May the Best Move (or Punch) Win

Along Santa Monica’s Ocean Front Walk sits a haven for geeks of the game of chess. The International Chess Park, comprising a giant chess set and dozens of regulation-play chess tables, draws people from all walks of life. Including men, who, three days a week, will stand between the 2- to 3-foot-tall chess pieces and physically beat the crap out of each other. Legally.

In the midst of this strange scuffle, a giant bearded man will suddenly blow a whistle, and the two opponents will dash over to a chess table, remove their gloves and sit down to continue a game of chess.

Spectators will stop and stare, some even snapping a few pictures. But what they don’t realize is that they are witnessing the birth of a brand-new sport in the U.S. — a unique mashup of boxing and chess.

The bearded man, 6-foot-9 photojournalist Andrew McGregor, runs the Los Angeles Chessboxing Club, the first group in North America sanctioned by the Berlin-based World Chess Boxing Organization (WCBO). He stages competitions, teaches classes at the Chess Park and even competes. He hopes to help spread the sport to the rest of America, promoting brains and brawn by making both boxing and chess more approachable.

But Santa Monica pedestrians don’t know any of that. They just keep their distance.

“I don’t think they truly get that we’re doing both,” McGregor says with a chuckle. “I haven’t actually been spoken to by anyone.”

McGregor’s interest in chess boxing began seven years ago when he was in Budapest and spotted a flyer advertising an upcoming bout. The subject was intriguing. He was already a chess geek at school — and unbeatable among his circle of friends — but he just shrugged and walked on. The concept stuck in his head, though, and over the next six months, he would occasionally Google the subject.

Then, in 2008, while McGregor was on assignment in Africa, a chess friend of his e-mailed him a Wikipedia link about chess boxing along with the note, “You could be their Muhammad Ali.”

He kept following the sport through various European websites, and after grad school, he tried his hand at boxing. Unfortunately, it was a difficult discipline to grasp, but after former heavyweight champion George Foreman answered McGregor’s e-mail and passed along encouragement, McGregor was more motivated than ever.

“I asked around the boxing community [to find out] where the best gym was in L.A. I basically went in there, with all these hard-core fighters around, and said, ‘Hi, I want to do chess boxing! One round of boxing, one round of chess.’ They were like, ‘What?’ and pointed me to a trainer. ‘He’ll train you, whatever.’ ”

McGregor persisted, though, regularly working out at the gym; his boxing improved, and eventually he was sparring with pros. By this time he was also communicating through Facebook with chess boxers in Europe, and he had launched a website for his new chess-boxing club, which eventually partnered with the WCBO.

Intrigued by the enthusiasm, WCBO representative David Pfeifer flew to Los Angeles in early 2010 and met with McGregor. After the two chatted, McGregor said, “Let’s do an event. You’re here.”

McGregor sent an e-mail out to his friends, the local media picked up on the story, and more than 70 people showed up to watch the L.A. debut of chess boxing. Final outcome? Andrew “the Fightin’ Philanthropist” McGregor, the fledgling who became a boxer because of an e-mail from George Foreman, actually checkmated the established German competitor, David “Dr. King Kong” Pfeifer. Now McGregor was thoroughly hooked.

Pfeifer then explained to McGregor more about the origins of chess boxing, and the American finally learned how the sport began. Chess dates back some 1,500 years, and boxing may have emerged as early as 3,000 B.C. But the combination of the two is only seven years old. The sport’s roots lie in modern Europe, and they are an unlikely synthesis of Yugoslavian comics, French apocalypse, Dutch performance art and lager-fueled German nightlife.

As a young man growing up in Amsterdam in the late 1980s, Iepe Rubingh was introduced to comics via his father’s collection, and he read with great interest the 1992 graphic novel Froid Équateur (“Equator Cold”), by a Yugoslavian artist named Enki Bilal. Within the sci-fi tale of a futuristic Paris steeped in violence, panels depicted a 12-round boxing match, followed by an equally brutal game of chess.

Rubingh eventually moved to Berlin, where he established himself as the artist Iepe, a performance-artist prankster. But he never forgot Bilal’s powerful images.

One day in 2002, during a conversation with art friends about their mutual hobby of boxing, it suddenly occurred to Rubingh that one could appropriate Bilal’s concept and stage a match that combined both boxing and chess. They all agreed it couldn’t be a performance-art stunt. The two sports had to fuse together in such a way that either could decide the outcome.

Rubingh and his friends practiced the concept among themselves and mapped out a general rule book. A match begins with a four-minute round of chess, after which the chess table is removed from the ring, and fighters put on gloves and wale on each other for three minutes. The bout alternates between the two sports for 11 rounds, with one minute of rest between each. A win is determined by either a knockout in the ring or a checkmate on the board.

The Platoon cultural development center in Berlin staged the world’s first chess-boxing match in 2003, between Iepe the Joker and his friend, Luis the Lawyer. In addition to the traditional boxing announcer and ring girls, a chess expert provided play-by-play commentary, and the audience followed each chess move on video screens throughout the club.

Rubingh emerged victorious by checkmate, and shortly thereafter, he set about founding the World Chess Boxing Organization. When the WCBO’s first-ever world championship was staged a few months later at a sold-out concert hall in Amsterdam, between the same competitors, he won that also, as Luis the Lawyer ran out of time during the final chess round.

