Is Chess 'One of the Least Expressive Sports'? The Debate Through a Former Badminton Athlete's Eyes

Chess is the sport of silence. There is no ball bouncing, no leaping jumps, no sudden accelerations and braking that make a stadium erupt. There are only two people sitting across from each other, a board of 64 squares, and thoughts unfolding at a speed the naked eye cannot see. That characteristic is precisely what makes chess one of the hardest sports to broadcast, and it is also why it is repeatedly placed on the scales against other sports on the criterion of expressiveness. Recently, a personal opinion stirred debate among fans: Naganethra Reddy, a former Indian badminton athlete now working in sport sustainability, argued that chess is one of the least expressive sports. This is not a technical statement, nor is it a judgment on any player's strength. It is an aesthetic and spectatorship observation. But precisely because of that, it touches a real and persistent fault line running through the sport of the mind. WHO IS SPEAKING, AND FROM WHERE? The first thing to clarify is the standing of the person making the claim. Naganethra Reddy is not a professional chess player. She holds no competitive rating, no tournament record within the World Chess Federation system. She is a former badminton athlete, originally from Bengaluru, India, now living and working in London. In her post-playing career she has worked in sport sustainability, involved in projects connected to electric and endurance motorsport platforms including Formula E, Extreme E and WEC. In other words, this is someone who understands very well what makes a sport attractive from the perspective of organisation, media and spectator experience, but who approaches chess from the position of an amateur player. She has said she was inspired to explore chess by her brother, and that he was very difficult to beat. That is a family, recreational reference point, not an elite-competition one. That distinction matters. When someone with an elite sporting background says a sport is inexpressive, they are speaking with the measuring stick of a spectator trained to read bodily movement. In badminton everything is exposed: racket-head speed, shuttle spin, the explosion of a jump smash, exhaustion written plainly on a face after a long rally. Spectators need no interpreter. They see, and they immediately understand who is on top, who is fading, who is at the decisive moment. Chess is the exact opposite. Everything that matters happens inside. WHY CHESS IS CALLED INEXPRESSIVE To be clear: chess itself is not short of drama. Elite games contain enormous psychological tension, decisions made in an instant that can change an entire career, comebacks that leave insiders holding their breath. The problem is not drama. The problem is transmitting that drama outward. In most sports, emotion is a public signal. A sprinter crosses the line with a face distorted by effort. A tennis player roars after a winning point. A footballer holds his head after a miss. Spectators read the state of play through the athlete's body. It is a free, instantaneous and highly accurate information system. Chess has no such system. A player dominating and a player in desperate trouble can sit with the same posture, the same expression, the same breathing rhythm. In many cases the one who is winning looks more tense, because he understands he can lose everything with one careless move. Emotional deception is not merely a natural consequence of the sport; it is a competitive skill deliberately trained. It is precisely the gap between what is happening and what can be seen that creates the expressiveness problem. When a general audience watches an elite game without commentary, they see two people sitting still. When they watch an elite badminton match, they see two bodies fighting. Intuition does not lie, and intuition decides whether someone changes the channel. Notably, this criticism is not new. It has existed alongside the broadcast history of chess. Every time chess appears on mainstream television, the question of how to make an ordinary viewer understand what is happening resurfaces. And each generation of organisers has found a different answer, from giant demonstration boards to modern digital analysis tools. SILENCE IS NOT A GAP, IT IS A LANGUAGE There is a notable counter-argument: the silence of chess is not emptiness, it is a different language. Those who understand chess can read countless signals from details outsiders find dull. The rhythm of fingers tapping a table. How thinking time is allocated to a move. A gaze lingering longer than usual on a particular square. A very faint sigh after an opponent releases a piece. To an expert, that is a continuous data stream. To a general spectator, it is silence. The distance between those two readings is the distance between insider and outsider, and it explains why inexpressiveness critiques usually come from outside the chess community rather than within it. Yet if chess stopped at the argument that outsiders simply do not understand, it would close the door on its own potential audience. A sport that wants to grow cannot require