Is Chess the 'Least Expressive' Sport? The Debate Over Watchability in the Game of Kings

Inside the tournament hall, the only thing moving is the clock hand. Two players sit across the board, backs straight, eyes fixed on the 64 squares, motionless to the point that a first-time spectator might think they are meditating rather than fighting for hundredths of a second. No cheering, no collisions, no leaps. Only the soft tap of a piece being set down, the click of the clock, and sometimes a quiet sigh when someone realizes they have just made a mistake.

I have sat in such halls many times. Each time, I hear the same question from the person beside me: "Why are they so quiet? There's nothing to watch." That seemingly harmless question is actually the origin of one of the most persistent debates in the chess world: the debate over the "expressiveness" of the game of the mind.

Recently, that debate flared up when Naganethra Reddy — a former Indian badminton athlete, now based in London and working in sports sustainability — stated plainly that chess is "one of the least expressive sports." The remark did not come from a chess expert. It came from someone who has spent an entire career observing and organizing sports events in the most physically dynamic disciplines: badminton, Formula E, Extreme E, WEC. And precisely for that reason, it deserves to be taken seriously rather than dismissed.

That day I sat in the stands, never knowing I would step onto the pitch through words. I was an outsider to the very sport I now write about — and perhaps that is why I understand how someone outside chess like Reddy could say what many insiders only dare to think.

Chess and the obsession with proving it is a sport

Chess has struggled with the question "is this a sport?" for decades. It has no ball, no net, no finish line. People measure it in Elo rather than seconds, in moves rather than meters. But precisely because of this, chess carries a double complex: it wants to be recognized as elite sport, yet it does not want to lose the intellectual dignity of an art form.

The International Olympic Committee has long recognized chess as a sport, and the World Chess Federation (FIDE) is one of the oldest still-operating sports federations. But administrative recognition does not mean the general public sees chess as an entertainment spectacle on par with football, tennis, or badminton. And this is exactly the point Reddy's remark touches: not whether chess is a sport, but whether chess is worth sitting down to watch.

I followed women's football for many years, and I noticed something: when a sport is doubted for its entertainment value, people rarely say outright "I don't care." They say the sport is "slow," "lacking in expression," "hard to follow." Those words sound neutral, but they are in fact value judgments dressed in the clothing of objectivity. And chess, throughout its history, has heard these same judgments over and over.

So what does "expressive" actually mean?

In badminton, expression is the smash that cuts through the air, the diving save, the cry of joy after each point. In football, expression is the sprint, the fierce tackle, the sliding celebration. People see the effort with their own eyes, feel the rhythm with their ears, and measure the intensity by sweat.

Chess is different. Its expression happens on the inside. When a player spends ten minutes on a single move, that is not hesitation — it is a silent battle between hundreds of variations calculated in the mind. When a player raises an eyebrow slightly, that may be the sign of a trap just set. When a player sits motionless, that is not passivity — it is the extreme tension of a brain running at full capacity.

In other words, chess is not less expressive. It is expressive on a different frequency. The problem is that most viewers are not trained to hear that frequency — and that is a problem of media, not of the sport itself.

From notation to the Eval Bar: the silent revolution of chess broadcasting

If you watched chess on television thirty years ago, you would understand why people called it "unexpressive." Back then, broadcasters showed a static board, with a line of text recording the moves, and a commentator talking continuously while viewers had no way to verify whether the position was improving or worsening. It was an experience nearly impossible for outsiders to access.

Then technology changed everything. The Eval Bar — a real-time engine evaluation of the position — became one of the most important inventions in the history of chess broadcasting. It visually displays which side the position favors, letting viewers who cannot read variations still feel the drama. An unexpected blunder can make the evaluation bar jump from 0.2 to 3.5 in a single move, and that moment delivers a thrill no less than a last-minute goal in football.

This is the clearest proof of a paradox: chess is not unexpressive by nature, but for decades it was presented in the least expressive way possible. When the presentation tool changed, public perception changed with it.

The Queen's Gambit and an unexpected boost

In October 2026, while the world was huddled in pandemic, Netflix released the miniseries "The Queen's Gambit." The show told the story of an orphaned girl who becomes a top player, and it created a chess boom without precedent in the modern era.

Chess set sales soared, downloads of chess apps multiplied exponentially, and online platforms like Chess.com recorded millions of new users within months. Notably, most of these new players did not come from the traditional chess community. They came out of curiosity, out of story, out of the emotion the show conveyed.

