Since the days when chess was first played over 1,500 years ago, enthusiasts have ranged from King Edward I to Napoleon to former President Jimmy Carter. Yet none of those figures reached checkmate while rocking goggles in a pool. In 2012, American master Etan Ilfeld created "diving chess" for the 30th‑anniversary Mind Sports Olympiad in London. Instead of a dry board, a weighted board sits 3.2 to 5.6 feet underwater. Players move only while submerged, surfacing for breath only after a legal move. A warning follows the first breath‑without‑move, and a second results in a loss.

Players find the game simultaneously athletic and cerebral. Ilfeld, who once saw chid‑boxing, wanted a sport that didn’t rely on body size, so storyt he devised a game where breath control matters. Grandmasters such as Hans Niemann, Fabiano Caruana, Vidit Gujrathi, and Lithuanian Paulius Pultinevičius have competed, and Cuban‑American Leinier Domínguez calls it "normal chess with an athletic edge."

Matches now take place in Cape Town, St. Louis, and the Netherlands, and the sport was featured in ESPN’s Ocho broadcast. The board and pieces are magnetized, weigh about four and two pounds respectively, and can stay submerged for up to eight hours. Even sharks have swum around the cage in South Africa during a recent event.

Despite the physical demands—holding breath, moving in water, and maintaining board stability—Ilfeld insists the outcome is still decided by chess. He sees the sport as a way to grow the game and keep momentum one checkmate at a time.