Publicity came naturally to Rubingh; as Iepe, he had already engineered massive art pranks that had stopped traffic in the streets of both Berlin and Tokyo. Promoting chess boxing was not going to pose a problem for him.

“Chess boxing is extreme physical stress combined with a huge mental test,” he told media at the time. “The adrenaline after boxing inhibits your ability to think, making the chess harder. Few people can still think straight after a right hook to the head. You need to be able to pull off that champion chess move while blood is pouring from your nose.”

The WCBO motto, “Fighting is done in the ring and wars are waged on the board,” spread throughout Europe’s chess and boxing networks, and more bouts soon followed. Chess-boxing clubs quickly began popping up in other countries, from Germany to England to Siberia.

In 2006, an ESPN broadcast about the odd sport caught the eye of David Depto, an engineer living in San Francisco. In the news segment, the WCBO said it was looking for American opponents to fight the German champion.

Depto had been a boxer for years, and he was no slouch at chess. So he sent the WCBO some information, and about six months later, the organization responded, asking for videos of his past fights. They also requested that he play chess with them online. He passed the test, and none other than the sport’s founder, Iepe Rubingh, flew out to California to meet him.

“We did some workouts together, ran some wind sprints through a park, played a few rounds of chess,” Depto says. “He liked what he saw, and so I got the fight.”

Depto was already in top physical shape, so he focused on working with a chess coach on a strategy that would mesh with his aggressive boxing style — and he prepared himself to be the first American to compete in chess boxing, which he had never even seen in person.

“I knew going in that I probably [wasn’t] going to be the strongest chess player,” he remembers. “But I’m also one of the more experienced fighters. Therefore, I wanted to develop a chess strategy, develop some moves to force the game to slow down. My goal was to go into the ring, get some shots, go for the knockout.”

In 2007, Depto flew to Berlin to fight the German champion, a 37-year-old police officer named Frank “Anti Terror” Stoldt. To Depto, it was clear that the Germans knew how to stage a bout. The ring sat in the middle of an underground nightclub, surrounded by alcohol, loud music and 1,200 fans screaming for bloodshed.

“It was a lot of fun,” Depto recalls. “When I got into the ring, and they were playing the national anthem, it was overwhelming, representing the U.S. in this new sport.”

But the American wasn’t able to fully relax and land his punches. Then, Stoldt checkmated him in the seventh round.

Depto returned to Germany the next year and fought another bout in Cologne, against Swedish contender Konrad Rikardson. This time, Depto was more prepared. He won by a knockout punch in the second round.

“I got the feeling they were a little disappointed,” he says. “It went one round of chess, one round of boxing, and it was over.”

Depto was unable to compete in the championship that year, and he has been plagued with injuries ever since. But he’s had time to reflect on his career in chess boxing.

“I don’t think there’s been a ton of strategy yet,” he admits. “But because of the alternating rounds, there’s more opportunity for physical rest than just boxing. So the fighters are going to be much more recovered, fresh to go every round. Very few guys win with one-punch power. Most people win on the chessboard.”

McGregor agrees that the sport has not fully developed yet, but he says it’s incredibly addictive. The adrenaline rush of getting smacked in the face, then sitting down and trying to focus on the chess while trembling and sweating and dripping blood, creates an entirely new experience.

“I always want to win on the chessboard, because it’s more [impressive],” he says, laughing. “If you can orchestrate a checkmate when somebody’s trying to kill you, that’s pretty sick!”

Although the sport is new, says McGregor, regional differences have already become apparent. European cultures are often more fluent than Americans in chess, and Russians are particularly good at it. Fighters will wear headphones during the chess round to block out the crowd noise. Many competitors are professional boxers, and they refuse to use headgear in order to keep the experience more purely pugilistic.

In establishing a club in Los Angeles, McGregor realized he’d have to adapt the sport for U.S. sensibilities. It needed to have a modicum of safety. “For the American stuff, that’s not going to work,” he says. “People are not going to sign on to that.”

So he instituted amateur rules, with headgear strongly encouraged. After his club’s two bouts this year, McGregor says, the number of inquiries increased. “Lots of interest from men and women [in their 30s and] in grad school,” he says.

Getting in shape and having fun is one thing. But does this hybrid sport have any future as a legitimate revenue stream? Depto thinks that’s the missing link right now.

“For this thing to grow, there has to be sponsorship,” he says. “They can sell tickets to cover the events, but there’s not much money yet. Other guys who think the idea is novel are starting it in their own gyms. That’s been their growth model so far.”

And indeed, compared with boxing or chess, the absence of money in chess boxing is palpable. Matches display a refreshing lack of logos in the ring and around the venue. According to Depto, who traveled to Germany twice for fights, winning purses were “several hundred euros,” and boxers’ travel expenses were paid. But nobody appears to be chess boxing professionally as a primary source of income.

“There is no chess boxer — so far — who makes a living out of the sport,” says the WCBO’s David Pfeifer. “Most of us are working in different jobs. The WCBO does offer cash to the fighters who participate in championships. [But] it’s more of a thank-you for their hard work and preparation.”