I remember following this phenomenon with particular interest, because it proved something I have always believed: chess can appeal to a mass audience, as long as its story is told the right way. The Queen's Gambit did not teach viewers to play chess. It taught them to feel chess. And that is exactly what good sports journalism must do.

The Indian wave and the next generation

If there is any moment in this decade that made chess more "expressive" than ever, it is the rise of India's young generation of players. Names like R. Praggnanandhaa, Arjun Erigaisi, and especially D. Gukesh have completely changed how people view elite chess.

In December 2026, in Singapore, Gukesh — then just 18 — defeated Ding Liren to become the youngest world chess champion in history. That moment did not come through a smash or a goal, but it carried all the emotional weight of a great sports final. Ding Liren, the reigning champion, made a serious error in the final game after hours of extreme tension. Gukesh sat motionless for several seconds before realizing he had won. It was a moment of silence — but the silence of a bomb that had just exploded inside his head.

As someone who follows elite sport, I see a fascinating paradox there. The shock of 2026 was not just a match. It was the knock of a generation at the door. And for Indian chess, Gukesh's crowning was a similar knock — a knock announcing that the center of gravity of world chess is shifting eastward.

Vietnamese chess in that picture

From the perspective of someone writing for the Vietnamese market, the story of chess's "expressiveness" carries another layer. Vietnam has a considerable chess tradition, though the world has not mentioned it enough.

Le Quang Liem, born in 2026, once won the World Blitz Championship in 2026 in Khanty-Mansiysk — a feat few Vietnamese fully know about. He has been among the strongest players on the planet, with a peak Elo above 2,700, a figure only a handful of players worldwide ever reach. Alongside him, Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son was for years a pillar of the national team.

On the women's side, Pham Le Thao Nguyen and Hoang Thanh Trang are two of the few female players in Southeast Asia to achieve the Grandmaster title. These are names that deserve to be told more, because they represent a reality the chess world often overlooks: chess talent knows no borders, and certainly no gender.

Based on my experience following regional chess matches and tournaments, I have observed one thing: Vietnamese chess is often undervalued not for lack of talent, but for lack of stories told the right way. A player like Le Quang Liem has enough material to become an inspiring figure for an entire generation, yet such stories are rarely told with the depth they deserve.

The watchability problem: draws and the fear of boredom

Part of the reason chess is seen as "unexpressive" lies in the high draw rate in top-level tournaments. At the highest level, many games end in a draw after only twenty to thirty moves, when both sides are content with the result. For viewers, this is like a football match ending 0-0 with neither team wanting to attack.

The chess world has tried to solve this problem for a long time. In 2026, the M-Tel Masters in Sofia, Bulgaria introduced a set of rules known as the "Sofia rules," under which players are not allowed to offer a draw directly to each other — they must play until the position is genuinely deadlocked. Similar rules later appeared sporadically in various tournaments, aiming to protect the sport's appeal.

More recently, a new debate has emerged around Freestyle Chess (also known as Chess960) — a variant in which the starting positions of the pieces are shuffled randomly, neutralizing the advantage of memorized openings. Multi-time champion Magnus Carlsen is one of its strongest advocates, arguing it makes chess more creative and unpredictable.

This is where my view of chess becomes clearest. Tactics are like people: you must know who you are before you want to become someone else. Formal reform can boost short-term entertainment, but if it erodes the strategic depth that is the soul of chess, the price will be enormous. I am not against reform. I only believe reform must begin from understanding the sport's essence, not from the fear of being called boring.

The Gukesh moment and the art of storytelling

If you want a game that proves how expressive chess can be, watch the final game of the 2026 world championship. After more than a dozen games balanced to the point of suffocation, Ding Liren needed only a draw to defend his title. But in a moment of lost focus, he made a fatal mistake. Gukesh, who had waited patiently for hours, seized the chance instantly.

Notably, throughout that game, no one shouted. No one slammed the table. But if you look at Gukesh's face the moment he realized the position was winning, you see one of the most intense expressions in sport: joy compressed, happiness forced to wait until the final second to be revealed.

When the cheers fall silent, I can finally hear the true breathing of the match. And the breathing of that game was no less powerful than any final I have ever commentated.

The counterpoint: when chess is treated like women's sport

This is where I want to pause longest. Naganethra Reddy's remark — that chess is "unexpressive" — is not a new judgment. It is a judgment used over and over to undervalue many sports, including women's sport.

