Why Should Barstool Play Chess?

6/12/2025 8:45 PM

CARINA JOHANSEN. Getty Images.

There seems to be an appetite for chess at Barstool Sports. An appetite that I, as a 900 rated 36 year old loser who has played chess every day for the last 5 years, am particularly well suited to feed. So as we prepare to bring you Barstool Chess Content, allow me to explain why this game has so thoroughly taken control of my life and never plans to go away.

Chess is infinitely applicable

The legendary JRR Tolkien spoke extensively on the difference between allegory and what he termed, applicability. Famously he loathed the former and loved the latter. It all comes down to authorial intent. In allegory the author is TELLING the reader what to think. “X is really just a stand in for Y” (think Animal Farm). With applicability the author tells a story and the reader decides how it applies to their world. Herein lies one of the greatest aspects of Chess. It is infinitely applicable. Monarchies have used chess to validate the authority of kings while the proletariat have used it to champion the power of the people. Seemingly contradictory and yet, somehow, perfectly appropriate. A paradoxical game, Chess will help you navigate real life situations as you try to determine your best path forward.

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Chess is a PERFECT Game

The Immortal Game puts forth that Chess could be considered to be divine. IF divinity can be defined by something that stands the test of time. A game that originates some time in the 6th century CE, that has undergone shockingly few changes in the last 1500 years. The last rules update to the game itself took place in the early 1800s. The Spanish opening, or the Ruy Lopez, is an eponymous set of opening moves that a Spanish monk originally published in 1561 and is still played at the highest levels of professional chess to this day. Chess is time travel. I can’t watch football film from the early 1900s but I can watch every single move and match from Paul Morphy and Adolf Anderssen’s championship match of 1858. You can feel the style of these players through the vastness of decades. It is also a perfect information game. One of the few games in which RNGesus has no presence. One always knows EXACTLY what the opponent is doing and it is up to your pure skill to find a way to outwit, outmaneuver and outplay your opponent.

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Chess is Unifying

One of the great parts about playing sports growing up is you get to meet, work, and grind with people from all different cultural and socio-economic backgrounds. Friends that, as a silver spoon white suburban kid, I would have NEVER come into contact with otherwise and yet now consider them to be some of my closest friends to this day. Chess is the same. I may not know how to speak Spanish, but I can sit over the board with someone from Mexico or Spain and suddenly, we speak the same language. Rich, poor, black white, it all matters not; any one, from any place or any time can play Chess.

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Chess is FOOTBALL

This is for the baws out there. I know this hearkens back to the applicability point in some ways but I can’t help but notice the similarities. Linemen are the pawns. Doing the dirty work up front in the trenches. Don’t get the headlines, don’t get the attention, but they are your classic lunch pail grinders. Not the fastest, not the flashiest, but at the end of the day the game is won or lost in the trenches. Rooks are your wide receivers. Flashy, fast, with BIG BOLD MOVES. A classic backrank checkmate is not unlike a deep post to win the game in OT. Knights are your running backs. Elusive, shifty, and yet they bring a toughness the rooks do not possess. Weaving in and out of holes, attacking and defending they have great footwork and lateral movement. Pass rushers are your bishops. Some of the exciting big play ability of the receivers and yet, more of a yeoman’s piece than the flashy rooks. Applying pressure to the middle from the flanks, as if trying to contain a quarterback in the pocket. Speaking of, the Quarterback is the queen. The obvious most important piece in the game. Everything radiates outward from the queen. Whether its attacking or defending NO PIECE determines the flavor and result of the game as that of the Queen.