I fucking love Aliens. From the hotness of Sigourney Weaver to the antics of Bill Paxton, the movie will always hold a special place in my heart, save for the shitty video games. Finally, after years of cranking out the aforementioned shitty video games, Aliens comes to your tabletop with this special chess set. You’ll receive this intricate board, face huggers as pawns, the Alien Queen, Ripley in the cargo loader and such.

I have no idea where you can buy it or how much it costs (or if some fanboy made it) but it’s quite the work of art, isn’t it?

Link (via)

Who would’ve thought that boxers would like to exercise their brain in ways other than getting punched in the face. Berlin is home to the world’s biggest chess boxing club. That’s right, you read correctly: chess boxing club. A chess boxing match consists of six rounds of chess and five rounds of boxing but a knockout or checkmate could end the game prematurely.

Two men square off in the ring, separated by a chess board. After four minutes of mind bending chess, the two opponents put on their gloves and go at it. Three minutes of heavy-handed brawling goes down before the bell is rung, the chessboard is set back up in the middle of the ring and the boxers find themselves faced off with yet another potential check mate scenario.

“For me the thing is to channel your violence, to control it. Hence the marriage between boxing and chess,” said Rubingh, president of the international federation of chess boxing.

Link

Chalk Chess is the brainchild of UK design studio SUCK. Each piece is a piece of chalk that can be used to draw a chess board anywhere you please. Just draw a grid, color it in with your pieces and you’re ready to whoop anyone’s ass in a straight-thuggin’ game of chess.

Though it’s just a prototype at the moment, I could see Chalk Chess becoming a reality sometime soon. The only issue I have is that eventually, the pieces will become worn down and unrecognizable as time goes on. Also, what if it starts to rain? Will your pieces melt quickly? Surely the board would wash away. Perhaps Chalk Chess is best left for a beautiful day in the park.

Link (via)

If only Bobby Fischer were still around to see this (he read our blog daily, don’t believe me? Prove me wrong. We win.) Whatever happened to playing chess on a flat cardboard square? When Bobby Fischer left the earth, so did the great tradition of the game of chess.

The Sharper Image Roll-Up Chess Board, seems to be saying “Hey, look at me, Bobby Fischer. I’m invading your beloved game.” Bah, get off my lawn. Though, being magnetic is definitely a plus. And if you aren’t a chess player, checkers is a viable option as well. Get your own for $50, which is about $4,000 cheaper than everything else in the Sharper Image catalog. We miss you already Bobby. — Andrew Dobrow

Link [via]

Well, at chess, anyway. Vladimir Kramnik lost 2-4 to the multi-processor version of Chessbase’s commercial software Deep Fritz at a tournament held in Bonn, Germany. Kramnik was able to hold an earlier version of the software to a draw in 2002, but this latest defeat may preclude a rematch. Monty Newborn, a professor of computer science at McGill University, told The New York Times: “I don’t know what one could get out of it at this point. The science is done.” Newborn also said, however, that poker and go, an ancient Chinese strategy game, are where the future development of computer game-playing software is likely to concentrate. — Mike Payne

[via Engadget]