Chess boxing

When French cartoonist Enki Bilal created chess-boxing for his 1992 graphic novel Froid Équateur, he surely never imagined that one day it would become an actual sport. But it has, and it's a surprisingly popular one.

The rules of chess-boxing almost read like surrealist poetry. Here's Wikipedia's summary:

A match between two opponents consists of up to eleven alternating rounds of boxing and chess sessions, starting with a four-minute chess round followed by three minutes of boxing and so on. Between rounds there is a one minute pause, during which competitors change their gear.

"If you don't know anything about chess-boxing it might seem a strange combination", chess-boxing trainer Andreas Dilschneider told Time Magazine, "but if you think about it, in both sports there are many parallels." Just as you can be knocked out in boxing, "you can be in front in chess for 10 or 20 moves. You can build up a very strong position. You can be a very good player. But if for one moment you are not aware, and you make one bad move, the whole game is over."


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