E H MAY T BEST MOVE (OR )

Piotr Pukos (center) and Sascha Wandkowsky face off at the 2008 International German Championship, in . WCHECKMATE ORI ?N IF YOU’RE , IT DOESN’T REALLY MATTER, AS LONG AS YOU’RE THE FIRST ONE TO DO IT. BY JACK BOULWARE

DECEMBER 15 2010 AMERICAN WAY 51 Sebastian Bauersfeld (left) and Jan Mielke meet at the 2008 German Middleweight Championship, in .

McGregor’s interest in be- gan seven years ago when he was in Bu - dapest and spotted a flyer advertising an upcoming bout. The subject was intriguing. He was already a chess geek at school — and unbeatable among his circle of friends — ASANTAL MONICA’SO OCEAN FRONTN WALKG SITS A but he just shrugged and walked on. The HAVEN FOR GEEKS OF THE GAME OF CHESS. THE concept stuck in his head, though, and over INTERNATIONAL CHESS PARK, COMPRISING A the next six months, he would occasionally GIANT AND DOZENS OF REGULATION- Google the subject. PLAY CHESS TABLES, DRAWS PEOPLE FROM ALL Then, in 2008, while McGregor was on WALKS OF LIFE. INCLUDING MEN, WHO, THREE assignment in Africa, a chess friend of his DAYS A WEEK, WILL STAND BETWEEN THE 2- TO e-mailed him a Wikipedia link about chess 3-FOOT-TALL CHESS PIECES AND PHYSICALLY boxing along with the note, “You could be BEAT THE CRAP OUT OF EACH OTHER. LEGALLY. their Muhammad Ali.” He kept following the sport through various European websites, and after grad school, he tried his hand at boxing. Un - In the midst of this strange scuffle, a Angeles Chessboxing Club, the first group fortunately, it was a difficult discipline to giant bearded man will suddenly blow a in North America sanctioned by the Berlin- grasp, but after former heavyweight cham- whistle, and the two opponents will dash based World Chess Boxing Organization pion George Foreman answered McGregor’s over to a , remove their gloves (WCBO). He stages competitions, teaches e-mail and passed along encouragement, and sit down to continue a game of chess. classes at the Chess Park and even com - McGregor was more motivated than ever. Spectators will stop and stare, some even petes. He hopes to help spread the sport to “I asked around the boxing community snapping a few pictures. But what they don’t the rest of America, promoting brains and [to find out] where the best gym was in realize is that they are witnessing the birth brawn by making both boxing and chess L.A. I basically went in there, with all these of a brand-new sport in the U.S. — a unique more approachable. hard-core fighters around, and said, ‘Hi, mashup of boxing and chess. But Santa Monica pedestrians don’t know I want to do chess boxing! One round of any of that. They just keep their distance. boxing, one round of chess.’ They were like, “I don’t think they truly get that we’re do- ‘What?’ and pointed me to a trainer. ‘He’ll THE BEARDED MAN, 6-foot-9 photo- ing both,” McGregor says with a chuckle. “I train you, whatever.’ ” journalist Andrew McGregor, runs the Los haven’t actually been spoken to by anyone.” McGregor persisted, though, regularly

