Column

Sports enthusiasts, who are an impressionable lot, have embraced with breathless excitement a ‘new’ hybrid sport called ‘chessboxing’. As the name suggests, the game is a cocktail of chess and pugilism, and is being billed as ‘the ultimate combination of brawn and brain’. Contestants face off for six rounds of chess and five rounds of boxing, and the winner is decided through a knockout, a checkmate or, somewhat tamely, on points.

Yet, for all the hype that surrounds this new form of spectator sport, there’s nothing really new about chessboxing. That’s because for all its projection as a genteel, aristocratic game of the mind played by whiskered old gentlemen or by genial blokes, chess has, down the ages, always had much in common with heavyweight boxing.
Battles across a chessboard have not always been confined to the 64 squares, and far too many victory-crazed pawn-pushers have yielded too readily to the temptation to invoke the same sporting instincts that won Muhammad Ali much distinction in the square ring.

And not all chess players bring to the game the attitude of amiable cheerfulness that Viswanathan Anand is noted for.“Chess,” Grandmaster Nigel Short once said, “is ruthless: you’ve got to be prepared to kill people.” (Grandmaster Gata Kamsky’s father took him at his word, and threatened to kill Short over some typical chess dispute.)
Chess history is replete with instances of otherwise sedate games rapidly descending into fights, sometimes with fatal consequences. The 7th century Umayyad caliph Al-Walid is one of the earliest chess players to have turned the game into a form of bloodsport. It is said that he cracked open a courtier’s head using a chessboard following a dispute.

Four centuries later, William the Conqueror similarly broke a chessboard over the head of a French prince who had resorted to some low stratagem in order to win. The father’s sins did, in this case, visit the son. A generation later, LouisVI lost to William’s son Henry and, being a bad loser, threw the entire army of chess pieces at the victor.
The 15th century historian William Caxton has chronicled one of most celebrated homicides across a chessboard. Chess writer Norman Knight recounts Caxton’s racy narration of the incident at Emperor Charlemagne’s court, centred around the emperor’s nephew Berthelot and a French knight called Renaud de Montauban. The two were caught up in a tense game, but soon fell into a dispute. Harsh words ensued. Renaud, notes Caxton, was “right wroth and sore angered and swore that it should ill betide him; therefore Renaud took the chess board, and smote Berthelot upon his head so hard that he cloved him to the teeth. And thus Berthelot fell dead to the ground before him.”

In more modern times, however, competitive chess has become rather more tame, thanks to killjoy provisions by overzealous administrators who evidently know nothing of the Grand Passion the game gives rise to. Even so, there are colourful personalities who add them bit to the game with their idiosyncrasies. Former world champion Alexander Alekhine was a notoriously poor loser and, at a tournament in Vienna in 1922, he resigned somewhat spectacularly against Ernst Gruenfeld — by hurling his king across the room. On another occasion, after a defeat, Alekhine reported “reduced the furniture in his hotel room to matchwood.”

Likewise, in Amsterdam in 1950, two Grandmasters settled their dispute across the board with admirable cordiality, stepped outsideand then engaged in fisticuffs. Perhaps the most combative chess match of modern times was the Candidates match in 1977 between Viktor Korchnoi and Tigran Petrosian. It descended into a Match of Hate and at one point, the organisers installed a board under the table to stop the two Grandmasters from kicking each other!
Email: venky@dnaindia.net