Scott Berkun

Innovation in sports: Chessboxing

One breakthrough moment as a kid was the first time I played a pinball machine that, when you hit the right bumpers, would release a second ball. This little change transformed pinball forever, as the level of panic required to managed two or more balls at once created an entirely different experience of game play.

A bigger breakthrough occurred when watching the biathlon in the 1984 Olympics. What on the surface seemed to be a boring combination of two boring sports (skiing and precision rifling), was a suprisingly interesting event to watch – a fascinating combination of two very different skill sets. It’s still one of my favorite sports. It made me realize you can make interesting things by combining two boring, but creatively unrelated things, and putting them together.

So when I first heard about Chessboxing, I was thrilled. The name itself expresses everything. Like the biathlon, it takes two unrelated skills at opposite ends of the physical/intellectual spectrum, and throws them in together.

Here’s how it works:

• Competitors play a 4 minute round of chess, alternating with a two minute round of boxing
• You win by knockout or checkmate
• The chess is speed-chess, which means you have a total of 12 minutes of time to make your chess moves. If you run out, you lose.

I’ve never seen a chessboxing match – there don’t seem to be to many of them yet, but I’d watch.

I’ve also come across SlamBall, which combines basketball with, well, trampolines. It’s basically a version of basketball focused on trying to be like a video game, as the trampolines that make up the court allow for amazing dunks, blocks and lots of high impact mid-air collisions (Youtube highlight reel here)

So what new sports have you seen? Or always wished existed? It can be hard to think of it, but there was a day when soccer, baseball, and football were only ideas in someone’s mind.

(Photo credit: wikipedia)

• Posted Monday, November 10th, 2008 at 9:30 am


• in creative thinking | 5 Comments » |