Yes, I know you’re all going to scoff. Chess doesn’t have any physical exertion, so it simply can’t be a sport. Well, as any linguist can tell you, there are many ways of construing the definition of a word, and several interpretations of “sport” include chess:

• The Collins English Dictionary says it is “any activity or experience that gives enjoyment or recreation”
• Dictionary.com says it is an “activity requiring skill or physical prowess”
• The Oxford English Dictionary says it is “a source of amusement or entertainment”
• Merriam-Webster says it is “a source of diversion”

This is among countless other examples. Language is fluid. However, if you’re still tsking about the lack of physical exertion, take it from the co-president of the school chess team that there is serious stamina involved in these games. At state tournaments, we have to sit down for games that often last more than two hours- longer than soccer, basketball, or lacrosse. It takes conditioning and fortitude, and in all that time, your concentration cannot break. The level of mental exercise exceeds that of conventional “sports”, and mental exercise is still exercise.

On the other end of the spectrum, you might argue that Scrabble and Connect-4 are also now sports, since they’re “sources of entertainment” as well. Sure, why not? If a Scrabble player is ready to accept their level of playing as that of a sport, who’s to say it is not? There are often competitive undertones to sports, and any event with something as competitive as a world championship (like Scrabble, chess, and baseball) should be classified as a sport.

Oh, the World Championship? Grandmasters often train in excess of 16 hours a day just to get to it, more hours than many “normal” athletes put in. The International Olympic Committee recognizes chess as a sport, and it has seriously considered adding chess to the 2020 Olympics.

If I haven’t convinced you by now that chess can be defined as a “sport”, you’ll really hate this next part. Soccer tops every list as the “most popular” sport, with 3 billion people watching it every year. However, the top definition of “popular” according to Merriam-Webster is “of or relating to the general public”. Any logical analysis of that meaning will yield two interpretations: that popularity of a sport can be based off the number of viewers, or number of players. If it’s popular, it’s of the people, and there are different ways of interpreting that.

Yes, soccer beats chess by a lot when it comes to number of viewers worldwide. But that’s only because chess is not the type of sport you watch. It’s the type of sport you play. A 2007 FIFA report estimated that 265 million people worldwide play soccer, the most of any traditional “sport”. Well, sorry to spoil the party, but in a report to the IOC, the World Chess Federation (FIDE) approximated that 605 million people play chess. That’s almost three times as many people as soccer.

The facts are undeniable. You might still roll your eyes exasperatedly and shake your head, but the cold, hard truth based off interpretations of definitions and statistics is that chess is not only a sport, but the most popular sport in the world.  I rest my case.