For others who just love the sport itself, like McGregor, hurling a ton of marketing at chess boxing would turn it into another dodgeball league — all logo and no heart. To him, the grassroots origins of chess boxing and the physical and mental acuity it takes to compete are what make the sport special.

“I want to do it because it’s awesome — people can benefit from it,” he says. “People should learn how to defend themselves, but this is self-defense in a healthy fashion.”

He adds, “I think it’s going to blow up. I think it will become like snowboarding over the next 10 years.”

#  #  #

This article originally appeared in American Way magazine.

All of Chile is going ballistic. Islanders are already envisioning a new hospital and school. The mayor is demanding each resident should receive an equal share — $8 million apiece.

The American is aghast. For six years he’s made this journey to the tiny island, hunting for an 18th century stash of gold. Each October he returns here to continue his excavations, in obscurity. But as of today, his anonymity is gone forever.

All the money he has spent. The months of research. The wrangling of government permits. Only to have the treasure stolen away by a little wheeled robot named Arturito. Everyone in Chile is laughing at him. Despite his doctor’s orders, Keiser starts smoking again.

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Arturito was a four-wheeled, remote-controlled gizmo decorated with a rotating red light. Because the appliance resembled the Star Wars’ R2D2, it was thus nicknamed “Arturito,” or “little Arthur.” A ground-penetrating sensor was supposed to identify buried metals up to 50 meters. Its owner, Wagner Technologies, claimed previous successes: Arturito had located a cache of illegal weapons, and found the corpse of a missing businessman.

Within two days, Arturito discovered three separate treasure locations at Robinson Crusoe. Media immediately fell in love with the cute robot, that claimed the gold for Chile. There was no love for Keiser, the American. Reporters described him as “Gringo Loco,” and made fun of his remedial Spanish. Chile’s largest newpaper, El Mercurio, screamed the headline, “Bernard Keiser: ¿el gran perdedor? (“The Great Loser?”). All without anyone so much as sticking a shovel into the dirt to verify the claim.

And then the cute robot story began to unravel. Scientific experts expressed doubts as to the robot’s claimed “atomic gamma rays” and “antiplasma reactor” technology. Locals pointed out that Arturito’s locations, the jagged peaks of a mountain, were impossible. Spanish sailors would never haul chests of gold up the steep slopes. Wagner Technologies then suddenly announced it was forfeiting all rights to the treasure. Arturito’s inventor, a man named Manuel Salinas, gave a speech to a university physics class in Valparaiso, and was unable to explain how the robot even worked. The professor abruptly ended Salinas’ presentation, to a rousing ovation from students.

Within two weeks, Arturito was shamed into oblivion. Robinson Crusoe Island returned to its leisurely pre-robot pace. Fishermen continued trapping longostas. Tourists kept on bird-watching and scuba diving. And Bernard Keiser went back to excavating. He’s not here for the lobster or the scuba. He knows in his heart, the treasure is still here.

He doesn’t want to talk about Arturito. But he can’t not talk about it. Because of Arturito, everyone now knows about him. He’s even listed in tourist guidebooks.

“It was ridiculous,” Keiser says evenly, somewhat exasperated at having to explain it all over again. “Is it logical that if this thing can find the treasure, and it can find anything, go 50 kilometers into the ground — wouldn’t somebody be using this? Wouldn’t they be patenting it? Wouldn’t they be selling it to all the mining companies in the world? All the Exxons, all the Shells? What are they doing here? The whole thing is absurd.”

Almost as absurd as the idea of an American selling off his business and moving to an isolated island, to spend six years digging for treasure. And not finding it.

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Most people don’t bother hunting for treasure. The risk is too great, the odds too long. The obsession either pulses within your DNA, or you experience a bizarre epiphany and realize your true calling. In the case of 56-year-old Bernard Keiser, it is both.

Raised in Chicago by Dutch-Jewish immigrant parents, little Bernie had in many ways a typical Midwest childhood. He grew his hair long, listened to Chicago blues music, drove muscle cars. While attending college in Jacksonville, Florida, he noticed the ongoing efforts of legendary treasure hunter Mel Fisher.

In Florida, you couldn’t help but hear about Fisher. In the 1960s, the former scuba instructor was among the team to first discover the Spanish Plate Fleet, a group of 12 ships which sunk in a 1715 hurricane off the Florida coast. Fisher’s expeditions yielded millions of dollars in gold, and made him internationally famous. Like many in Florida, Bernard Keiser read treasure books, scuba-dived the waters, picked up coins on the beaches.

It was a youthful and short-lived obsession. Bernie returned to Chicago, and with a loan from his parents, co-founded a textiles company, Architex International. It wasn’t much of a stretch from the family business – his father sold drapes.

The timing was perfect, an ambitious son of immigrants, coinciding with the growth of America’s new office cubicle culture. Businesses were adding more employees, and demand was high for fabric-covered furniture and room dividers. Architex pushed its textiles to companies like Steelcase, and by the 1980s, the company employed over 200 workers, and operated a 50,000-square-foot warehouse.

The money was good, and Keiser worked hard for it. So he bought some toys. He owned a sailboat. He collected vintage cars. He and his wife raised two sons. But he never forgot Mel Fisher.