52 AMERICAN WAY DECEMBER 15 2010 working out at the gym; his boxing im - synthesis of Yugoslavian comics, French a performance-art stunt. The two sports proved, and eventually he was sparring with apocalypse, Dutch performance art and had to fuse together in such a way that ei- pros. By this time he was also communicat- lager-fueled German nightlife. ther could decide the outcome. ing through Facebook with chess boxers in Rubingh and his friends practiced the Europe, and he had launched a website for concept among themselves and mapped out his new chess-boxing club, which eventually AS A YOUNG MAN growing up in Am- a general rule book. A match begins with partnered with the WCBO. sterdam in the late 1980s, Iepe Rubingh a four-minute round of chess, after which Intrigued by the enthusiasm, WCBO rep- was introduced to comics via his father’s the chess table is removed from the ring, resentative David Pfeifer flew to Los Ange- collection, and he read with great inter - and fighters put on gloves and wale on each les in early 2010 and met with McGregor. est the 1992 graphic novel Froid Équateur other for three minutes. The bout alternates After the two chatted, McGregor said, “Let’s (“Equator Cold”), by a Yugoslavian artist between the two sports for 11 rounds, with do an event. You’re here.” named Enki Bilal. Within the sci-fi tale of a one minute of rest between each. A win is McGregor sent an e-mail out to his futuristic Paris steeped in violence, panels determined by either a knockout in the ring friends, the local media picked up on the depicted a 12-round boxing match, followed or a on the board. story, and more than 70 people showed up by an equally brutal The Platoon cul- to watch the L.A. debut of chess boxing. game of chess. tural development Final outcome? Andrew “the Fightin’ Phi- Rubingh even- “FEW PEOPLE CAN STILL THINK STRAIGHT center in Berlin lanthropist” McGregor, the fledgling who tually moved to staged the world’s became a boxer because of an e-mail from Berlin, where he AFTER A RIGHT TO THE HEAD. first chess-boxing George Foreman, actually checkmated the established himself YOU NEED TO BE ABLE TO PULL OFF THAT match in 2003, be- established German competitor, David “Dr. as the artist Iepe, a tween Iepe the Jok- Kong” Pfeifer. Now McGregor was performance-artist CHAMPION CHESS MOVE WHILE er and his friend, thoroughly hooked. prankster. But he BLOOD IS POURING FROM YOUR NOSE.” Luis the Lawyer. Pfeifer then explained to McGregor more never forgot Bilal’s In addition to the about the origins of chess boxing, and the powerful images. traditional boxing American finally learned how the sport be- One day in 2002, during a conversation announcer and ring girls, a chess expert gan. Chess dates back some 1,500 years, with art friends about their mutual hobby provided play-by-play commentary, and the and boxing may have emerged as early as of boxing, it suddenly occurred to Rubingh audience followed each chess move on video 3,000 B.C. But the of the two that one could appropriate Bilal’s concept screens throughout the club. is only seven years old. The sport’s roots lie and stage a match that combined both box- Rubingh emerged victorious by - in modern Europe, and they are an unlikely ing and chess. They all agreed it couldn’t be mate, and shortly thereafter, he set about founding the World Chess Boxing Organization. When the WCBO’s first-ever world championship was staged a few months later at a sold- out concert hall in , between the same competitors, he won that also, as Luis the Lawyer ran out of time during the final chess round. Publicity came naturally to Rub- ingh; as Iepe, he had already en - gineered massive art pranks that had stopped traffic in the streets of both Berlin and Tokyo. Promoting chess boxing was not going to pose a problem for him. “Chess boxing is extreme physical stress combined with a huge men- tal test,” he told media at the time. “The adrenaline after boxing inhib- its your ability to think, making the chess harder. Few people can still Bauersfeld and Mielke match up again, gloves on. think straight after a right hook to the head. You need to be able to pull off that champion chess move while

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blood is pouring from your nose.” The WCBO motto, “Fighting is done in the ring and wars are waged on the board,” spread throughout Europe’s chess and box- ing networks, and more bouts soon fol - lowed. Chess-boxing clubs quickly began popping up in other countries, from Ger- many to England to Siberia. In 2006, an ESPN broadcast about the odd sport caught the eye of David Depto, an engineer living in San Francisco. In the news segment, the WCBO said it was look- ing for American opponents to fight the German champion. Depto had been a boxer for years, and he was no slouch at chess. So he sent the WCBO some information, and about six months later, the organization responded, asking for videos of his past fights. They also requested that he play chess with them online. He passed the test, and none other than the sport’s founder, Iepe Rubingh, flew out to California to meet him. “We did some workouts together, ran some wind sprints through a park, played a few rounds of chess,” Depto says. “He liked what he saw, and so I got the fight.” Depto was already in top physical shape, so he focused on working with a chess coach on a strategy that would mesh with his ag- gressive boxing style — and he prepared himself to be the first American to compete in chess boxing, which he had never even seen in person. “I knew going in that I probably [wasn’t] going to be the strongest chess player,” he remembers. “But I’m also one of the more experienced fighters. Therefore, I wanted to develop a , develop some moves to force the game to slow down. My goal was to go into the ring, get some shots, go for the knockout.” In 2007, Depto flew to Berlin to fight the German champion, a 37-year-old police of- ficer named Frank “Anti Terror” Stoldt. To Depto, it was clear that the Germans knew how to stage a bout. The ring sat in the middle of an underground nightclub, sur- rounded by alcohol, loud music and 1,200 fans screaming for bloodshed. “It was a lot of fun,” Depto recalls. “When I got into the ring, and they were playing the national anthem, it was overwhelming, representing the U.S. in this new sport.” But the American wasn’t able to fully relax and land his punches. Then, Stoldt

