This thead is great and Mummelmann put it well in his last sentence in the post above. I for one do not consider Chess players, darts players or snooker players as athletes, neither do some people in those sports/games, the players do not spend a lot of time trying to claim they are.
I find the idea of trying to justify calling pro-gamers athletes by trying to work out if Chess is a sport (which was discussed before in this thread) a joke as that isn't the question. Pro-gamers are not athletes, certainly not professional athletes (they might be athletic as they compete in non-professional sports). That doesn't mean they need to try and justify their profession and livelyhood by claiming it is. They should be happy with the fact they make money of something as trivial as a game which has a life cycle of only a few years if that.
Hmm, pie.
