Play like a butterfly, sting like a bee - Chessboxing
Maxim Trevelyan
March 2017
This issue, we will look at a more violent sport than we are used to. Another hybrid, chessboxing is a weirdly popular sport and one of the youngest I had covered so far. This sport combines two traditional, yet vastly different disciplines; chess and boxing.
Chessboxing was invented by a Dutch performance artist Iepe Rubingh, who got the idea from a 1992 comic Froid Équateur, written by Enki Bilal. This particular comic depicts a fictional sport’s world championship where opponents faced a boxing match before going at each other with a chess game. Ribingh found the fundamentals of game arrangement a bit chaotic, so with a few tweaks in game play, he presented an idea for a sport, which now has a detailed set of rules and is played all around the world.
First chessboxing competition ever took place in Berlin, Germany in 2003. Same year also found an establishment of World Chess Boxing Association (WCBO) who perhaps has one of the best sport organization’s mottos around; Fighting is done in the ring and wars are waged on the board. WCBO, together with Dutch Chess Federation and Dutch Boxing Association held first world chessboxing championship in Greece where Rubingh won after 11 rounds of alternating boxing and chess.
After its inception in 2003, the sport only grew in popularity not only in Europe, but around the world, most prominently in Asia.
Chessboxing consists of 11 rounds with six rounds of chess and five rounds of boxing. The rounds alternate, the game starting and ending with a chess round. Each round only lasts three minutes with 60 seconds break between them. Opponents are matched according to weight classes that can be found in any boxing match; lightweight, middleweight, light heavyweight and heavyweight.
The game can end early with a knockout or technical knockout in boxing rounds, checkmate or exceeding time in chess rounds, or by a disqualification or resignation of an opponent. Should the game end in a draw, the fighter who is ahead in boxing points wins the bout. If the score is again a tie, whomever used black pieces wins, although that had never occurred in practice.
Current world champions at chessboxing are Sven Rooch from Germany (light heavyweight), Leonid Chernobaev from Belarus (middleweight) and Nikolay Sahzin from Russia (heavyweight).
Now that I think about it, chessboxing eerily reminds me of IRC snitch play, though trivia rounds are less bloody unless you are like me and you hit two bludgers in less than five minutes.
This issue, we will look at a more violent sport than we are used to. Another hybrid, chessboxing is a weirdly popular sport and one of the youngest I had covered so far. This sport combines two traditional, yet vastly different disciplines; chess and boxing.
Chessboxing was invented by a Dutch performance artist Iepe Rubingh, who got the idea from a 1992 comic Froid Équateur, written by Enki Bilal. This particular comic depicts a fictional sport’s world championship where opponents faced a boxing match before going at each other with a chess game. Ribingh found the fundamentals of game arrangement a bit chaotic, so with a few tweaks in game play, he presented an idea for a sport, which now has a detailed set of rules and is played all around the world.
First chessboxing competition ever took place in Berlin, Germany in 2003. Same year also found an establishment of World Chess Boxing Association (WCBO) who perhaps has one of the best sport organization’s mottos around; Fighting is done in the ring and wars are waged on the board. WCBO, together with Dutch Chess Federation and Dutch Boxing Association held first world chessboxing championship in Greece where Rubingh won after 11 rounds of alternating boxing and chess.
After its inception in 2003, the sport only grew in popularity not only in Europe, but around the world, most prominently in Asia.
Chessboxing consists of 11 rounds with six rounds of chess and five rounds of boxing. The rounds alternate, the game starting and ending with a chess round. Each round only lasts three minutes with 60 seconds break between them. Opponents are matched according to weight classes that can be found in any boxing match; lightweight, middleweight, light heavyweight and heavyweight.
The game can end early with a knockout or technical knockout in boxing rounds, checkmate or exceeding time in chess rounds, or by a disqualification or resignation of an opponent. Should the game end in a draw, the fighter who is ahead in boxing points wins the bout. If the score is again a tie, whomever used black pieces wins, although that had never occurred in practice.
Current world champions at chessboxing are Sven Rooch from Germany (light heavyweight), Leonid Chernobaev from Belarus (middleweight) and Nikolay Sahzin from Russia (heavyweight).
Now that I think about it, chessboxing eerily reminds me of IRC snitch play, though trivia rounds are less bloody unless you are like me and you hit two bludgers in less than five minutes.