And then one day in 1996, he turned on the television and was captivated by a program on the Learning Channel, a documentary called “The Hunt For Amazing Treasures.” One treasure in particular caught his eye – the rumored stash of Captain General Don Juan Esteban de Ubilla y Echeverria.

In the early 18th century, the Spanish commander was in charge of ferrying booty from Mexican and South American colonies back to Spain. Along the route, Ubilla had supposedly stolen and hidden some of his cargo on a remote Chilean island, at the time called Más a Tierra.

Keiser watched as the program revealed copies of three letters, which described Ubilla’s treasure and its location. Two letters had turned up in England, and one was found in Chile. This last letter Keiser was most curious about.

“Something hit me, very funny about the document,” he remembers. “The words that were used. I thought, wait a minute. A Chilean does not write Old English. It’s different phrasing, different words. Very difficult to write.”

Keiser taped the program on his VCR, and watched it again and again. There was something about the document. “It had historical facts, that only a historian would know. Only someone from that time period would have known how to write it.”

He traveled to England, researching the letters in libraries, maritime logs, public records, newspaper archives. After six months of rummaging, he returned home to Chicago, his brain churning with facts and questions. He was in too deep. There was only one thing to do. In late 1996 he came to Robinson Crusoe Island.

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A fishing boat takes me to the rocky coast of Puerto Inglés (English Port), on the north side of the island. Since 1999, this small valley is where Keiser has been digging for Ubilla’s treasure. I don’t know what he looks like, but Americans are not hard to find. Only 600 people live here.

I walk past a group of Chilean excavators, working with hand trowels, and come to Selkirk’s Cave, a jagged hole in the hillside about 10 feet high. This cave was named for Alexander Selkirk, a Scottish sailor who was marooned on the island from 1704-1709. His experience formed the basis for Daniel Defoe’s classic novel Robinson Crusoe.

In 1968, the Chilean government renamed Más a Tierra to Robinson Crusoe Island, to promote tourism. It certainly wasn’t to promote historical accuracy. The fictional Crusoe character was actually stranded in the Caribbean instead of the Pacific. Crusoe had a sidekick (Man Friday), Selkirk was alone. And a neighboring island, Más Afuera, was renamed Alejandro Selkirk Island, even though Selkirk never set foot there.

A small bearded man sits inside the cave on a portable stool, sipping instant coffee. Bernard Keiser wears a yellow raincoat and safari hat with one side pinned up. His jeans are grubby with soil. A Kent cigarette lingers in his hand.

Is this Selkirk’s Cave, I ask.

“Well, it’s called Selkirk’s Cave,” he smiles. “But he never lived here. They just say that, for the tourists.”

We start chatting, and when the subject of Arturito comes up, Keiser sighs and shakes his head.

“Name me one high-tech innovation that came from Chile – there’s none,” he says in a flat Chicago accent. “I told them, ‘I don’t want to have anything to do with that company, that machine, with the little light on top.’ It didn’t pertain to anything here at all.”

We examine the walls of the cave, covered with names and dates and odd petraglyphs. This room is where Keiser first began his research, and he believes the treasure was once hidden right here, beneath our feet. He points out each carving. The name “ANSON.” A carving of a rose. An “AB” surrounded by a diamond. An S-shaped design, with three holes.

“Man has a reason for doing everything he does,” he tells me. “Especially in the olden days. When you see something, there must have been a reason for it.”

As he explains what each means, a whopper of a story begins to fall together. Some of it might be true, some is conjecture and guesswork, and weeks later, some details still doesn’t make sense. But an incredible tale nevertheless. Based on several years of research in England and Spain, his theory goes something like this:

In 1713 and 1714, Ubilla sailed to the island and stashed six to eight million pesos’ worth of treasures. He carved an S-shaped map of South America into the cave wall, and also the diamond shape, which was stamped into silver bars to denote purification. To hide his theft, Ubilla doctored the ship’s manifest, low-balling the total. But before Ubilla could return to retrieve it, he was killed in the Florida Plate Fleet storm.

Nearly 50 years later, on orders from English Lord High Admiral George Anson, sailor Cornelius Webb left Britain on a secret mission – to bring back this Spanish treasure in the name of the crown. In 1761, Webb found Ubilla’s gold hidden inside a tunnel of volcanic rock. His men used black powder to blow out the side of the chamber (creating what is now Selkirk’s Cave), and hauled all of it onto the ship. Webb carved the name “ANSON” into the wall, and added a rose shape, because the treasure contained a unique, jewel-encrusted rose.

The ship set out for England, encountered a storm, broke a mast, and was forced to return to the island. Webb’s men off-loaded the treasure, and reburied it back at Puerto Inglés (Keiser believes this new location is very near the cave). Webb then sailed to Valparaiso, the nearest Chilean port, for repairs. When alerted to a secret mutiny brewing, he blew up his own ship, killing all the crew members, and rowed away on a small boat. He was the only survivor.

Webb wrote two letters to Lord Anson, describing that he found the Ubilla treasure – including 864 bags of gold, 200 bars of gold, 21 barrels of precious stones and jewelry, and 160 chests of gold and silver coins – and that he reburied it. The second letter included the code words “yellow stone” and “Dschubba” (ancient name of a star in the Scorpio constellation). But Anson died before receiving them, and Webb died the following year.