For decades, women's football was called "slower," "less technical," "lacking drama." Women's basketball was deemed "less physical." Women's volleyball was viewed as "gentle." What all these judgments share is that they are made according to a yardstick set by outsiders — a yardstick that rarely reflects the sport's true value.

When someone says chess is "unexpressive," they are imposing a definition of expression that includes only physical movement. They assume emotion deserves recognition only when it is shown outwardly. But human emotion is not limited to that. Some battles take place in silence, and those battles are no less fierce.

Euro 2026 did not create an identity crisis. It only exposed what had long been cracked. And what had been cracked is the prejudice over who gets to define what is "exciting." The same holds for women's chess. For years, the world's top female players were routinely treated as if they competed at a lower level, despite many of them holding the Grandmaster title — chess's highest title, regardless of gender.

Chess is more expressive than ever

The truth is that over the past decade, chess has become more expressive than at any point in modern history. The growth of online platforms has produced a generation of player-streamers who tell chess stories in entirely new ways. Hours-long live streams, where viewers watch, chat, and learn at once, have turned chess from a closed sport into an open community.

What Reddy and many outside chess miss is this: they are judging chess by a yardstick of the previous century. They imagine chess as a static board, a lone commentator, a silent stand. But chess in 2026 is no longer like that. It is live-streamed matches with hundreds of thousands of viewers, heated debates on social media, moments clipped and shared everywhere.

In esports, I don't watch the screen; I watch how they stay calm while losing. That principle applies perfectly to chess. What is worth watching is not the move, but how a player keeps their composure as the clock runs down and the position worsens. That is a kind of expression traditional sports broadcasting has not learned to capture — but that is not chess's fault.

The counterintuitive angle: the trap of complacency

If I stopped at defending chess, I would betray my own method. For there is an uncomfortable truth chess lovers must accept: sometimes, it is the chess community itself that has made the sport less appealing.

Look at how many top tournaments are organized. Spectators sit so far from the board they cannot see the pieces clearly. Commentators sometimes speak in technical language newcomers cannot understand. Organizers sometimes prioritize solemnity to the point of losing warmth. And players, after hours of tension, often give only a few seconds to the media before leaving.

This is where I think of women's football. For years, it was the managers of women's football themselves who helped create the stereotype that the sport was "unappealing" — by holding tournaments in small stadiums, broadcasting in bad time slots, and investing little in media. Prejudice does not only come from outside. Sometimes it comes from within, from those who have grown so used to being undervalued that they no longer believe in their own worth.

The same goes for chess. If the chess community keeps organizing events as if the audience is already knowledgeable, then outsiders like Reddy will keep being right when they say the sport is hard to follow. The responsibility does not lie with the audience. It lies with those who have the power to change how the sport is presented.

The empty corridor of chess

The empty corridor of 2026 taught me that the pitch never dies, it only knows how to wait. With chess, I learned the same lesson in tournament halls emptied by the pandemic. No spectators, no applause, only the board and the people still sitting there because they believe in the value of what they do.

Those silences taught me that expression does not lie in noise. It lies in presence. A player sitting before an empty board in a hall with no one else is an image more expressive than any celebration — because it shows that, even when no one is watching, a person still chooses to continue.

What is really changing

I do not think Naganethra Reddy's remark is entirely wrong. She touched on a real problem: chess, in its traditional form, is not easy for general viewers to access. But I think she confused cause with symptom. Chess is not unexpressive. It has simply not been told the right way.

And the good news is that this is changing. The new generation of players, online platforms, tools like the Eval Bar, and stories told with unprecedented depth — all are gradually closing the gap between chess and the mass audience. This is a process that demands patience, like every process of changing perception in sport.

What I firmly believe is this: chess will never become a sport as loud as football. But it does not need to be. Its value lies in the fact that it forces people to slow down, to focus, to think. In a world increasingly swept up by fast and intense stimulation, a sport that teaches people to be silent and observe may be more precious than ever.

Closing: a question to carry

Perhaps the right question is not whether chess is expressive, but whether we are patient enough to learn how to listen to it. A sport cannot change its nature just to please those who come to it in haste. But a sport also has the right to have its story told in the best possible way — and that is the job of people like me, who once sat in the stands and then stepped down through words.

The next generation of Vietnamese chess is growing up in a world where a game in Singapore can be followed from Da Nang in seconds. The question is no longer whether chess is worth watching. The question is whether we are brave enough to tell its story with all the depth it deserves.