Chess boxing

Chess boxing, also written chessboxing, is a hybrid sport that fuses chess and boxing into a single contest. Two combatants alternate rounds of blitz chess and rounds of boxing until one of them wins by checkmate or by knockout. A player can also lose on the clock, as in ordinary chess, and a drawn chess round can be settled by a boxing decision. Events are usually held in a standard boxing ring with standard amateur boxing equipment and rules, and the chess round is played in the ring too, with the table, board and seating lifted in and out for each round. The sport has two governing bodies, the World Chess Boxing Association and the World Chess Boxing Organisation. It was conceived by the French comic book artist Enki Bilal, adapted by the Dutch performance artist Iepe Rubingh as an art performance, and has grown into a competitive sport that is particularly popular in the United Kingdom, India, Finland, France and Russia.