Ice Swimming Chess
9.11.2015
Once upon a time there was a PhD student. He studied, made his research,
and eventually had his dissertation:
Karol Waga's dissertation. Every successful dissertation will
be followed by a karonkka party. Karol rented the entire
polar bear club. We had nice
dinner and party there. Sauna and swimming in the lake included.
Then Karol had his idea that let's play some ice swimming chess. Few
rounds in the sauna, and I eventually came up with the following rules.
Six volunteers were found and two teams were formed accordingly. Karol as
the hero of the night choose Pasi and Mikko Malinen into his team.
Andrei, Radu and Adam Ludvig formed the other team. (don't remember anymore)
Rules
The players in a team were organized so that one was playing, one is in
sauna, and one is moving to/from the sauna. The team member who is
playing must first dip into the water (down to the neck) after which
he is allowed to make the chess move. Normal sport chess rules applies:
no turns, one can move immediately after the swimming task is completed.
The team member who is playing will do this swim+chess sequence two times
after which change must happen and he should go to sauna. One person
should be in sauna all the time. No running is allowed, player's shall
move only by walking.
The game
Game started and few rounds were happily played. But as you can guess,
this one can become quite challenging for an inexperienced ice swimmer. :-)
So what happened is that Andrei started to hesitate going into the water
and eventually refused to do it anymore, despite that Radu was shouting
"get into the water!". Meanwhile, the opponen team continued playing
and taking piece after pieces. Then Radu realized that Pasi had left
sauna too early and started to claim win due to breaking the rules.
After short discussions the playing was stopped.
Well, we tried. It was fun as long as it lasted. Maybe we try it again
another time, maybe not. :-) Pasi and Karol decided to move the board
into the sauna and played there few rounds of normal chess. Dipping
into the water between each game.
Pictures
(non-existing)
All tournaments
