Chess boxing

Chess boxing  

Chess boxing is a combination of Chess which is a mind game played onboard and other is Boxing which is a physical game. In this game,  competitors fight against each other in Chess and Boxing alternatively. This makes Chess boxing very interesting because to win it, players have to be mentally as well as physically strong.  

Chess boxing was first invented in 1992 by Dutch performance artist Rubingh who got the idea of mixing two games from a French comic book ‘Enki Bilal’. In this book, the opponent was playing boxing before playing the game of Chess. Rubingh then modified this in such a way that both games can be played alternatively. In 2003, the first chessboxing competition took place in Berlin. In the same year,  a world championship fight was held in Amsterdam with the help of the Dutch Chess Federation, the Dutch Boxing Association, and the World Chess Boxing Organisation.  

This game started to grow in 2005 when players were fighting for various titles in front of a large audience. But the real expansion of Chessboxing took place when it came to India and other parts of Asia in 2011. The Chess boxing Organisation India was founded in the same year by Montu Das who was the champion of  Karate as well as Kickboxing in India. For making chess boxing  professional, a world championship was held in 2013 in Moscow which 

was the first Chessboxing event organized and marketed by Chess Boxing Global.

A Chess boxing fight consists of 11 rounds in which there are 6  rounds of chess and 5 rounds of boxing. Each round is held for 3  minutes whether it may be chess or boxing. Since there are 6 rounds of chess so there are 18 minutes of chess held, and each opponent is given 9 minutes of control time. If any player consumes a total of 9  minutes before six rounds, then the player is defeated. There are many other ways of winning this game. Such as, if any player checkmates the opponent in any round of chess then the opponent will be defeated, or the player can also win by knocking the opponent in any boxing round, or the player can also win if the opponent has resigned.  

Chess boxing is really very difficult. To win this game, players have to go through rigorous training. It is because chess is a game where one needs to be very calm and have full concentration and when it is of very little time (i.e. rapid chess) then more focus is required. But in  Chess Boxing, it becomes very hard for the players to focus on chess just after boxing because they become tired, and also, they do not get even time to relax in between two successive rounds. Thus,  for winning Chess Boxing a player has to be strong in both Chess as well as in Boxing, lacking in any skills will cost them the entire match.  

This type of hybrid games or sports should be appreciated because it requires a large number of skills. So, this will help players to gain more and more skills and will also help them to become strong mentally as well as physically. And this will be very helpful in their personal life.  

Article By- Abhas Raj