Chess Boxing
A sport alternating rounds of boxing and chess. You win by checkmate, knockout, running out of chess time, or on points.
Quick Facts
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Organisation & Competition
What the style is built from
Editorial rating on a 0–3 scale, based on how much room each area gets in ordinary training.
About Chess Boxing
Chess boxing is a sport in which rounds of boxing alternate with rounds of chess. The idea comes from the 1992 comic Froid Équateur by the French author Enki Bilal, which stages a chess boxing world championship; Bilal's version, however, had the opponents fight an entire boxing match and only then sit down at the board, which proved unworkable in practice. It was turned into a competitive sport by the Dutch performance artist Iepe Rubingh, who alternated the rounds. The first competition took place in Berlin in 2003, and that same year Rubingh won the first world championship in Amsterdam against Jean Louis Veenstra. Shortly afterwards he founded the World Chess Boxing Organisation (WCBO) in Berlin, which remains the leading amateur body; in 2013 the World Chess Boxing Association (WCBA) was added in London by Tim Woolgar, after the two men failed to agree on unifying the sport. A bout runs eleven alternating rounds, beginning and ending with chess — six chess rounds and five boxing rounds. Each round lasts three minutes, with a minute's break between them as a rule. At the board each player has a total of nine minutes under blitz time control. Victory can come by checkmate, by knockout or technical knockout, by exceeding the chess time limit, by resignation in either discipline, or by disqualification. If the game ends in a draw before the last round, an additional boxing round decides the winner on points. The sport has spread to more than thirty countries and is strongest in the United Kingdom, India, Finland, France and Russia.
Similar styles
Selected by overlap in the style profile, not by historical lineage.