Never before have we seen chess pieces floating. Now it happened. At the National Underwater Chess Championships. Contrary to the intention, they had become detached from the board, and a little later the Groningen grandmaster Sipke Ernst would still win his game.
It sounds like a crazy sport and it is, although the participants take it very seriously. And that should be the case. There’s quite a bit involved. For example, the chessboard must match the pieces being played. For Sipke Ernst, the winner of the first National Championships last year, here in the Willem Alexander Sports Complex at Zernike in Groningen, there was no match between those two elements.
Pieces were mixed up
“One board has a thicker coating than the other. Then you need pieces with heavier magnets,” said organizer Govert Pellikaan on Friday evening at the second edition. In short, the pieces were swapped with those from another game.
And so there were more obstacles. Amir Nicolai, a strong chess player from Friesland, had to go to the side twice to clean his glasses. He promptly got wet, literally and figuratively, against Josephine Damen. Then there is the rule that you are not allowed to hinder the opponent, so you are also not allowed to hit them. That turned out to be quite a challenge with all the struggling to stay under water.
Panting and half cheering
The height of the water was 1.20 meters, and the chess players, in this case twice twelve, had to alternately go to the bottom for their move. As soon as one was up again, the other just went under. “I have mastered the technique!”, Nijmegen resident Tom van der Most came out of the bath, half panting, half cheering. “You always have to keep watching when it is the other person’s turn. Then you know what to do next!”
And watching is quite difficult, in that turbulent water. Also staying underwater. Omar Said struggled towards defeat. ‘His’ water hit the shore and some people who were watching. “You have to inhale deeply and then exhale very calmly when you go down,” Bram Knoop – who had just won a game himself – tipped him for the next match. The games lasted about ten minutes, but the next round was only started once the previous round had been completed by everyone.
Nicer than down there
If break dancing and shooting clay pigeons from the air are Olympic sports, then this is also possible, right? “Please not,” Pellikaan responded. “But next year we want to hold the World Cup here.” The chess games are already going international, because they are being exchanged with London (where it started in 2013) and the US. Furthermore, chess is not played underwater anywhere.
While her husband André van der Graaf kept an eye on things as an arbiter, wading among the chess players, his wife Angelique was also keeping track of scores as an arbiter. They alternated those roles. They came from the area, right? “No, from Brabant. But we really like this.”
They were now also no referees at the ‘real’ tournament on site. Some chess players from that tournament had dropped out, including the only 10-year-old American Johan Ghosh. Sipke Ernst, favorite, also skipped the real, ‘dry’ tournament. “He likes this better,” Pellikaan revealed.