Chessboxing Storming the Athletic World

samzenpus writes "Have you been craving an athletic competition that combines the raw physical energy of a chess match and the strategic acumen of boxing? Crave no more. Chessboxing is here. No really, Chessboxing. As the name suggests, Chessboxing combines rounds of chess alternating with rounds of boxing. If there is no winner after 11 rounds, the match is awarded to the fighter with the most points in the boxing ring. Dutch artist, Iepe Rubingh, created chessboxing in 2003. He says, 'I got the idea from a Serbian comic. It looked great. I wanted to see if it would work.'"

Wait...

[cloudkiller]

This is real, right?

Chess boxing on Wikipedia

[tepples]

Alternating rounds of chess and boxing is at least as real as WarioWare. See Wikipedia's article [wikipedia.org].

Re:

[cloudkiller]

I stopped using Wikipedia as a source for determining if something was real right after I used it to convince the world that WarioWare actually existed.

Archon anyone

[boris111]

Reminds me of a real world version of this [wikipedia.org] game I played in my youth.

Hmmm.

[jockeys]

Call me when they have UFC-Go and I'll be the biggest fan in the world.

Re:

[underqualified]

shouldn't it be MMA-Go?

Re:

[jockeys]

fair enough.

Racing Chess (or Go)

[Michael Woodhams]

I had a similar idea a while ago. Play Go (or Chess or Shogi or similar) while running on a treadmill. As you run 'distance', your time available on the chess clock goes up. You can win either by winning the board game, or by sufficiently 'outrunning' your opponent (e.g. by having 30 minutes more to spare on your clock than they have.)

For the record: I put this idea in the public domain. (Not that anyone will notice.)

Perens' theory of money vs. health

[Bruce Perens]

You have achieved the proper balance of health and money when you can hold your breath for as long as it takes to make a dollar.

Re:

[pamar]

You have achieved the proper balance of health and money when you can hold your breath for as long as it takes to make a dollar.

Interesting. Based on average pay for your country? Or your own income/salary? Or what?

I.e. how do you define "it takes X seconds to make a dollar"?

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Based on your own salary.

This is actually a good measurement. Say you're making X dollars per hour worked, and you can't hold your breath long enough to match one dollar -- chances are, you're sacrificing your health for your work and not getting enough money in return. The less money you're making, the healthier you need to try and become, because the poorer you are, the greater your risk of health issues fucking up your life forever.

Likewise, if you're rich as all get out, you don't need to worry about b

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

By how long it actually take YOU to make a dollar.

Re:

[Chris Burke]

That's a round-about way of saying that you think Bill Gates is way too healthy and should be constantly hyperventilating.

Headphones?

[Vintermann]

"The competitors also wear earplugs and headphones during the chess rounds to help with concentration. "

Maybe it would have been more aproppriate with Chess Wrestling.

Heard about this...

[nathan s]

...it seems to me that anyone intelligent enough to be particularly interested in chess wouldn't be overly enthusiastic about the possibility of brain damage over time from being struck in the head repeatedly. Concussions aren't funny. I mean, I'd hate to lose a game of chess to some 400-lb gorilla who got in a few lucky shots, and if you did this with any serious enthusiasm, your game of chess would almost certainly degrade over time.;)

I train in martial arts, but I avoid schools where being struck in the head is seen as a core part of training (I think MMA is fairly idiotic for this reason), and I think go is a much more interesting game overall. Combine go with something like a triathlon and I might find the idea more appealing as a mind-and-matter competition.

Re:

[Hierarch]

There's plenty of precedent for it. Consider Max Euwe, who was the 5th World Champion of chess, and the amateur heavyweight boxing championship of Europe. (Although I don't think it was at the same time.) It may have contributed to his reputation as being one of the most sportsmanlike world champions — Max was always willing to wager his championship, while many other champions found plenty of excuses not to stake it.