spectators to learn a new language before being allowed to enjoy it. It must translate that language, or accept serving forever a narrow but loyal fan base. THE QUIET REVOLUTION IN CHESS BROADCASTING What is interesting is that over the past decade and more, the chess industry has quietly addressed precisely the problem these critiques raise. Online platforms have turned chess from a passive viewing sport into an interactive experience. Viewers do not merely watch two players think; they can play alongside, analyse moves, join comment rooms, and follow real-time evaluation indicators. The pivotal tool in this process is the evaluation bar, commonly known as the Eval Bar. It is a graphic showing the balance of a position, updated continuously based on engine analysis. In essence it does exactly what an athlete's body does in other sports: it converts an internal competitive state into an external visual signal. When the bar suddenly shifts after a move, a general viewer immediately understands that something important just happened, even without knowing exactly what. Alongside it has come a professional commentary layer. Modern chess broadcasters do not merely explain moves; they tell stories. They reconstruct the player's thought process, place moves in historical context, point out alternatives that were rejected and explain why. They convert technical data into narrative. And narrative, not the move, is what holds an audience. A third factor, less discussed but equally powerful, is the rise of players themselves as content creators. Many top players now spend much of their time streaming, commentating on their own and others' games, explaining their thinking while they play. This creates an entirely new expressive layer: post-hoc expression. Audiences no longer need to read emotion from a player's face during the game, because they can hear the player describe that emotion immediately afterwards. Seen this way, the inexpressiveness critique may already be somewhat outdated relative to how the industry actually operates. But it still reflects a real gap: the gap in the live, in-person viewing experience, in a tournament hall where there is no Eval Bar, no commentator, no storytelling layer at all. Just two people sitting in silence and a board. LESSONS FROM BADMINTON: PHYSICAL AND COGNITIVE EXPRESSION To fully understand Reddy's observation, it must be placed in the context of her own sporting background. Badminton has one of the highest densities of physical expression of any sport. In a rally lasting a few dozen seconds, spectators see a cascade of signals: shifts in tempo, losses of balance, swaying centres of gravity, the obvious difference between a shot struck in full flow and one struck in exhaustion. This is a sport in which emotion cannot be hidden. Athletes can try to keep a calm face, but their bodies betray them. It is an almost uncontrollable expressive system, and that is exactly what produces such an immediate spectator experience. Chess operates on the inverse logic. Its expression is cognitive, not physical. And cognitive expression, by nature, cannot be directly observed. It can only be inferred, reconstructed, narrated. This does not make chess less dramatic, but it does make it harder for an untrained audience to access. There is a curious paradox here. People who understand chess deeply often describe elite games in the language of choreography and warfare: lightning attacks, fortified defences, bold sacrifices, spectacular counterattacks. That language is not mere metaphor. It reflects a real internal visual experience, except that the experience happens inside the viewer's mind rather than on the field of play. The problem is that such internal experience takes time to form. And time is something modern sports broadcasting does not have much of. THE DRAW-RATE PROBLEM AND THE FORMAT DEBATE Another facet of the expressiveness debate, though not raised directly in the original remark, is the draw rate in elite chess. In many top-level events, a substantial share of games end in draws, and not every draw is a long tactical battle. Some are agreed after relatively few moves, when both sides judge that continuing carries more risk than potential reward. Competitively, that decision is entirely rational. For spectators, it creates a problem. A viewer who spends three hours following a game and gets a draw after twenty moves will feel their time was wasted. Repeated often enough, that feeling hardens into a prejudice: chess is a sport where the best players often choose not to lose rather than to win. This is why major events have repeatedly experimented with formats designed to increase decisiveness. Rules restricting early draw agreements, the addition of rapid and blitz games as tiebreak mechanisms, and knockout formats requiring a winner in every pairing. All these adjustments aim to make the final outcome clearer and more expressive for spectators. Importantly, such format changes are not only a media matter. They change how players compete, how they calculate risk, and sometimes how they prepare for events. A format in which a draw is the safe option produces different strategies from one in