Lately there was talk of a group of parents wanting to appeal to the MOE for chess to recognise as an official sport. Though I commend the noble effort of the group, some doubts linger in my mind: How does having more children playing chess raise the stature of the game here in Singapore? How does it increase the popularity of the game here? Will chess be as popular as that in Indonesia, India and other countries? Here is my opinion. Throughout the countries that are promoting chess from age 6 onwards, we have several institutions like Chess-in-the-Schools program, the Susan Polgar academy in the US, while in the UK Michael Basman and Malcolm Pein also championed the Chess in Schools & Communities project . Lately we have Kasparov starting Chess for Schools in the EU. The Scholastic chess ( chess in primary and secondary school) model is being seen as the most likely model to propagate chess interest amongst the populace. Sadly, the results of these noble efforts do not commensura...