I was not quite sure whether to be annoyed or relieved about the recent High Court decision not to recognise bridge as a sport. On the one hand, it’s a comfort to know that there is now little danger of British bridge and, pari passu, chess being classified alongside activities that feature perspiring individuals running around in underwear. Chess should, in my opinion, be dignified by elegant surroundings, with the players in formal attire, as in the fictional sequence of the James Bond movie From Russia with Love, or the encounters between Nigel Short and Garry Kasparov that were screened by Channel 4 in 1987.
However, with established chess championships going back for well over 100 years, competitions carried out under strict conditions, a stratified title system, millions in prizes for world matches, and recognition by the International Olympic Committee, I think high-level competitive chess should certainly be granted the status of a mind sport. Indeed, it is a sport where male and female, young and old, even the deaf, blind and physically disabled can compete with equal prospects.
What’s more, chess is recognised as a sport in all the former eastern bloc countries, as well as in China and almost all of the European Union, the exceptions being the UK, the Republic of Ireland, Belgium and Sweden. Sweden plans to rectify this next year. And Russia is trying to have chess included in the Winter Olympics, while chess and bridge have been invited to apply for inclusion in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
This week’s game was the real-life model for the combination in the fictional game between Kronsteen and McAdams from the film From Russia with Love. Notes are based on those from Spassky Move by Move by Zenon Franco (Everyman Chess).
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