which drawing is nearly eliminated. The expressiveness debate, therefore, is not only a debate about audiences; it is a debate about the nature of the sport itself. THE INDIAN CHESS WAVE AND THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE REMARK One detail that cannot be overlooked when reading Reddy's remark is her geographical and cultural context. She comes from Bengaluru, one of India's largest technology hubs, and now works in London. Over the past two decades India has become one of the world's leading chess powers, with a generation of outstanding young players consistently achieving results at international events. This is a country where chess is no longer an exotic pastime but a career path, a source of national pride, and a field receiving serious investment. Against that backdrop, it is all the more notable that an Indian with an elite sporting background would offer a critical observation about chess's appeal. It suggests that even where chess is strongest, the spectator-experience problem remains unresolved. Competitive success does not automatically translate into performative success. At the same time, her base in London, within a professional sports-commercial environment, creates a distinctive vantage point. London is where sports business models are designed and tested. People working there tend to evaluate every sport through the lens of spectator experience, commercialisability and media value. From that angle, a sport whose drama cannot be seen will always be rated lower than one whose drama is visible on the field. SPORT SUSTAINABILITY AND THE QUESTION OF THE FUTURE Another interesting aspect of Reddy's profile is her work in sport sustainability, tied to electric and endurance motorsport platforms. This is a field where a sport's value is measured by different yardsticks: environmental footprint, ability to attract younger generations, technological innovation, and cultural reach. By several of these measures, chess holds major advantages. It has a negligible environmental footprint, can be staged almost anywhere, does not discriminate by gender, age or physical condition, and can reach communities that physically demanding sports struggle to touch. In an era when the sports industry faces mounting pressure on sustainability and accessibility, chess owns advantages other sports must spend heavily to acquire. This contrast raises an interesting question: can a sport succeed without high physical expressiveness? The answer may be yes, but only on the condition that it finds a substitute expressive system suited to its nature. And chess, over many years, has in fact done exactly that, just in a way rarely recognised as a deliberate strategy. WHAT CHESS HAS DONE RIGHT Looking back at chess development over the past two decades, a clear pattern emerges: chess has not tried to imitate physical sports. Instead it has built an experience ecosystem of its own. First, chess has shifted strongly online, where geography is no longer a barrier and where a viewer can become a player with a single click. Very few other sports have that advantage. In football, a spectator cannot walk onto the pitch and join the match in progress. In chess, they can do the equivalent instantly. Second, chess has built a rich storytelling content layer. Documentaries, analysis channels, in-depth commentary shows and online discussion communities have created an ecosystem in which chess knowledge becomes a form of social currency. Understanding chess confers status in certain communities, and status is a powerful driver of recruitment. Third, chess has harnessed the power of individuals. Leading players today are known not only for results but for personality, opinions and lifestyle. Personal stories become the bridge between an inaccessible sport and a broader public. All of this suggests that if expressiveness is narrowly defined as the display of physical emotion, chess will always lose the comparison. But if it is defined more broadly as the ability to create emotional connection with an audience, the picture is entirely different. THE REMAINING PROBLEM: THE LIVE VIEWING EXPERIENCE Chess's real weakness, if it has one, lies not in broadcasting or online platforms but in the live, in-person experience inside a tournament hall. This is an environment where every supporting tool is stripped away, and spectators are left with the sport's rawest essence: two people sitting in silence and a board. In that setting, the gap between those who understand and those who do not becomes most stark. The informed see a tense battle. The uninformed see silence. And in a sporting culture where silence is often read as lifelessness, the inexpressive prejudice finds fertile ground. Chess organisers have recognised this and experimented with various solutions: large screens showing the game, live on-site commentators, interactive spectator zones, even artistic installations to create atmosphere around the board. These efforts amount to an implicit admission that the problem exists and must be addressed rather than denied. OBJECTION AND AGREEMENT: TWO SIDES OF ONE DEBATE Within the chess community, reactions to such remarks typically