Chess Boxing match

[polecateddy]

A high profile chess boxing match from yesterday between English International Master, Lawrence Trent and Canadian Grandmaster, Aman Hambleton. Both obviously terrible boxers but potentially these sort of events might prove to have a growing popularity. Time will tell!

[Boxerbeetle]

I’ve always wanted to see a Lennox - Vitali chess-boxing match.

[forcefraser]

What are the rules?

[polecateddy]

Off the top of my head they alternative chess and boxing ‘rounds.’ It’s probably like 10 minutes and an increment of 2 or 3 seconds on the chess clock, so they basically do 90 seconds of chess, glove up and do a 90 second round, then another chess round and so on, until someone either gets stopped or wins the chess game. There will be more to it than that probably to stop boring draws. Presumably if it goes right to the end there must be a points decision of some kind? Not really sure.

[forcefraser]

If you can't play chess but can box like nobody's business, you could likely muller the chess boffin in the first boxing round?

[Terminator666]

Terry marsh does this if I remember correctly

[polecateddy]

If you can't play chess but can box like nobody's business, you could likely muller the chess boffin in the first boxing round?

I’d think so, as long as you played slowly and don’t fall for Scholar’s Mate in the first 90 seconds or whatever it is.

[deadpan]

I tried it once, it was embarrassing. I got knocked out by a queen.

[polecateddy]

Surprisingly big crowd in attendance - Eddie Hearn should get on this;

[margaret thatcher]

Lol yup, next dazn card

settle the carlson vs nieman controversy that way

[polecateddy]

Lol yup, next dazn card

settle the carlson vs nieman controversy that way

Yeah exactly. I think they’ll do a few more. I don’t think it will look any prettier as they’re pretty much all non-boxers. There was quite a competitive girls match;


There apparently is a minimum standard of chess rating needed to do this sport, so it does stop total non-chess players/great boxers beating up on the chess masters.

[margaret thatcher]

2nd fight, white was about as bad a boxer as it gets, but if you cant stop the grandmaster i guess you're going to lose

[Ruthless-RKO]

YouTube star admits he lost $200,000 running $1.6million chessboxing event

Streamer Ludwig packed out the 10,000+ capacity Galen Center in Los Angeles for a celebrity 'chessboxing' event, but after deciding to make the show free-to-air, he ended up taking a big hit

Social media star Ludwig Anders Ahgren, who goes by his first name Ludwig, has admitted he lost $200,000 promoting a celebrity chessboxing event.

The renowned YouTuber and streamer, who has around eight million followers across social media, put on the event, in which fighters competed in a round of timed chess before putting on gloves and boxing. And despite drawing a capacity crowd of over 10,000 to the Galen Center in Los Angeles and attracting 3.6m viewers to the stream of the show, he took a big hit on the event.

Ludwig made the decision to allow fans to watch the December 11 event for free on YouTube, as opposed to putting it on pay-per-view like most YouTube boxing events, or placing it behind a broadcast paywall such as DAZN. And even with millions tuning in and a capacity crowd buying tickets, the $1.6million cost of putting on the event returned around $1.4m.

"The chessboxing event happened on Sunday, it was f***ing crazy," he told fans during a recent stream. "We had 317,000 peak viewers, the VOD [Video On Demand] of the stream has 3.5m viewers. The event itself cost $1.6m, so by every single metric I think we could find it was the biggest event I have ever done."

Asked by a fan if he had made a profit on the show, which was a success by almost every standard, he replied: "No, it lost a bit of money. I think it lost like $200,00, maybe $150,000, which isn't that bad. 'It's not that bad, it's not that bad, copium, copium, copium'. But it isn't that bad because I can make up a good chunk of that."

He proceeded to joke he would make that loss back by making reaction videos to a dating video series called 'The Button', which he is known for on his channel. It appeared from the YouTuber's tone that he didn't seem concerned about the financial loss, as he recapped the event in good spirits, ultimately deeming it to have worked out well.

YouTube boxing has become massively popular over the last four years with the likes of KSI and the Paul brothers Jake and Logan making millions from the endeavour. But Ludwig's event attempted to add something different, with less mainstream influencers involved in the new take on boxing and chess.

[polecateddy]

To be fair he aired it for free which is very commendable in this pay per view age we seem to have fallen into.

[Ruthless-RKO]

To be fair he aired it for free which is very commendable in this pay per view age we seem to have fallen into.

He spent $1.6m to put it all on and he made back $1.4m Not bad.. the loss is not huge (as he said). Shows it's not a bad concept.

Sold out Galen Center. 10k seats.

Most Boxers just about sell out less than that.

[polecateddy]

Probably the achilles heel of the concept will be that it’s driven by chess streamer personalities stepping into the ring so to speak. There’s only a finite number of those and pretty much universally they are terrrible boxers. Still might have a couple of good shows left in them I guess. No doubt on PPV next time.

[margaret thatcher]

you could get them to play any game between the rounds really, then you could have anyone do it

[margaret thatcher]

you could get them to play anything between the rounds really, then you could have anyone do it

get dudes to play call of duty between rounds or something

[gilgamesh]

They need Wladimir Klitschko to make the transition to Chess Boxing. He's retired from straight up Boxing, but he could reign for 10 more years at this