And Now, a Sport For Geeks…

I know that a lot of my readers think that sports are not intellectually stimulating.  I mean, what’s the point of large guys pounding on each other, throwing each other around, or just throwing a ball past each other.

For those of my readers who prefer something more intellectually stimulating, I present to you…

Chessboxing.

The idea of this game is that you play a few moves of chess in 4 minutes, and then you put on the boxing gloves and pound on your opponent for a 3 minute round, and then you take a break, take off your boxing gloves, and make a few more chess moves.  The physical and mental combat can alternate for up 11 rounds, although the game can also end suddenly with a knockout or checkmate.  This is the sort of competition you might face:

From the article, it seems like I could be competitive on the chess side of the match.  The players at the top levels are rated 1700 to 2000 USCF, which means they would not even be likely to win the Erie City Championship in games of straight chess.  OTOH, if our Erie City Junior Champion bulked up a bit, he could be quite good at this.

Most likely, boxing skill is way more important than chess skill in this competition.  A decent player can avoid a quick mate, and if your boxing skills are good enough, by the 3rd or 4th round your opponent will be too DAIN BRAMAGED to do much harm over the chess board.

Here are two chess-boxing videos.  It looks like these guys are worse at boxing than they are at chess.

Now we need rules for Sumo Scrabble…