It’s sort of like that movie Fight Club… sort of.
Some sports require vast amounts of mental preparation and strategy. Some sports require significant physical endurance and strength. Chess boxing requires both. That’s right. Chess boxing.
The origins of chess boxing are hotly contested. Some give credit to French cartoonist Enki Bilal, who incorporated the sport into his graphic novel Froid Équateur, others vehemently claim the sport originated from the 1991 Finnish movie Uuno Turhapuro, which features the protagonist of the film simultaneously playing chess while pummeling another individual in a boxing match. Regardless of its origins, chess boxing seems to be taking off in popularity. Well, at least in Europe. In 2003 the World Chess Boxing Organization held the first annual world championship in Amsterdam. Official chess boxing training centers have even opened up in Berlin, London, and Bulgaria, all to foster this brand new, baffling pastime.
Chess boxing is, as its name suggests, a fairly straightforward sport. First comes a four minute round of chess. This is followed up with three minutes of boxing. Rounds alternate and the match is called after Round 11, assuming it goes that far. The type of chess used in chess boxing is speed chess, which limits an individual’s total time to think and move to only 12 minutes. There are only four ways to win in Chess Boxing: get a checkmate, get a knockout, have the judges disqualify your opponent based on injury, or force your opponent to run out of time.
Naturally, there are some restrictions placed on the sport. A minimum ELO rating of 1800 is required to compete; this is done to assure that a professional boxer cannot come in and crush his competitor in the second round. If you’d like to compete but lack a world ranking, don’t despair! You may also qualify to chess box by winning against a WCBO spokesperson in a game of chess. Additionally, participants must be in good physical health and have a doctors certify their ability to compete.
As silly as the game may seem at first blush, Chess Boxing competitors must be extremely well rounded athletes. Not only are the athletes drained by the boxing segments of the match, the four minute rounds of speed chess tax them in a completely different way. To reliably use logical thinking after such an enormous physical strain is an incredible accomplishment. As a chess player myself, I know just how difficult playing the game can be. Playing the game well with a concussion boggles my mind.
As many chess boxers assert, chess and boxing share many similarities. Both require your next move be strategically planned, and competitors in both must remain calm, cool, and collected despite their predicament. Perhaps it is due to the reinforcement of these values that some Berlin schools are offering chess boxing workshops to their students.
With more than 150 championship applications being sent in per weight division, the WCBO proudly notes that its sport is gaining in popularity. With additional events being planned in Russia and the Ukraine, the number of European chess boxers is expected to rise dramatically in the next few years. Will the sport catch on here in America? It’s hard to tell, but it does seem fairly darn cool.
David Johnson is a 1L and can be reached at david.johnson@valpo.edu
Entries (RSS)