Is chess a sport? Ending the debate

Chess is not a sport as it does not require any components of fitness to play. Every sport contains these. They include muscular power, muscular strength, endurance, balance, agility, body composition etc. Chess cannot be classified as a sport if none of these are present in the game. Chess is a board game much like monopoly and snakes and ladders. It is on the same level as those in terms of being a sport as it isn't. If you believe chess is a sport you must also believe all other board games are and none of them are so you are wrong. 

It all comes down to the question: "What is sport?" To me, sport is any competitive entity with no humanly achievable skill cap. As such, chess is definitely a sport.

You brought up two really good points. What is sport. The dictionary defines both chess and sport, and they are defined very differently. But more importantly you said "to me", which is all that matters. If someone wants to say chess is a sport, even though it isn't, it should be left at that. If sport is any competitive entity with no humanly achievable skill cap, then pretty much all human activity is sport.

It could be argued Hungry Hippo is actually a sport.  It has it's own league and everything.  A little bit of a mess true, but surely 'some physical skill' is required to win a Hungry Hippo tourney.

It took me 770 posts to finally 'come up with something' that I thought was a pretty solid, easy to understand example.  
The truth is, if you can't 'get it' from this image, you ain't gonna 'get it' anytime too soon. But PLEASE keep trying!!!

It depends how you define "sport" ? is it physical athletism only, or it does includ mental athletism? According to wikipededia :- The word "Sport" comes from the Old French desport meaning "leisure", with the oldest definition in English from around 1300 being "anything humans find amusing or entertaining. my opnion it shouldn't be referred as a "sport"

"anything humans find amusing or entertaining"

That is BS. What happens if I think that scratching my butt is amusing and entertaining? I am now doing a sport? 

 But whatever, we live in a world where Golf, Poker or driving a car are considered sports...

Actually it is not going as you think,, any word in any language,has roots and meaning and who decide to put this and that meaning is a complicated process,,i also think that sport now is a term most of speakers and writers refer as a physical activity(e.g sport physiology is a branch of human physiology and considers sport as physical activity)...but at the same time you can not deny a historical prove,,and if you do, then you should do your own dictionary !!

There is a new fantastic sport , thats quite new: Hobby Horsing!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYxYernE8do

Hobby Horsing is the way to go when the knight on the rim gets to dim.

  We have been defining the word "sport" by the basic, modern, standard English version of the word.  

I used to figure chess was a sport, I did some reading(like about 5 minutes of reading) and it just 'came to me',  I understood why chess was not definable as a "sport" in ANY WAY AT ALL... 

This isn't getting anywhere. Really. It isn't.

Here's my view on it.

The people that say that chess isn't a sport are generally basing their argument of the "official" definition of "sport". 

There's no official definition. That's merely your perception.

Now, is perception reality? Well, yes and no. It's your reality, but is it everyone's? No. It certainly isn't. Believe what you want, but your perception is your reality, and nobody else's.

A quick footnote: maybe fuelling the debate would've been a better title. 

Fully disagree with you here, curling is definitely a sport.

if you look at the physical aspect, it's actually hard work. As a curling player myself, I speak from experience. 

If you look at the mental aspect, again, it's very mentally challenging. Once again, speaking from experience.

Making your font big and ping and filled with exclamation marks doesn't make your point any stronger. It just looks like you're high.

Chess itself is not a sport, it's yes a game. But...

Chess competition with enforced rules, official ratings, referees and prizes, titles and trophies, of course it's a sport, and a hard one.

Long jumping is a game also, makes fun jumping long and some even longer.

Putting that game into the context of a competition it's becoming a sport.

Yup n chess competition 50% chess, 50% competition (it's not math, ok?)

I don't disagree with your post #801 but 50/50 it's not. It's 100% chess, the competition is just the context the game/sport is done.

As I said, I did not mean math, but more like a way of speaking. You can check on my blog and see the many ways you can lose a competition chess game for reasons that have got just nothing to do with chess...