Is Chess Really Inexpressive? The Ledger Behind an Outsider's Remark

I was sitting in the back row of the chess hall in Purana Paltan. A wooden board in front of me, two players almost motionless, the clock ticking. A young spectator beside me whispered, "Who's winning right now?" I glanced at the engine bar — dead level, leaning nowhere. To his eyes chess was a silent, almost expressionless scene. That exact feeling was recently put into words: chess is supposedly "the least expressive sport" the speaker has ever watched.

The remark came from Naganethra Reddy — a professional badminton background, later sustainability work with Formula E, Extreme E and the World Endurance Championship, plus committee roles. At the centre of her interest was one question: why do people watch, follow and connect with a sport? Chess entered her life through her brother — that is, as an amateur enthusiast, not a professional analyst. This is where the first clear line must be drawn: the remark is not about the quality of the game, but about its visibility.

On the first page of my notebook is written — "what the scoreboard cannot see." Across nine years of covering chess I have learned that inside the single moment when the clock stops, an entire match's story hides. But an outsider cannot read that story unless someone teaches them how. I have watched from the sideline until the game became a sentence I could finally edit. This piece contains no specific match, no opening, no rating — only an opinion, and no verifiable source behind it. So it is not an analysis of the game; it is the testimony of a pair of outside eyes, showing how readers beyond the chess world see the sport.

Recall that the speaker's baseline was built on high-motion sport — badminton's fast rallies, visible exertion, reactive emotion; and motorsport's visual spectacle. By that yardstick chess is naturally less expressive — because chess is a static, seated activity where body language is minimal. Much of what spectators "read" in physical sport — sweat, breath, the glare of the eyes — is simply absent here. This part of the remark is broadly defensible, and admitting it is the honest thing to do.

But this is where the ledger goes wrong. In place of the body language it lost, chess has built another language — the channels of proxy expressiveness. An on-screen graphic called the eval bar shows the value of the position on every move; the commentator's voice rises and falls; the reaction camera catches the creases of a face; and streaming personality — like Hikaru Nakamura's broadcast style — manufactures drama the board itself does not display. In other words, the remark conflates physical expressiveness with watchability; those are not the same variable.

I have sat at the back of the hall many times and watched how an experienced commentator turns a silent move into suspense — the pressure of the clock, the weakness of a colour, the race of the back rank. A spectator watching without the eval bar and commentary genuinely cannot tell who is ahead; this is the real barrier to watching chess. But the problem is not the game's expressiveness, it is the absence of a translator for the spectator. Miss that distinction and the criticism sends its letter to the wrong address.

The debate over watchability that returns year after year inside the chess world centres on draw rate and short draws. An unresolved game does not attract spectators — fearing exactly this, some tournaments have adopted rules like the Sofia Rules, forbidding agreed draws before a set number of moves. Note, though, that this outside remark is not directly connected to that debate; it is an aesthetic critique, not a structural proposal.

And here my old question returns, one I learned while covering the chess league's transfer window: before asking "who won," you must ask "who paid for this board?" In Bangladesh's Premier Division Chess League, Police, Navy, Biman and the bank teams hire Indian grandmasters as guest boards; once I reported ahead of everyone that a Kolkata-based grandmaster was joining a bank side for a reported Tk 1.5 lakh. Yet the chess federation's annual government grant sits at roughly Tk 11 lakh a year — less than a single franchise cricketer's bat deal alone. I have imposed on myself the rule of keeping this number in every emotional piece, because behind the watchability debate this money line is the most uncomfortable part.

Here is the counter-angle. The outside eye says "inexpressive," yet in the post-pandemic period online chess platform usage, streaming audiences and high-profile World Championship cycles have grown chess viewership. That means the main driver of watchability is not physical expressiveness — it is stakes, narrative and accessibility. The remark is therefore a mere amateur impression; there is no audience research, retention data or viewership figure behind it. Making one person's viewing feeling the verdict on an entire sport is its core weakness.

And the biggest trap is overcorrection. If, in search of "expressiveness," short formats or dramatic gimmicks are forced in, the sport's core audience — those who love deep strategy — will drift away. The risk cuts both ways. The question is not aesthetic, it is about retention — how many come back, how long they watch. That data is what the answer must face, not mere counter-aesthetics.

The industry ledger is tangled in here too. The upstream player-training chain is neutral in this debate; but online platforms and streaming — these downstream segments — are the most exposed, because they depend on retaining new viewers. The phrase "inexpressive" strikes directly at that conversion funnel. The tools the platforms hold — eval bar, commentary, personality-led broadcasts — were built precisely to answer that blow. The best columns are built like a rehab plan — small steps, honest pain, no shortcuts.

So the chess world's response should be in the language of statistics. The eval bar, expert commentary and player-driven broadcasts are already answering the "inexpressive" charge, and now is the time to sharpen each of them at every tournament. If that spectator at the back of the hall returns, let him see not only the board — let him read the story inside it too. The question remains: do we mourn the body language chess lacks, or do we start teaching the board's own language to outsiders?