Chess should be an Olympic event.

Before I begin my main arguments, I agree with all definitions and rules my opponent has offered. There is little doubt chess is one of the greatest strategy games man has created. Chess has appeal to many people, young and old - when I was a kid I got a game called Chessmaster for my Game Boy Advance. Even though it was brutally hard (I couldn't get past the second difficultly level, and there were probably around two dozen of them), it was so cool to be able to play such a fun game on the go. Now that I'm older it is fun to see my fourth-grade cousin get into chess as well. However, the question here is not whether or not chess is good or fun - it is whether or not chess is an appropriate event for the Olympics? I will be arguing the contraries point - that chess is not an appropriate event for the Olympics.To begin, the purpose of the International Olympic Committee, the group that organizes and runs the Olympics, is to "promote Olympism throughout the world and to lead the Olympic movement" (Olympic Charter 16). What is Olympism? According to the Olympic Charter "Olympism is a philosophy of life, exalting and combining in a balanced whole thequalities of body, will and mind. Blending sport with culture and education, Olympism seeks to create a way of life based on the joy of effort, the educational value of good example, social responsibility and respect for universal fundamental ethical principles" (Olympic Charter 11). Here is where we run into our first problem: chess is not a sport, it is in essence a board game. Chess may indeed be a mind-enriching game, but that is all it is - a great game, but not a sport. he Olympic motto "Faster, Higher, Stronger" demonstrates this best - because chess doesn't provide any sort of athletic benefit, it doesn't fit the ideals of Olympism or the Olympic motto. Chess may be a great game but, as the BBC points out, "Scrabble fans don't agonise over the fact that it's never going to be at the Olympics. Aficionados of Settlers of Catan don't complain that it's not on Sky Sports on a Sunday night. You wouldn't want to see Monopoly on a big screen in Times Square" ("10 Reasons Chess May Never Make It as a Spectator Sport").That leads into my next argument: spectators. What is the appeal of watching Chess to the average population? The BBC notes that, in comparison to poker, a similar type of game, there isn't really that much that is good television. Moves become increasingly uncommon as the game goes on, and the expressions of the players rarely change. Beyond this, games often end in draws - sometimes after just a short amount of time. During the 2013 world championship series between defending champion Viswanathan Anand and Magnus Carlsen, the first two games ended in draws - the former after only 16 moves ("10 Reasons Chess May Never Make It as a Spectator Sport")! The fact games can and do end in draws is a significant problem, because the games are held in a short window of time and it is very possible that players could draw persistently for multiple games in a row. For example, world championship matches can take longer than six hours ("10 Reasons Chess May Never Make It as a Spectator Sport"), longer than football, soccer, or basketball games. This time could feasibly be lowered by changing the amount of time allotted to make moves, but this would arguably result in lower-quality games. Using my opponent's 12-player single-elimination knockout tournament as a model, there would need to be at, at minimum, 12 games - four games in the first and second rounds (two in each bracket in each round), two in the third round (one per bracket) and two in the fourth round (1st and 3rd place games). Assuming they cut the length in half to three hours and no games end in draws, that is still, at minimum, 36 hours. That's not even accounting for draws, which would obviously require a re-do.In conclusion, because chess is not a sport and would not be appealing to spectators or even reasonably scheduled, it should not be an Olympic event.Citations:Olympic Charter. Lausanne, Switzerland: International Olympic Committee, 9 Sept. 2013. PDF."10 Reasons Chess May Never Make It as a Spectator Sport." BBC News. N.p., 11 Nov. 2013. Web. 26 Mar. 2014.