player if he didn't ruin his chess by playing junk openings. It is difficult to say what might have happened if Basman played regular openings, but one thing is for sure: by playing in his own unique way, he had a lot of fun!

Now let's get back to Korneev's comment about the metamorphosis of high-level chess from art to science to sport to show. He saw it as a bad thing. But isn't it great that millions of people see chess differently? For some people, chess is the Opera Game:

Other people are fascinated by the precision of computer chess and Alpha Zero's algorithms. Millions of people are fascinated by GM Bobby Fischer's phenomenal 6:0 in his Candidates matches vs. GMs Mark Taimanov and Bent Larsen. Still, they wouldn't be able to recognize any chess position from either match—and that's fine, too!

Finally, Carlsen and other top players are making chess a show, whether by playing meme openings or just streaming, and that's a great thing too! Isn't it part of the beauty of our game that everyone finds something they like about it?

So what is chess for you? Please share your opinions in the comments, so we can figure out what chess really is by the vox populi!