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The following article on an interesting and more physical alternative of the game- Diving Chess, is by Albert Silver of ChessBase….

‘Chess variants come in all shapes and sizes. While most involve variations on the actual rules of chess, such as replacing pieces captured (crazyhouse), adding new pieces (Grand Chess), some try to include it under very unusual circumstances such as the famous Chess Boxing. One variant, already running for a few years now, is Diving Chess, played underwater, and in which your thinking time is determined by how long you can hold your breath!

The rules are fairly simple, albeit with a twist. The game itself is a normal chess game, except it is played in a swimming pool... at the bottom! Classic pictures of chess players playing on a floating board abound, but this is one variation that is far more challenging.

In Diving Chess, the entire game takes place underwater with the board, designed especially for this, at the bottom. The water is essentially chest high and each player takes turns diving under the water to make their moves.

Although informal games are held anywhere at anytime, the aficionados have put together a ‘World Championship’ each year for several years now. In 2015 it was held in Third Space Gym in Soho, London. Each player can only think as long as they are able to hold their breath. Once you’ve made a move and come up for air, your opponent must dive and cannot come back up until they’ve played a move, and then it’s your turn to dive again…

This brings to fore some tactical aspects. Since the rules stipulate you must dive as soon as the other player comes up, one way to pressure the opponent is to play quickly, leaving them less time to recover their breath. Another technical aspect is using weights. Even if you think spending 15-20 seconds underwater is no big deal, it can become a lot more challenging if you have to make an effort to stay under water. Even diving up and down, combined with constantly holding your breath, can soon become tiresome. In spite of the competitive side to this all, it is ultimately still all about having fun in a pool with an original twist on chess’

An article on the 2018 edition of the event was amusingly titled ‘Contestants breathless as underwater chess plumbs new depths’

Few sports have such a deep and complicated world that is completely closed to outsiders. One of the reasons chess has such an intellectual reputation is because if you don’t understand chess, you don’t understand it at all, and this also makes it more attractive to us, the members of the club. It’s like speaking a foreign language or liking cauliflower, it puts you into a special group of people that understand something that those out of the group can’t. – Mig Greengard