The Xtreme Chess Championships: Chess Taken to the Extreme!
When I hear the word extreme associated with sports, I usually think of snowboarding, rollerblading, the X Games or skateboarding. Chess is pretty far down the list of competitions that I would label as extreme, right down there with Magic: The Gathering or curling.
It turns out that a group of local talent is out to change that. The Xtreme Chess Championships, the brainchild of Philadelphia residents Jen Shahade, her brother Greg and Daniel Meirom, recently debuted on YouTube. The show takes 8 young chess players (including Alisa Melekhina, a law student at Penn) and pits them against each other in 20 minute, winner take all chess matches.
The show is a mixture of reality show and sports competition as each player is profiled and we get to know them as they prepare for battle. For those that don’t know a rook from a rake, the game is explained in simple terms and the play by play team makes everything easy to follow.
I’ll admit, as the show progresses and the match gets more heated, you do really start to get into it and before you know it your yelling at your monitor, saying things like “What are you doing!?! How can you move your knight to C5!? Dumb ass!!!”
While I don’t think we’ll see the Xtreme Chess Championships on ESPN any time soon, any fan of the game of chess or reality shows will get a real kick out of it. Episode 2 has just been uploaded and I highly recommend giving it a look. Who knew chess could be extreme?
Check it out on Youtube and Facebook.
The Xtreme Chess Championships
www.youtube.com/user/XChessChamps/videos
