Chess Boxing: A brain-meets-brawn sport

Chess Boxing is a brain-meets-brawn sport combining chess, a cerebral board game, and boxing, a physical sport. Competitors fight in 11 alternating rounds: 6 rounds of chess and 5 rounds of boxing, and a victory in either chess or boxing ends the contest. The sport was invented by French comic book artist Enki Bilal and adapted by Dutch performance artist Lepe Rubingh as an art performance, subsequently becoming a competitive sport. Chess boxing is popular in India with more than 1,200 registered chess boxers, 35% of whom are women. The motto of the World Chess Boxing Organization is: “Fighting is done in the ring and wars are waged on the board”.

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