The Ubilla story – and treasure, if there is any – sat dormant until 1950, when the letters came into the hands of Luis Cousiño, at that time the richest man in Chile. Cousiño decided to hunt for the treasure himself. He anchored his yacht in the island harbor, and excavated a portion of the hillside at San Juan Bautiste, the only village. Finding nothing, Cousiño gave up. The letters were passed down to his ex-daughter-in-law, Maria Beeché, who still lives on the island today.

Decades later, Beeché was interviewed for the buried treasure documentary. Keiser met with Beeche, and she shared her letters in exchange for a percentage of any treasure. He spent the next two years securing excavation permits from the Chilean government, and started digging in 1999. He’s coy about costs, but some say he’s spent millions of his own money.

Keiser gestures at the walls. “It took years of looking, trying to figure this all out. What it meant. So knowing this, all of a sudden — shit, it’s coming together.”

He lights another cigarette. “I think there isn’t anything more I could find. There’s only so much that was written. Like a detective, you can only go so far.”

We walk around the valley, and he indicates spots that have been exacavated, where he’s planning to dig next. He points to a hillside of peculiar yellow rocks. This is apparently the “yellow stone” and “scorpion” mentioned in a letter. I squint, but I can’t see a scorpion. The crew dug up this area previously, and this year is going back in and widening the dig. They’ve found many artifacts that date from the time of Ubilla. But still no treasure.

Few in Chile believe Keiser’s story. The media is against him. He fired a crew of archeologists because they were too skeptical. The government is also an enormous pain in the ass. Keiser is allowed to excavate only from October through the end of March. After the end of each season, he is required to replace all the dirt and replant the area. He can’t use any backhoes or pneumatic hammers – all the work must be done with hand tools. If they’re unearthing a previously excavated area, only then are they allowed to use shovels.

But Keiser is thankful about one thing. He’s the only person with licensed permission to excavate on the island. Nobody else is going to find it. Maybe not even him.

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I drop by Keiser’s room at his hosteria, to see some of his artifacts. On the door is a sign that reads, “Bienvenido, Bernard Keiser,” with a little cartoon of a treasure chest and pirate flag. Fox News blares loudly from a TV. There’s a bed, a closet and bathroom. This is Bernard Keiser’s life. During excavation season, he lives in this room, keeping in touch with family through email and phone calls. The rest of the year he lives in Santiago, processing the artifacts and having them analyzed.

We look at photos of his Chinese porcelain fragments. A thermo-luminescence lab test determined them to be 880 years old. Other fragments date from the 1700s, pieces of bottles and ceramic vessels. As he says, it is very odd to find these specific items on such an obscure island.

It’s time for the big news. Keiser hands over a xeroxed page with drawings of various sailor buttons. It was common for sailors to change the designs of their buttons every few years. He points out a button design from 1715, the same that was found among the Plate Fleet in Florida. He now pulls out a circular tin and opens it. inside is a small metal button resting in a pile of dirt. It’s identical to the Plate Fleet button.

Keiser stabs at it with a finger. “Now how the fuck did that button get here on the island? It’s not just a button, it’s a very particular button. You just don’t find it anywhere. Finding something that exists in one other spot in the world – the odds are a zillion to one.” This is one of about 20 identical buttons, all found at the same location. His theory is that in 1713 and 1714, as Ubilla’s sailors were working hard to hide the treasure, the buttons popped off their jackets.

He shows me copies of the letters from Webb to Anson. Even if no treasure is ever found, it’s exciting to read a 300-year-old letter that lists $10 billion worth of gold and silver and jewels and porcelain.

But Chilean historians aren’t interested, he says. Neither are other treasure hunters. He’s pretty much alone. Does his family consider him Gringo Loco?

“They know me pretty well,” Keiser says. “They know I wouldn’t do something stupid. It’s well researched.”

I mention that all this must get frustrating, especially when he’s finding such specific artifacts.

“It’s very frustrating. Very emotional. You take in the criticisms. You have to be calm, do what you can do and that’s it. The one thing I know, is that it’s there.”

“Don’t you want to blow up the whole mountain?” I ask.

“No,” he answers ruefully. “I’d like to, but I know I can’t.”

He has given himself no deadline, he adds. It’s a cumulative effect that keeps him going. Each button and sliver of ceramic connects to his theories. He enjoys the patience, the detective work. In a way, the process isn’t much different from running a textile company.

“Just like when you start a business,” he says. “Are you going to ask someone who is semi-successful, the first year, second year, third: ‘How long are you going to keep the business?’ As long as you’re making money, basically, as long as you’re on the right track — you keep on going. This is the same thing.”

I ask if he ever feels like giving up. “Mel Fisher didn’t give up,” he says quickly. For 14 years, Fisher searched for the wreck of one ship, the Atocha, off Key West. And he finally found it. To treasure hunters, Mel Fisher was a god.

“He passed over the wreck site a number of times, not thinking that it was anything unusual,” Keiser continues softly. “Every morning he would say, ‘Today’s the day.’ Those famous words, for 14 years. And it ended up one day he found the cannons. He found the silver, gold, strewn over the floor of the ocean. They’re still finding things today.”

