Chess boxing | Hacker News Reader

Chess boxing

en.wikipedia.org

44 pointspaulbaumgart37 comments

I loved this idea of combining physical and intellectual combat.

The Wikipedia article for Go says:

Backgammon is a "man vs. fate" contest, with chance playing a strong role in determining the outcome. Chess, with rows of soldiers marching forward to capture each other, embodies the conflict of "man vs. man". Because the handicap system tells Go players where they stand relative to other players, an honestly ranked player can expect to lose about half of their games; therefore, Go can be seen as embodying the quest for self-improvement—"man vs. self".

So the pairing of boxing with chess is quite apt. Which physical games would you choose for backgammon and Go?

To run with the "man vs. self" idea, I would consider pairing a climbing competition with Go.

And Backgammon with Russian Roulette.

Some years ago we invented this sport independently, but our version had three components: boxing, chess, and alcohol.

A round of shots after each round of boxing?

I think it could also be livened up by making the event simultaneous: Attempting to avoid falling behind by more than 2 shots or letting your clock run out on the chess game (presumably on a large, sturdy touch screen to let you designate moves while wearing gloves) while dodging punches.

Next chessboxing event in London is now on Saturday! If you haven't seen it, you should. It's brilliant!

http://www.londonchessboxing.com/PAGES/Events-%20Up&Comi...

I have read a long article on this (on paper, so no links). It explained that even people who are good at both chess, and boxing, often have issues combining them. The rush of adrenaline of the boxing interferes with the thinking needed for the chess part.

Well, there's barely know Antichess, or Suicide-Chess http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antichess and I'd love to see a Anti-Chess-Boxing.

"stop hitting yourself!"

There is a certain ELO rating required to participate; can anyone familiar with chess tell me how difficult it is to reach this level? Is it something an amateur can fairly easily obtain or does it really require significant talent and/or study?

If I googled it correctly, elo 1800 is required. I'd say with average chess talent, it can take about 4-5 years of regular study and competitive play to reach 1800. So taking your description, it's something between...but hard to quantify since how quickly one advances in chess play levels is highly individual.

Yes it's 1800, sorry thought it was mentioned in the Wikipedia article but didn't know it by heart. Well there goes my chance of ever becoming a chess boxer then I guess :)

I dont have an ELO, but had a USCF of about 1900 when I used to play as a teenager. It took me about five years of lessons and tournaments to get to that point, dedicating about 5 to 10 hours per week or so.

Really the best way to improve your game is to play opponents MUCH stronger than you. It can be disheartening losing most of the time, but you will improve much quicker than you would by playing in groups of your own strength.

There's an RTS called "Kung-fu Chess."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kung-fu_chess

It would be interesting to see a game of speed-chess played on a rather large field with 200 to 300 pound weights used as pieces. Another variant: speed-chess on a large field where the pieces are soccer balls. This would lead to tactics where the opponent is made to move a powerful piece like their queen so often that they tire out and make a critical mistake.

I prefer Tressling.

Is that like wrestling, only with Tessla coils?

ha ha ha!!! ...woah! I just found the Tresling page: http://tresling.org/

Well, the people in the picture at the bottom of that page sure do look like they're having fun!

i worked for the organization (www.showroommama.nl) that helped this artist to realize this. it was a really interesting project!

the artist had a title battle in amsterdam back then, fighting an amature boxing friend of his. after a heavy battle, the artist, iepe, won by the flag on the chess clock.

funny fact: "kung fu" has sometimes been called chess-boxing, as there was so much tactics to it.

There's also a real-time strategy game based on chess called "Kung-Fu Chess".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kung-fu_chess

Is anyone doing any kind of analysis on if players chess play begins to suffer as they take more shots to the head?

No analysis necessary, getting hit in the head is bad for your health/concentration.

Well we don't know without analysis... Health concerns are mostly long-term, and there's no definitive answer on how much getting hit in the head is required for permanent brain damage. Re: concentration, I'm even less convinced; maybe it's not the getting hit that is bad for concentration but the switch between mental/physical activity. Or maybe concentration improves with more adrenaline.

