Pawns in the ring

Hollywood cinema has created a stigma in which the louts we see on screen are not the most intelligent characters in the plot. Strength and intellect have been put as antagonists in our subconscious through scripts that portray geniuses as sleazy guys and athletes like those who have instead a nut replacing the brain. But in an almost parallel universe inside a shed in Berlin, a new sport proves that these two stereotypes can coexist.

Intelectual Fight Club, 2017. By Karine Bravo

A gray building in the middle of Kreuzberg — the birthplace of techno ballads and freakish parties — houses one of the most unusual events in the German capital: a ChessBoxing tournament. That’s right, and Chessboxing literally means what the name suggests, a sport that mixes boxing and chess with a history of more than twenty years.

In the center of the dimly lit space, a ring; and in the middle of it, a chess table. As soon as I walked through the doors of the Intellectual Fight Club -a Chessboxing tournament that happens four times a year in Berlin- I came across two elements that are difficult to find in the same environment: blood and chessmen.

Two screens show in detail each step of the players, who, amid the gasping breath and the silence of those who watch, try to make reasonable plays. The bells ring, and the game is interrupted. The table is removed from the center of the ring and opponents wear their gloves, perhaps still thinking about the pawns on the board.

In the blink of an eye, the atmosphere changes completely: the two players, now fighters, wear their gloves and begin to switch punches, and the audience that watches in silence does not measure words and begins to cheer.

The game is over, and I approach the champion of the match. The Ukrainian, Timo, is only 22 years old and has just won a checkmate fight after almost being knocked out. With his broken English, he tells me that this was his first ChessBoxing championship, but he has been training chess since he was a child.

But why have you maybe never heard of this sport? I talked to Helmut Kuhn, a Chessboxing fighter for over ten years and an expert on the subject to figure out where this idea came from.

Social Sculpting:

The hybrid sport first appeared in 1992 in the comic strips of the Serbian-French cartoonist Enki Bilal, in which the main hero played a match of Chessboxing amid a plot full of science fiction.

Ten years later, the book served as inspiration for Iepe Rubingh, a Dutch artist who brought the idea to life through an artistic performance called Social Sculpting.

The idea is not just to put a sculpture or piece of art in public spaces, but to install something in society that can be used by people in some way,” Kuhn explains.

Then in 2003, he launched the sport to the world in a performance set in a church in Amsterdam. The show was attended by 1,200 onlookers and considerable media attention, who watched Rubingh’s 11-round fight against his teammate, Lowis Lawyer.

And so the idea stepped out from the comic books. With all the repercussion, Rubingh saw a new opportunity and decided to transform the sport into something bigger, giving meaning to the concept of Social Sculpting.

Around the World:

In 2004, Rubingh founded the World Chess Boxing Organisation an institution dedicated to the amateur players, with the aim of publicizing the modality worldwide as an official sport.

In the same year, he created the first Chessboxing Club in Berlin, and over the years several countries followed suit, taking it to countries like China, India, Iran, Italy, Russia, Mexico and the United States.

Even with the global spread of the organization, the idea was only brought to professional height in 2013. Kuhn explains that there are two levels: “Of course there are amateur clubs, such as the Intelectual Fight Club, which we have here in Berlin. Anyone can come around, learn and participate in tournaments within a few months. But there is also a professional level, led by the organization Chessboxing Global, a company that Iepe founded after receiving a big incentive from the official creator of the idea, Enki Bilal. “

As a high admirer of the idea he created himself, in 2013 Enki Bilal developed a series of paintings inspired by the sport and invested one of his most significant works — which was evaluated and sold for 174,000 euros — in Iepe Rubingh’s company. In the same year, the first professional Chessboxing championship took place in Moscow.

But how does it work?

Chessboxing has undergone some changes since its first appearance, in which players needed to fight a full boxing match before the board enters the ring. Today, a fight is composed of 11 rounds alternating the two modalities. The match begins with a three-minute chess match that happens three times, alternated by five three-minute boxing assaults. Between each of them, an interval of one minute allows the players to change the pieces through the gloves and catch their breath. The game ends when there is a knockout, a checkmate, or when one of them exceeds the time allowed in the chess.

According to Kuhn, who has been fighting Chessboxing for more than ten years, the rules were created in a way that it is not so easy to compensate for the lack of skill in one sport for another.

“Most people who are interested in Chessboxing come from a background in boxing and learn chess, which is actually harder than the other way around.”, according to Kuhn, who has been fighting ChessBoxing for ten years”, “(…) we see many boxing fighters training and giving up because they are not so good at chess. On the other hand, only a few chess players come to us, but we teach them boxing, and they end up winning most of the tournament.” Most training takes place at special gyms, and anyone can attend. The schedule is divided into boxing sessions three times a week, and twice full Chessboxing workouts, with the presence of a chess instructor.

As impressive as the sport itself, are the people who participate in it. “At the last Intellectual Fight Club, I saw with my own eyes a 50-year-old Swedish teacher wrestling with a gym owner twenty years younger because he lost a bet with his students. He ended up being knocked out, but he fought well”, Kuhn tells me. Therefore, due to its peculiar background, getting into a Chessboxing tournament is meeting up a mix of eccentric artists, gym-goers, and teens with themed chess tees.

Next moves:

To date, more than 100 Chessboxing events and a thousand fights have already happened around the world, but the idea is going further. “We do not do a lot of marketing, but Iepe is really striving to leave everything professional internationally, looking for channels to broadcast the fights and more sponsors.”

For Kuhn, the next step is as bold as bringing an idea from comic books into real life: seeing Chessboxing in the Olympics.