Keiser replaces the papers back into a file. “If the treasure’s here, we’ll see.”

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The Chilean press has moved onto other stories. Mayor Leopoldo González Charpentier had at first envisioned a treasure theme park, even building a monument to Arturito. But like a true politician, he added that the island’s “greatest treasure is its people.”

Locals still laugh at Arturito. That was silly. There might still be a treasure here, who knows, it’s a nice story. But when asked directly about Keiser, villagers start muttering to each other in Spanish, without translating. It’s a small community. Nobody wants to criticize too much.

On a boisterous night at the Village Daniel Defoe bar, a group of sailors are celebrating their recent voyage, in 30-knot winds, from Valparaiso. Out of six sailboats, two were forced to turn back, their crews vomiting in the rough seas. So of course the crews who survived the trip are flush with victory and mad with alcohol. Four rowdies are downing Pisco sours and pounding their fists on the bar, shouting in unison, “Juan Fernandez! Juan Fernandez!”

Keiser is the topic of discussion at a table of yachtistas. One of them relights his stubby Cohiba and leans into my face. “Bernard eez a nice guy,” he slurs loudly. “But I theenk, sometime? He believe too much, you know?

A scant 100 meters down the dirt road, Bernard Keiser sits on the bed in his hosteria room, checking emails, as Bill O’Reilly’s voice erupts from the TV. He opens another pack of Kents. Maybe tomorrow will be the day.

Outside the city’s Central Business District, however, a much older industry is still very much alive. A visitor strolling through Guanyuan Market might initially linger to take in the wondrous variety of rare flowers, birds, and reptiles. It’s the crazy noise, though, that will eventually win the spectator’s attention. A cacophony of incessant chirping carries over the hum of the crowd. It’s a familiar sound amplified to a deafening level — and it beckons everyone walking by to come and check out the crickets.

The merchants here display hundreds of their chirping wares right on the street, each inside a bamboo cage or a plastic container. Some crickets are for singing, others are for fighting — and all are for sale. Prices can reach the equivalent of several thousand U.S. dollars, an astonishing amount for an insect that will live only two to three months.

For centuries, China has regarded a cricket chirping around the house as good luck; a deluge of crickets means wealth will come to the family.

Under the Tang dynasty (618–907 AD), the Chinese began keeping crickets as musical pets. “Ladies of the palace” would catch crickets and carry them either in their bosom or suspended from their girdle. At night, the women would place the crickets near their pillow to provide solace during moments of loneliness. It’s said that the cricket’s song mirrored the concubine’s own sadness. With as many as 3,000 women per emperor — each hanging out with her own cricket — this made for very noisy evenings at the palace.

As the pastime grew more popular, citizens began sending thousands of their best crickets to the capital each year as gifts for the emperor. Then painters, poets, musicians, and politicians alike followed the emperor’s lead and began to keep crickets as pets, storing them in containers developed specifically for the little songmakers — containers that ranged from tiny cages wrought of bamboo and fish bones to clay pots, beautifully carved wooden boxes, and decorative gourds inlaid with ivory and gold. Eventually, cricket societies and clubs grew, encompassing all levels of hobbyists. Thus this appreciation, as with so many other customs throughout the world, began in the palaces but soon spread to the lower classes and to the villages.

In ancient Chinese agricultural societies, however, crickets were appreciated for an entirely different reason — their chirping was a crucial indicator of climate change. When farmers heard the Jingzhe (the waking of the insects) in spring, they knew that the time was right to begin plowing the fields. To pay tribute, farmers wrote proverbs and songs about the insects, artists rendered paintings of them, and children were told cricket fables. There was even the belief that, because crickets lay hundreds of eggs, the key to success in life was to have as many children as possible.

China developed the sport of cricket fighting during the Song dynasty (960–1279 AD); the fight is a natural outgrowth of interaction between two males who are competing for territory. The brave and valiant warrior spirit of a cricket in battle captivated audiences — and the cricket’s reputation as an intelligent and competitive insect with an added talent for making beautiful sounds grew.

Fighting was at first a sport for the upper class, as a means to display wealth. The lower class was attracted to the gambling element, though, and eventually the sport became aligned with slackers and societal problems. When the government prohibited the fights, the sport went underground. Only in recent years has the sport of cricket fighting again been officially allowed, and then only if no gambling is involved — or discovered.

A cricket fight in China is as ritualistic as a bullfight is in Spain — and there is equal respect for both of the creatures involved. As has been the tradition for centuries, two crickets are weighed and then matched up according to size, weight, and color. Both combatants are placed in a small fighting arena, with walls high and thick enough to prevent desertion. The cricket trainers stimulate their charges with a straw or a fine-haired brush, and then the insect warriors go at each other, antennae waving and jaws snapping.

Over the years, experts have outlined three main fighting styles: A cricket might stalk his enemy slowly, in a strategy of “creep like a tiger, fight like a snake.” Another cricket might lie in wait, attacking only when its opponent chirps, in the “listen for sound, look for the enemy” technique. A great fighter will use the “charge like the wind, valiantly forging straight ahead” method of champions.

