Underwater Chess Crowns New World Champions in the Netherlands

Chess is tough enough when you can breathe, but on December 29, the World Diving Chess Championships in Groningen made oxygen part of the game. The setup is a magnetic chessboard at the bottom of a pool, where players dive down to study the position and make a move before surfacing for air. No scuba, no tanks, no shortcuts, just lungs, strategy, and nerve. If you’ve ever frozen over a decision in a normal tournament, underwater chess adds a blunt new question: Is this line worth another few seconds without breathing?

This year’s event was billed as the biggest yet. Underwater chess is part brain game, part breath-control showdown, where “time pressure” hits both the clock and your chest. Every slow move costs you twice, and every moment of panic feels instantly expensive. Even routine choices start to look different when you’re squinting through goggles, bubbles drifting past the board, trying to hold the whole position in your head before you have to rise.

Dutch wins in Groningen

There’s also a practical reason the competition still feels rare and cultish: the tournament was capped because there are only so many custom underwater boards available. Still, the demand is clearly there, and the format is weirdly watchable. You can read body language in the surface pauses, then see the calm (or chaos) of the dive itself.

The headline result was a home win. Dutch FIDE Master Zyon Kollen clinched the 2025 men’s world title, entering the final round with a perfect score and securing a quick draw to lock first place. On the women’s side, 17-year-old Josephine Damen claimed the crown as the top-placed female competitor, another Dutch victory that turned the day into a Groningen-style house party, just with underwater checkmates.