I would expect a novice to learn the rules and full strategy of Monopoly in 30 minutes. And they would have a significant chance to win against a top player in their first game. Perhaps 20 -30 %.
By contrast, any national strength chess player can beat a beginner wothout even looking at the board (just visualising it). Every time.
Kasparov took on a businessman, Terence Chapman, at odds of two pawns in 2001. Chapman had been ranked in the top 200 in England as a junior, but hadn’t played for decades (though he trained for the match).
Kasparov won 2.5 - 1.5 - an incredible feat:
By the way, since the tournament started I’ve been seeking out some competition in Chess on itsyourturn.com to see how my old chess skills are holding up after a decade of non-use, but I’ve yet to run into serious competition (11 games, won all due to people giving me pieces for free and generally not knowing the value of the fields they stand on, and 6 more games in progress all of which I’m winning - though I admit I got away lucky in one of them).
I’m starving for some serious competition, and I know I can count on you to seriously trash me, so if you’d oblige to that task I would be incredibly grateful. (I’m Arwin on itsyourturn.com … )
Yours,
A.
(oh, and saying that Chess is easy to program is a bit of an overstatement, I think - it’s not THAT easy)
How about this… in a sport, some or all skills can be rehearsed individually, whereas all skills involved in gaming must be developed against a real or simulated adversary. Gaming contests are predominantly strategy, sporting contests are predominantly physical.
I was thinking about this the other day when I was trying to explain to a non-English speaker why we do not “play” judo, we “do” it or “practice” it. I think the martial arts are a perfect balance between strategy and physical performance, so they go in a category of their own.
Basketball - Hank Gathers
Soccer? Are we talking about before the game, during the game or AFTER the game?
I always liked the definition of a sport being based on a variable combination of human brain/skill/physical exertions ONLY. That throws out any “sport” dealing with the brain/skill/physical exertions of machinery, and animals other than human. Inanimate objects used are ok (like bats, gloves, skates, helmets, etc.) as long as they do not increase any brain/skill/physical exertion by themselves.
It may not be popular with some fans of Nascar or horseracing, but then again, more emphasis is placed on the car, horse, etc., and the human becomes secondary to the “sport”. Still somewhat important to the “sport”, but not the primary focus of the “sport”.
Steeplechase and dressage riders may disagree. Equestrian sports are interesting because it’s a balanced partnership between rider and horse that makes a winning combination. The human is not secondary, but neither is the horse. And the winner of an auto race is not simply the guy with the fastest car. If that were the case they’d put put all the cars on a dyno and declare a winner.
Also, I notice that ESPN now shows poker tournaments. IMHO poker is no sport.
I think that definition would exclude baseball, cricket, jai allai and the racket sports. When you swing a bat, you’re getting more angular motion than is possible to get by using one’s arms alone, and that angular motion translates into greater force. Rackets would have a similar effect - they have the effect of making one’s arm’s longer, and therefore the angular motion greater.
Plus, you can hit the ball harder with a bat or a racket than you can with your hand or arm, because they don’t have any nerves.
Put another way, how many people can take a swing with their bare hand at a hard ball thrown at 90 mph and hit it to the home run fence?
I’ll see if I can get to itsyourturn (I’ll be called glee).
I meant both that a legal game of chess was easy to program, and that simply using a ‘brute force’ approach of analysing every possible position a few moves ahead makes a pretty strong program.
All games can be placed on a 2 dimensional scale. One axis represents skill, and the other represents athleticism. The 4 corners of this scale could be labeled “games of chance” (no skill/strategy or athleticism, eg. The card game war, and most gambling games); “Games of skill” (all skill and no athleticism, eg. Chess, video games, Texas Hold 'em); “Athletics” (no strategy and all athleticism, eg. Running); and “Sports” (a lot of strategy/skill and athleticism, eg. Football).
The examples provided are games that, IMHO, fall close to each respective corner of the scale. Some might argue that sprinting involves some strategy, and some might argue that video games require some athleticism, since hand-eye coordination is required. Where a game/activity falls on the scale is up for debate. This is just MHO.
A sport is an athletic competition primarily based on the paticipants’ abilities to use their human physical skills and strategy to defeat an opponent; having an objective means to choose a winner; and where there are regulations that allow the competitors to directly affect their opponent’s ability to score/win.
So by my definition, the following activities are not sports:
Chess (non-athletic)
Bowling, Diving, Golf, Swimming, Running, Gymnastics, Surfing (you can’t directly affect your opponent’s play)
Poker/card games (based too much on chance/luck and non-athletic)
Auto racing (not primarily based on a human’s ability… too much reliance on a machine’s abilities)
horse racing (not primarily based on a human’s ability… too much reliance on an animal’s abilities)
War (Generally speaking, no regulations on how to prevent your opponent from winning )
I would also like to add that just because an activity isn’t considered a “sport”, doesn’t make it any less important, difficult, or valuable.
I realize that some of you will disagree with my list non-sports, especially with the swimming, running, auto racing, and horse racing. But unless all the cars/horses were completely identical (to the point were one could consider them inanimate objects, such as a bat or a pair of soccer cleats), then I would argue that auto/horse racing is just a form of competition. And the reason why I wouldn’t consider swimming and track & field events “sports” is because there is not enough interaction with your opponents and generally speaking, you can’t prevent your opponent from running/swimming faster (that would be cheating ).
Now this, I like…except I would make it three dimensional…strategy (brains), skill (ability), and athleticism (physical exertion). I’ll stick with my definition of sport as being played by humans only though.
Which has all three?
Football, Hockey, and Rugby easily uses huge amounts of all three.
Basketball, Baseball and Soccer to a lesser degree, but they have all three.
I know there’s more sports deserving of all three, but I’ll leave that as an exercise to the reader.
I suspect this is better suited to Great Debates or perhaps Cafe Society. I’m not sure there’s a hard-and-fast answer that the OP would be satisfied with.
In that spirit, I’ll try to define game first:
A game is an activity primarily done for entertainment where the legal and permissible moves are absolute. That is, if one wishes to move a marker, or draw a card, or exchange one thing for another, or roll a die, this does not require any attempt on the part of the player to do so; he merely does it.
A sport is a type of game in which the legal and permissible moves must be attempted and success is not guaranteed.
This is sort of off the cuff, so I haven’t thought it all the way through, but it seems to me that Games (by this definition) are things like backgammon, checkers, poker, D&D, chess, Monopoly, etc, where the rules permit certain legal moves in a given order. One need not try to move a chess piece, or attempt to buy a hotel. One either performs the move, or does not.
Sports, therefore, would be those games where one must physically or mentally overcome some obstacle or achieve some physical result to move a marker (or a baserunner or a ball-carrier).
How’s that? I’m sure I’ve left a gaping hole in there somewhere, logically, but I’m too stuffed up and tired to think of it.
)