Meet the New Chess Boxing Champion of the World 235
Attila Dimedici writes "A Russian man has just been crowned world champion in the sport of chess boxing. Apparently the idea originated in a French comic strip from the early '90s. In 2003 a Dutch artist decided to bring the 'sport' to life. The 'sport' is played by starting a chess match in the middle of a boxing ring. After four minutes, the chess board is cleared and the opponents box for three minutes. A match consists of six rounds of chess and five rounds of boxing. A match is decided by knockout, checkmate, or points."
Re:I'd put money on the boxer any day (Score:5, Informative)
The chess part is speed chess, which can be quite difficult and heavily favors those who are well practiced in strategy and able to make decisions faster.
Players are given 1 - 5 minutes each to win a game, which generally does not result in a checkmate outcome. Rather, the person whose time expires first loses. The best strategy is to set up complex positions on the board that require ample thought on the part of your opponent and watch his or her time expire.
I would put my money on the chess player who can roll with the punches and make effective 1 second moves on the board. You can do rope a dope sometimes by letting other players move very quickly and eating up their major pieces when they make a mistake.
M
I'm not sure Enki Bilal would be proud... (Score:4, Informative)
There is also a hockey game in the first book which ends with something like 3 goals and 5 kills for each team.
BTW : In the book, the chess-boxing match ends with the main protagonist (possessed by a god) killing his opponent with some kind of laser shot from his eyes during a chess round.
french comics author is Enki Bilal: details (Score:3, Informative)
a sample of the original comics series: http://www.darkshire.net/~jhkim/archive/freerpgs/heritage/mobworld.htm#Chess%20Boxing [darkshire.net]
Re:Battle Chess Nostalgia (Score:5, Informative)
Whereas archon, just because you move the piece to a spot doesn't mean you get to eliminate the piece - what it does is it starts up an arcade battle between the two pieces.
The two pieces could be a knight versus a dragon, and if you are really good at the knight you could actually kill the dragon, it helps of course if the dragon was badly injured in previous battles and was not healed by the player (it costs a move to heal, so heals are rare).
Also in the first archon, white pieces and black pieces get health bonuses depending on whether the square is black, dark gray, gray, light gray or white.
Overall there was some strategy involved but it's typically overshadowed by arcade skills.
Much more than 5 minutes of chess (Score:3, Informative)
It's stated that there are 6 rounds of chess with 4 minutes per round. That works out to more than 20 minutes of chess, not "1 - 5 minutes to win."
I've played competitive Lightning (5 mins) and Speed (15 mins) chess before. Ample time to win a game in both modes.
Most difficult part here is probably trying to remember your plan after the boxing.
Re:I'd put money on the boxer any day (Score:5, Informative)
> Players are given 1 - 5 minutes each to win a game, which generally does not result in a checkmate outcome
Do you actually play chess ? Blitz games often ends in checkmate, because the player with the biggest time pressure will blunder.
I have seen my son give otb (=over the board) checkmate in rapid chess to someone 300 ELO higher than him with 3 seconds vs 5 seconds left and 8 moves.
Of course, the player with worst position can choose not to move and lose on time, but it is the stupidest thing to do, because in chess, you can think on the opponent time
Just look at the tie-break in US women championship [chessbase.com]. 11 seconds vs 2 seconds. Wanna bet who won ?
Lurk around playchess.com. You'll see 1 minute bullets games (ie: 1 minute for each opponents). The average rate of play is higher than 1 move per second, and they generally finish in checkmate.
PS: slashdot formatting is borken for me. Can' do proper paragraphs. Such is life
Other Media (Score:3, Informative)
There's also the movie Immortel (ad vitam) [wikipedia.org], also written and directed by Bilal himself, roughly based on the same story as the Nikopol trilogy.
And Benoit Sokal's Whit Birds Productions [whitebirds...ctions.com] have a point'n'click adventure game called Nikopol, based on this series in their pipeline.
Re:I'd put money on the boxer any day (Score:2, Informative)
Your post is the most ridiculous thing I've heard (Score:2, Informative)
You could be the dumbest poster I've ever seen.
Spoken like someone who has never actually been trained to fight. Just so I'm clear, learning how to position oneself, move around your opponent, and use reach and speed considerations to determine the correct time to strike for maximum effect is not "practical... in warfare or self-defense."? Is that correct?
Because THAT is what boxing is, your portrayal of it as just "throwing a punch" is ignorant, and makes it clear why your post is so ridiculous, you simply have no idea what you're talking about.
Here is a list of posters who should be ignored when discussing this subject
neuromancer23 (1122449)
Re:That is the most ridiculous thing I've ever hea (Score:2, Informative)
A gun is also extremely unlikely to kill by accident. A few hundred people - 600 in 2000 die in gun accidents each year [guncite.com] (and many of these are actually suicides that are covered up out of respect for grieving families); in that same year, 3,900 people drowned, 3,600 were killed by fire, 3,400 choked to death, and a whopping 16,200 died in falls. Your staircase or your swimming pool are much more likely to kill you accidentally than your gun.