Home > Sports > List > Mind

Mind Sports consists of a family of sports in which the objective is to test mental strength rather than physical strength. The term "Mind Sports Olympiad" was first used in 1997 to describe a set of games that constituted Olympics for the mind.

Chess is a challenging board game that falls under the family of mind sports. It requires intense thinking in which players stay glued to the board, hardly ever taking their eyes off, for several hours. Another board game that fits the mind sports bill is backgammon. The game of Go (also called Weiqi) is a popular mind sport in Asian countries. There are some people who consider these board games as sports, or at least worthy of being on a sports program.

---

---

All activities that require mental calculation or high levels of memory are all part of the mind sports family. Memory sports are contested biennially in the Mental Calculation World Cup and annually in the World Memory Championships.

Card games also fit the bill as a mind sport, for example, the games of Bridge and Poker.

Some of the other games are the Rubik's cube and Sudoku, which have major competitions like the World Rubik's Cube Championships and the World Sudoku Championship.

Speed reading, computer programming, gaming e-Sports (which is a new term used for all video games based competitions), spelling bee, and geographic bee, all fall under the mind sports category.

Recently speed-texting, that involves sending text messages using a phone has also been accepted as a part of mind sports.

Official Recognition

The International Mind Sports Association (IMSA) is an association of the world governing bodies for the following 'mind sports': bridge, chess, draughts (checkers), go, Mahjong and xiangqi (Chinese chess).

Bridge and Chess are members of the Association of IOC Recognised International Sports Federations.

The Global Association of International Sports Federations includes the federations for Chess, Bridge, Go, Draughts, giving these activities some credibility with calling themselves a sport. In 2017, the international federation for Poker was given 'observer status' paving the way for it to also be considered officially a sport.

At the 2010 Asian Games in Guangzhou, three board game tournaments (chess, xiangqi and go) were on the official program. In 2018, Contract Bridge was on the Asian Games program. Next up - the Olympic Games?

Some Mind Sports

• Speedcubing — players solve single piece 3D puzzles in the quickest time possible.
• e-Sports Gaming — a competitive form of playing computer games (e-sports).
• Poker — a card game that combines gambling, strategy, and skill. The winner of each hand is determined according to the combinations of players' cards.
• Bridge — a card game that is played by four players, playing in two competing partnerships. Players score points based on the number of tricks achieved.
• Chess — a strategy board game played by two players on a checkered gameboard with 64 squares arranged in an 8×8 grid.
• Chessboxing — a combination of chess and boxing.
• Memory Sports / competitive memory — a competition in which the participants ("memory athletes") attempt to memorize the most information that they can, before presenting it back.

---

---

Related Pages

• About the World Mind Sports Events
• Is Bridge A Sport? (blog post)
• About Sport Psychology
• Complete List of Sports