Chess Club – where primal male aggression is set free

Fight Club is a 1996 novel by American author Chuck Palahniuk, which was turned into a Hollywood movie, made in 1999 by director David Fincher, which resulted in the novel becoming a pop culture phenomenon. The story is about a young, affluent and stylish insomniac (Edward Norton), who meets a slippery soap salesman (Brad Pitt), who shows him that "not only can you live without material needs but that self-destruction, the collapse of society and making dynamite from soap might not be such a bad idea either" (IMDB). The two create an underground boxing club as a radical form of psychotherapy.

The fight club is about bare-knuckle fighting and is controlled by a set of eight rules:

1. You don't talk about fight club.
2. You don't talk about fight club.
3. If someone says stop, goes limp, even if he's just faking it, the fight is over.
4. Only two guys to a fight.
5. One fight at a time.
6. They fight without shirts or shoes.
7. The fights go on as long as they have to.
8. If this is your first night at fight club, you have to fight.

The following high School Promotional Video documents the inner, underground workings of a club dedicated to enhancing all characteristics of chess. It parodies the dark and frightening atmosphere of the Fight Club movie. Anyone who has seen the Norton/Pitt version will enjoy this chess translation.

Chess Club – the movie

Thanks to Micah Hughey of Edmonton, Canada, for pointing us to this video. Javier Encinas of Orlando, FL. pointed out that the chess board is, naturally, in the wrong position (with the white square on the bottom left).