No definitive answer? Surely there are plenty of boxing champions and football players for data on this.

Yes, for boxing champions, but even there it's hard to say what is caused by the boxing and what is caused by genetic factors. People often say 'look at Ali!' but there's no way to tell if it's really because of the boxing. But more importantly, note that I said 'how much getting hit in the head is required'. See e.g.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/05/070502093035.ht...

http://www.bmj.com/content/335/7624/809.full

Both from 2007. First one says that amateur boxers do get brain damage, second one says they don't. (there are the top google hits, I looked into this deeper about 5 years ago; at that time there was very little research done, let alone consensus.)

Point being, the question is: does getting hit in the head pose linear risks/ I.e, simplified, do a number of cells die for each punch or kick to the head? Or does it require a certain threshold of damage for there to be any cognitive effects?

I don't compete in any sport but I've trained plenty of full contact sports over the last 10 or 15 years. I've been punched and kicked in the face a lot, with and without gloves, been knocked out briefly once, been choked out several times. Still my head/brain has taken nowhere near the amount of punishment a pro or even good amateur fighter gets; my brains gets plenty of time between trainings to recover. I can never know for sure if my training has caused brain damage, and if it did, in what form that will manifest itself (or has already, maybe), but I don't have reasons to believe it affected my cognitive functions. Maybe it did and the damage caused decreased intelligence, making me believe that it didn't :)

There are definitely short-term cognitive consequences to getting hit in the head. The nausea you can experience with head trauma can also interfere with thinking.

After suffering a blow to the head, I was given a battery of cognitive tests: Repeat this sequence of numbers, and the like. Three days out I was failing the tests rather spectacularly. At five days everything was back to normal.

I'd be interested in 100m sprints interspersed with 60sec of chess, to see how much of the difficulty is due to hits to the head.

It's like homeopathy. No analysis necessary, it's just works, you know.

Kind of funny, but not really meaningful. There are different priors. Prior probability that water is actually medicine: ~0. Prior probability that repeat head trauma causes damage: >0. If you'd ever seen an MRI of diffuse axonal injury you'd have a different perspective.

A good example of a priori knowledge: "All bachelors are unmarried". This is true, because it's so by definition, it's probability == 1. The effect of boxing is not so obvious as you claim (prior probability that repeat head trauma causes damage: <1), and should be verified. See also roel_v's responses in this sub-thread.

Please reread what I wrote instead of setting up a strawman; you'll see that I did not write "=1" but instead >0. We have prior knowledge on this from evidence.

It's not prior knowledge but a prior conjecture. If you know something, you know it for sure.

That's not how probability works.

Completely anecdotal, but I've tried chessboxing (as an amateur) a number of times. I'm an awful, awful chess player but a decent boxer and I'm reasonably fit.

Personally I've found some sort of link between mental and physical exhaustion, though I'm not sure which causes which.

I think that being struck in the head probably leads to a loss of control and an overall inability to remain cool more than it affects mental capacity. People panic when someone's trying to punch them. That said, the more experienced (and physically fit) a boxer, the longer they can last before becoming overwhelmed. I don't think it's as simple as purely a mechanical reaction to being punched in the head.

But isn't there a minimum of 1800 ELO points to compete? I asked elsewhere in this thread and it seems that 1800 is not quite 'awful' :)

It would seem that's just for WCBO Championship fights. The amateur boxing world is almost entirely self-regulating.

Ah I see. Good luck in your chessboxing career :)

Also anecdotal, from my exercise playing frisbee, wrestling, and ultimate calculus. If you don't train to do something while hurt, then you're going to poorer when hurt. Doesn't matter if your use to getting your smashed into the ground over and over. If you haven't been practicing integrating by parts while getting smashed around, you're going to suffer. Granted, you'll do better than someone who's not use to getting smashed around at all.

This is particularly true for head hits, cause beyond the pain, head hits really do make you dizzy and think fuzzy. I know in my experience, hitting smacked hard in my head will make my vision explode into white fuzz, and also temporarily make me feel like I just shot back 4 shots of rum.

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