Re:

[quatin]

Concussions are your body's natural reaction to abnormal stresses to your brain. Heavy padding IE. Football, Boxing causes the hits to be just light enough for you not to get a concussion, but still enough to cause brain damage. This is why MMA has fewer deaths/brain cases (Hollyfield) than boxing or football. In MMA, if you suffer a strike to your head with force, you get a concussion and the competition is over. In a boxing match, because of the heavy gloves you remain conscious and continue to fight lead

Re:

[abarrieris5eV]

Fact of the matter is MMA is one of the most safest full contact sports.

True, but I don't think he was arguing for boxing or football. There are many schools of traditional martial arts that do not include any actual contact head blows. He was probably arguing in favor of say, aikido, judo, or even karate, and MMA was simply an easy example of a full contact martial art.

Re:

[quatin]

Karate, tae kwon do and other traditional martial arts won't work in chessboxing. The idea of chess boxing, is you get emotional from a full contact fight and immediately go into a game where you dominate with logic and reason. You won't feel that with point sparring like in most traditional martial arts, especially one that does not allow head blows. I've done point sparring and I've done kick boxing. They are on two completely different levels when it comes to physical conditioning, strategy, control and

Re:

[zippyspringboard]

Just thought would throw my two cents in as a boxer. Not all boxers beat the shit out of each other during every workout, and you don't have to to enjoy and learn the art. In fact even during legitimate hard sparring most guys pull the punches to the head. I've seen guys practicing for professional bouts (and winning them afterwards) who were still greatly limiting the power in their punches to the head. If you want to learn boxing you can do it safely. Wearing head gear, 16 oz gloves and only sparring

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[Chris Burke]

As far as avoiding martial arts "where being struck in the head is seen as a core part of training" Well a quick hit on the jaw or throat for that matter, is a good way to drop someone, or be dropped. It may not be the be all and end all of martial training, but it should be a very real concern.

I think they were talking about where being hit was part of the training. Not training to strike and defend vulnerable areas, but actually getting punched.

Any martial arts class where I was expected to actually take

Re:

[zippyspringboard]

Yeah I guess the part about the "throat" probably just muddied the water. I was suggesting that proficiency at defending and attacking the chin might cross over to defending/exploiting the throat. Likewise I would never participate in a class where taking a hit to the throat is expected :)

Re:

[neo]

MMA has much fewer concussions than boxing due to it's lighter weight gloves with allow for knock-outs faster and because many matches end by submission. Boxing matches can last for up to 15 rounds with fighters being repeatedly struck to the head. This repeated beating of the brain is much worse than the relatively small amount that happens in MMA.

Chess, on the other hand, makes you angry from repeated beatings by higher level players. The scars, while much less obvious, are none the less debilitating.

Re:

[Yvanhoe]

Actually the comics author he is referring to is Bilal. He proposed this sport as a particularly twisted show of values in a dystopian future and presented it in a grim light.

If body and brain weight class accounted for?

[dspkable]

I would love to play chess and I would like to box. I think making weight would always be the toughest part of training since sitting on your behind for chess makes it hard to lose water weight.

"Serbian Comic"

[newsdee]

The comic in question is "Cold Equator" (Froid Equateur) from Enki BIlal. He's French comic book artist and filmmaker of Serbian origins.

At least in the World Chess Boxing organization website [wcbo.org], they give proper credit to the guy (with photos and all).

The comic is very good too, part of the Nikopol trilogy. Check it out.

Noise?

[lewko]

Why were they wearing headphones during the chess?

Beer Pong soould be added to the decatholon

[deodiaus2]

Well, why stop there. Maybe we can make it a decatholon event. We can add a game we played in college. Beer Pong. Like Ping-Pong, except you have to drink a sip of beer after each miss. We also use to have a Beer Mile Relay in HS track. It was patterned after the Three Mile Relay, but one carried a six pack of cheap beer, one can of which he had to drink before finishing his 1/2 mile segment, and pass the remaining containers to the next runner.
Please help me file out additional events, maybe make t

First appeared in a french comics

[DavMz]

Chessboxing first appeared in a french comics by Enki Bilal: Froid Equateur [wikipedia.org], published in 1992. Bilal probably never thought some people would make it real.