Fights are usually face-to-face and eerily silent, except for the chirping and the scuttling of feet and wings, and they can be quite mesmerizing. A bout usually doesn’t last long, and it’s surprisingly PG, with minimal gore and carnage (a more fierce confrontation, though, might include one cricket flipping the other across the arena). The loser often runs away or simply stops fighting. Only occasionally does a match end in a fatality, with decapitation as the humiliating finale.

American expat journalist Aventurina King witnessed her first cricket match in the kitchen of a friend’s home in Beijing.

“White-collar workers in their 20s generally don’t participate in this activity,” King explains. “I would say it’s people [from] families that are still quite traditional who take this up as a hobby. On the weekends, they get together with their friends and see which one of their crickets is the best.”

It was King’s first cricket match, and her immediate impression was that, in China, having crickets as pets is nothing unusual at all. “It was cute. … Each cricket had its own water and food in a tiny bowl made of white-and-blue Chinese ceramic.” After some friendly wagers were placed, the match began.

“My cricket, the one I had bet on, bared its fangs and made a lot of noise — it sounded like the opera star Renée Fleming when she reaches the high A. It turned the other cricket over once or twice. After that, it seemed like a game of cat and mouse, with the opponent running around the bowl as my cricket chased it.” King’s cricket ultimately was defeated, and both gladiators were returned to their respective containers and rewarded with food and water.

“[Since neither] of these was my cricket, there wasn’t much emotion involved,” she says. “But I can imagine that for someone who has spent a lot of time training a cricket, things [could] get pretty heated during fights.”

Especially if there’s money at stake: The forbidden element of gambling is one of the causes behind the contemporary resurgence of cricket fighting. At matches where money is exchanged, the pressure is as intense as at a heavyweight boxing match in Vegas. Cheating — such as giving the insects stimulants — is not uncommon. Occasionally, cricket-fighting dens are even raided, resulting in police arresting the gamblers and confiscating cash and crickets. So-called luxury games, held in outlying provinces, switch venues for each match in order to avoid the police.

The majority of today’s cricket culture is aboveground, though — and accepted in society. There are even some cities, like Jinan, where fights are broadcast live on television. And Chongming Island, off the coast of Shanghai, hosts a six-day national cricket-fighting competition, drawing hundreds of fans and their combative insects from all over the country.
Beijing’s Chinese Culture Club also sponsors cricket matches. Mariel Escudero and Sonia Dupont, expats who live in the city and work on the Latin American website GRILA.net (Grupo de Residentes Ibero Latino Americano), recently attended a cricket lecture and workshop at Beijing’s culture center, which provides English-language services for non-Chinese residents. The class culminated in cricket bouts for all participants. “I found it fascinating,” Escudero tells me. So fascinating, in fact, that she and Dupont collaborated on an article about it for their website and even posted a fight video on YouTube.

It’s said that there are as many as 900 species of crickets in the world, and the Chinese cricket culture includes a number of variants.

The best singing crickets are said to possess thick wings with wide veins. (Only mature males make the chirping noise, produced by rubbing their forewings together.) A cricket can create as many as five distinct calls, including an after-mating sound and sounds that signify courtship or attack. Some insect keepers will alter the wings of their favorite crickets, applying a tiny amount of wax (at the correct temperature) to amplify the sounds.

Chirping has been calibrated in certain species to be able to actually calculate the temperature of their environment, which is known as Dolbear’s Law. (Depending on the species, a rough method is to count the number of times a cricket chirps in 15 seconds and then add 38; the sum should equal the correct temperature in Fahrenheit.)

For fighting, the Gryllus bimaculatus is favored for its aggressive nature, thick body, and length of up to one and a half inches. Found throughout Asia, Africa, and southern Europe, this cricket is considered the best chirper of all the species; it has a strong, clean sound, which adds more excitement to the fight.

Like a boxer or a wrestler, a fighting cricket undergoes training and medical care. Keepers observe their crickets’ behavior carefully, watching for signs of disease and extremes in temperature, which can injure them. Their strict dietary regime ranges from flies and blood-filled mosquitoes to boiled chestnuts, ginseng, and calcium tablets. Some keepers prefer to feed the insects corn, wheat flour, and sliced apple. Training might include putting a female in the jar with the male, to create agitation and aggression. Other keepers will have the fighter fast prior to a match, and as soon as the cricket starts acting sick, they’ll quickly feed it small red insects to rebuild its strength. There are no instances in modern cricket fighting of the use of illegal steroids. Not yet, anyway.

Victorious fighters are treated with the respect of sumo champions. A winning cricket is referred to as a general. Owners of such warrior crickets will often travel great distances to meet one another and to ensure that their heroes are well matched for another bout. The best crickets will fight as many as six times before they are retired or defeated.

A particularly noble fighter may be preserved under glass for eternity, or his likeness may be rendered in a painting. In 1999, in Shandong Province, one champion, dubbed King of the Insects, was valued at 100,000 yuan ($12,920) — a shocking amount, considering that the annual income in Beijing, one of the wealthiest urban centers, averages just 7,000 to 30,000 yuan ($904 to $3,876).