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checkmated him in the seventh round. Depto returned to the next year and fought another bout in Cologne, against Swedish contender Konrad Rikardson. This time, Depto was more prepared. He won by a knockout punch in the second round. “I got the feeling they were a little dis - appointed,” he says. “It went one round of chess, one round of boxing, and it was over.” Depto was unable to compete in the championship that year, and he has been plagued with injuries ever since. But he’s had time to reflect on his career in chess boxing. “I don’t think there’s been a ton of strat- egy yet,” he admits. “But because of the al- ternating rounds, there’s more opportunity

THE RING SAT IN THE MIDDLE OF AN UNDERGROUND NIGHTCLUB, SURROUNDED BY ALCOHOL, LOUD MUSIC AND 1,200 FANS SCREAMING FOR BLOODSHED.

for physical rest than just boxing. So the fighters are going to be much more recov- ered, fresh to go every round. Very few guys win with one-punch power. Most people win on the .” McGregor agrees that the sport has not fully developed yet, but he says it’s incredi- bly addictive. The adrenaline rush of getting smacked in the face, then sitting down and trying to focus on the chess while trembling and sweating and dripping blood, creates an entirely new experience. “I always want to win on the chessboard, because it’s more [impressive],” he says, laughing. “If you can orchestrate a check- mate when somebody’s trying to kill you, that’s pretty sick!” Although the sport is new, says Mc - Gregor, regional differences have already become apparent. European cultures are often more fluent than Americans in chess, and Russians are particularly good at it. Fighters will wear headphones during the chess round to out the crowd noise. Many competitors are professional boxers, and they refuse to use headgear in order to keep the experience more purely pugilistic.

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In establishing a club in Los Angeles, McGregor realized he’d have to adapt the sport for U.S. sensibilities. It needed to have a modicum of safety. “For the Ameri- can stuff, that’s not going to work,” he says. “People are not going to sign on to that.” So he instituted amateur rules, with headgear strongly encouraged. After his club’s two bouts this year, McGregor says, the number of inquiries increased. “Lots of interest from men and women [in their 30s and] in grad school,” he says. Getting in shape and having fun is one thing. But does this have any future as a legitimate revenue stream? Dep- to thinks that’s the missing link right now. “For this thing to grow, there has to be sponsorship,” he says. “They can sell tickets to cover the events, but there’s not much money yet. Other guys who think the idea is novel are starting it in their own gyms. That’s been their growth model so far.” And indeed, compared with boxing or chess, the absence of money in - ing is palpable. Matches display a refresh- ing lack of logos in the ring and around the venue. According to Depto, who traveled to Germany twice for fights, winning purses were “several hundred euros,” and boxers’ travel expenses were paid. But nobody ap- pears to be chess boxing professionally as a primary source of income. “There is no chess boxer — so far — who makes a living out of the sport,” says the WCBO’s David Pfeifer. “Most of us are working in different jobs. The WCBO does offer cash to the fighters who participate in championships. [But] it’s more of a thank- you for their hard work and preparation.” For others who just love the sport itself, like McGregor, a ton of marketing at chess boxing would turn it into another dodgeball league — all logo and no heart. To him, the grassroots origins of chess boxing and the physical and mental acuity it takes to compete are what make the sport special. “I want to do it because it’s awe - some — people can benefit from it,” he says. “People should learn how to defend themselves, but this is self-defense in a healthy fashion.” He adds, “I think it’s going to blow up. I think it will become like snowboarding over the next 10 years.”

JACK BOULWARE prefers to fight his battles through e-mail — without attachments, please.

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