Last week, we interviewed the World Champion Chessboxer, a 19-year-old Russian math student, for TIME magazine, and remembered why we love our job: we get to research things like chessboxing. The matches work like this: competitors alternate between three-minute rounds of boxing and four-minute rounds of speed chess with one-minute breaks in between to get the gloves off and hunker down at the chess table. The winner is determined by knockout, checkmate, or referee decision.
Here's an excerpt from our conversation with the winner, Nikolaj Sazhin:
What makes a good chess boxer? You have to be totally cooled down in chess coming out of the boxing round. The adrenaline is the problem.
The World Chess Boxing Organisation describes the sports combo on its website as being "sexy." Do you agree? I totally agree. I imagine that the girls like the boys who are doing it because they know that this guy is not only fit and in a fighting mode, but he's also in a thinking mode.
Here's the full interview and the longer version of the story on TIME.com. Start a chessboxing club in your town today!
Reader Comments ( Page 1 of 1)
1. that reminds me, i have to go to my night of drunken dubachery and prayer tonight...
hannah at 1:54PM on Jul 14th 2008
2. In high school I was a star mathlete AND in the chess club and I STILL didn't get the ladies. Makes no sense...
Mokele Mbembe at 3:35PM on Jul 14th 2008
3.
This will never catch on until they find some way of incorporating fire, chainsaws and ebola virus.
Clif Kuplen at 7:14PM on Jul 14th 2008
4. Okay, here's how I saw chessboxing before reading the article to find out what it really was...
You have a huge chessboard with men for pieces, standing on it all set up to play, all in boxing gear, with appropriate shaped and colored headgear indicating their side and rank. Then the two coaches play chess and call out the moves. Say, pawn to king's bishop three, and that pawn moves to the appropriate square. Now, when a piece is to "take" another piece, instead of it being a definite thing, the attacker goes to the appropriate already-occupied square, and then he tries to beat the shit out of the man standing there. They fight. If the attacker doesn't win, the move is taken back and the coach must try another.
It's a very long game.
Godless Heathen Brian at 7:46PM on Jul 14th 2008
5. madness unlimited
mad african christian at 1:04PM on Jul 15th 2008
6. my spouse and I think this is a retarded idea. I agree with hannah, it's like combining drunken debauchery with a prayer meeting.
lilquiz at 7:13PM on Jul 16th 2008