split into two clear directions. The first is objection. Those in this camp argue the commentator lacks chess knowledge, is imposing one sport's standards on another, and that judging a sport by expressiveness is an oversimplification. They argue every sport has its own language, and that one person's failure to understand that language is not the language's fault. The second is partial agreement. Those in this camp concede that chess has a genuine problem reaching general audiences, and that denying the problem only makes it worse. They hold that outside criticism, however technically imprecise, is valuable information about how the outside world perceives the sport. Both directions have merit. The first protects the sport's integrity from unfair judgment. The second protects its growth from complacency. In practice, a healthy sport needs both: enough confidence not to be wounded by uninformed criticism, and enough openness to learn from criticism with a basis. The key is not to turn one person's opinion into a verdict. A former badminton athlete's remark is not scientific data, not market research, not an official statement from any organisation. It is a personal observation, and its value lies in representing a view many outside the chess community may share. THE VALUE OF THE OUTSIDE VIEW There is a natural tendency in any expert community to discount outside opinion. Chess is no exception. But in this case the outside view carries a particular value that an inside view cannot easily replace. People inside the chess community are so accustomed to the sport's language that they struggle to imagine a newcomer's experience. They no longer remember how confused they felt the first time they watched an elite game. This phenomenon is known as the curse of knowledge: once you know, it is very hard to imagine not knowing. Someone like Naganethra Reddy, with an elite sporting background but only amateur engagement with chess, is unusually well placed to observe. She understands vividly what a powerful spectator experience looks like, having lived in the environment of highly expressive sports. But she also approaches chess with the eye of someone not deeply trained in it, and can therefore see barriers insiders have unconsciously overlooked. This is why remarks of this kind, however uncomfortable, have value as a diagnostic tool. They show what the sport looks like from outside. And in an industry where audience expansion is a top priority, knowing how you look from outside is information that cannot be ignored. WHAT WOULD MAKE CHESS MORE EXPRESSIVE? If we accept the premise that chess needs greater expressiveness to attract audiences, the next question is how. Several directions stand out. First, strengthen the storytelling layer. Not stories about moves, but stories about people. Who is under what pressure? Who is defending what? Who stands at the threshold of a career turning point? These questions create an emotional frame audiences can enter, even without understanding technique. Second, increase the immediacy of signals. Tools such as the evaluation bar are a step in the right direction, but they remain technical. More intuitive expressions, closer to how general viewers feel, are needed. Third, increase interactivity. Today's audiences do not want to merely watch. They want to predict, vote, compare and argue. A sport whose audience can participate in the decision-making process, even only through predictions, has far greater retention power. Fourth, embrace format diversity. Not every viewer wants a classical game lasting hours. Some want blitz with fast rhythms and dramatic mistakes. Others want knockout events. Offering choices to different audience groups is a sounder strategy than seeking one perfect format. CONCLUSION: AN OUTSIDE VOICE WORTH HEARING Naganethra Reddy's claim that chess is one of the least expressive sports is not technical analysis, not an assessment of any player's strength, and not an official statement from any organisation. It is a personal observation, emerging from the background of a former badminton athlete and a sport-sustainability professional. But precisely because it comes from outside the chess community, it carries its own value. It shows how someone knowledgeable about sport but not a chess expert perceives the game. It points out that the gap between internal drama and external signal remains an incompletely solved challenge. And it reminds us that in an increasingly competitive entertainment market, relying solely on the loyalty of a narrow fan base is a risky strategy. Chess has come a long way in building an experience ecosystem suited to its nature. It has proven that a sport does not need leaps or sprints to create emotional connection with an audience. But it must also acknowledge that the work is unfinished, and that outside criticism, however uncomfortable, is a necessary part of the development process. A sport does not need to be expressive in badminton's way to have value. But it does need to find a way for those who do not yet understand it to feel that value. That is the real challenge this remark poses, and also the biggest opportunity chess now faces.