“You have to learn to think under water”
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Full-on concentration: sports inventor Etan Ilfeld playing underwater chess.
Source: Etan Ilfeld
Magazin des unpopulären Sports (MUS): Hello Etan. Thank you for talking to us about underwater chess. When will underwater chess be olympic?
Etan Ilfeld: Hi. I wouldn't hold my breath for that to happen, but it would be great if it did.
MUS: Do you still play yourself or do you mostly act on an organizational level? How well have you placed in the past world championships?
Ilfeld: I'm a USA Chess Federation master, so I'm reasonably strong at chess and I enjoy being in the pool, so this variant suits me quite well. I won the championship a few times in the early years and took silver in 2018. The competition keeps getting stronger each year.
MUS: Do you think you would win against Magnus Carlsen in underwater chess?
Ilfeld: I seriously doubt it. Magnus is in great physical shape and his chess is so much stronger. However, he'd still need to train beforehand.
MUS: That sounds like you have met Magnus Carlsen before.
Ilfeld: I met Magnus a few times. In December 2019, I attended a charity dinner to raise funds for chess in schools in the UK. Every table had a chessboard and would play against about a dozen of Grandmasters including Magnus. The Grandmasters were having fun and not playing that seriously, but I'm still very proud that I led my table to victory!
“Swapping chess clocks for holding your breath seemed like an elegant solution”
MUS: Back to underwater chess. What is the challenge of playing underwater for the first time?
Ilfeld: It is quite hard to play diving chess the first few times as you need to become used to thinking and seeing the pieces underwater. We had a very strong master come and play a few years ago but he wasn't comfortable in the water, and couldn't think for very long so he didn't do that well.
MUS: What is the most important skill in underwater chess?
Ilfeld: Definitely chess playing and keeping cool under pressure. Of course, getting comfortable thinking underwater is also very important.
MUS: We know that chess boxing has played a part in the invention of underwater chess. Can you elaborate? How did you end up inventing underwater chess?
Ilfeld: Boxing chess is very amusing to watch but I think that the boxing plays a bigger role than chess. Body types need to be matched for example. As an avid chess player, I was curious to explore a chess variant that was also physical but still revolved primarily around chess. Swapping chess clocks for holding your breath seemed like an elegant solution. From there it was just a matter of a bit of experimentation.
“It would be great to have the process standardized”
MUS: What are the next steps for this young sport?
Ilfeld: Like I’ve said, we've got an annual world championship and people seem to really enjoy it, so the foundation is sound. The next step is to either manufacture diving chess sets at a cheaper cost for more people as currently they are custom made. Alternatively, I like the idea of creating an open source production method that anyone could use to convert a standard tournament chess set to a diving chess set. Of course, there are a few engineering challenges but it would be great to have the process standardized. Then more individuals and sports clubs could have a set and introduce the game to new players.
MUS: Do you play other (unpopular) sports? Or have you in the past?
Ilfeld: I love playing tennis and have experimented with several odd tennis variants. I also made up an amusing ping pong variant called Double Shlomo that all the kids in my neighborhood used to play when I was a kid. I'm always happy to try new sports and learn new things.
MUS: Now I am intrigued. That sounds like an even more unpopular sport! How do you play Double Shlomo?
Ilfeld: Double Shlomo is unique in that gameplay continued after a point is supposedly over. So, if the ping pong ball is on the ground, the player whose turn it is can still save the point by scraping the ball off the ground and back into the table in one swing--kind of like golf. We had different scoring systems, but the core idea was the ability to continue playing after the ball was on the ground (or in the case of our basement, on top of random objects that were scattered about). It was very silly and entertaining.
MUS: Thank you very much for the conversation.
Questions were asked by Hannah Wolff