Commercial and residential expansion in China has led to the slow decline in the number of agricultural fields (where crickets originally were collected), so breeders now supply many of the country’s crickets used for retail purposes. Yet there are still specific areas where champion crickets grow in the wild.

Many great cricket fighters come from Zhejiang Province, from a town called Yuhang, where the pepper fields are said to lend a fiery disposition and incredible strength. Crickets from Luhua’s watermelon and soybean fields are also said to possess power and a hot temper.
But Shandong Province, south of Beijing, is still considered the ultimate birthplace for a fighting cricket. Folklore tells us that during an enemy invasion some 800 years ago, a Song dynasty emperor scattered his cricket collection at the foot of the sacred Mount Tai. The descendants of these crickets are said to be the world’s best fighters. It’s estimated that nearly half a million people travel to the county of Ningyang for crickets each year. Local farmers earn their main income just from plucking crickets from their fields and selling them to buyers from Singapore, Japan, and Hong Kong.

Demand for the insects is so high that many have been able to make a comfortable living as a cricket breeder in the big markets of major cities. One popular business model is to buy or capture young crickets, feed them special concoctions twice a day to increase their strength, and then resell them for profit.

It’s unlikely that citizens will once again send thousands of prized crickets to the emperor’s palace — nor will 3,000 concubines clasp a cricket to their bosom as they sleep in fitful loneliness — but it’s obvious that the hold this chirpy little insect has on this country is as strong as ever. And worth a buck or two

They seemed squeaky-clean, and elitist. If they were winning a game, they would purposely play even harder, to humiliate their opponent. Even as a child, I just knew they were Christians.

And behind me on the sofa, laughing and cheering, was my dad, who grew up in Texas and was loving every minute of it. I was too young to argue. I bit my lip and suffered through each season. Sometime in high school, sports and I parted ways, in favor of beer, cars, girls, drugs, music, books. It was a mutual decision.

Twenty five years later, I find myself stepping out of a taxi in front of a football stadium. A magazine has sent me here to write about luxury suites, of which this stadium has the most, and the largest. I’m 36 years old, this will be the first professional sports game of my life. In Dallas.

Texas Stadium stretches up to the sky like the Colisseum, a concrete shrine to the only deity that matters. 65,000 rabid fans stream into the building, laughing and hooting, full of excitement and memorized statistics. It’s totally overwhelming. What is it about football in this part of the country? Is it the heat? A residual bitterness because they lost the Civil War? Or the opportunity for white millionaires to pretend they still own slaves?

I navigate through the parking lot parties, past the Hooters restaurant. Children in the gift shop are pleading their parents to buy them authentic Cowboys gear. 175 bucks, for a jersey. For a kid.

After a number of wrong turns I finally arrive at Suite 418, luxury box of the Cowboys publicity department, located behind the goal posts. The hallways smell of delicious meat.

There are larger suites, but this one is already bigger than my apartment: 27 feet square, with beveled glass walls, marble counters, and full bar. Serving trays glisten with beans, potato salad, and hunks of simmering baked ham. The Boston cream pie is yet to come.

The room soon fills up with pious Cowboys fanatics. Everyone grabs a cocktail, and slips into conversations about rushing yardage and point spreads. Today Dallas defends its Super Bowl title against Philadelphia. The rivalry is explained to me with great passion, a long and hostile struggle between two cities I’ve never visited, until today.

Although video monitors dangle from the ceiling, and others occupy an entire wall, everyone has attached themselves to a set of binoculars. Church is now in session. The congregation is about to jump out of its skin.

Cowboys get the ball on the kickoff, drive down the field and immediately score a quick touchdown. One guest rises to refresh his cocktail, slaps me on the back and announces, “Welcome to Dallas, Jay-ack!” By the end of the game, he will be in tears.

At halftime, someone takes me on a tour of more breathtaking luxury suites. We head down a labyrinth of hallways, squeezing past a noisy mob of moms and babies, who are waiting to go down to the 50-yard-line for an intermission show sponsored by Huggies diapers, a series of races called the “Baby Derby.” The fastest infant gets a new pickup.

After inspecting more luxury boxes, which are luxurious, we end up back at our suite, where the Boston cream pie is long demolished. The Baby Derby is now in progress. Cameras detail the action in close-up, as well-coiffed Texas mommies kneel down on the field, cooing and jingling car keys, coaxing their drooling little thoroughbreds to crawl ten yards to win a truck.

One guy watches the monitor, sipping a whiskey, then turns to me with a big mushy smile and says, “Y’all have keeds, Jack?”

Standing there in my 15-dollar sportcoat, childless and sarcastic, without a girlfriend, I feel like an emissary of Satan. I reply that no, I don’t.

“Well — they’re a lot of fun!”

What is not turning out to be fun is the second half of this game. I’ve never in my life been surrounded by such stress. The Eagles are holding their own against the NFL champions, with the score constantly flipping back and forth. Chitchat is over. All eyes are staring at the field, fingers tightening around cocktails, too nervous to even sip from them.

With a little over three minutes left, America’s Team drives downfield. They’re down by three points. Quarterback Troy Aikman completes a pass to the Eagles’ three-yard-line and the stadium erupts into a frightening snarl.

The Cowboys could easily kick a field goal to tie it up, but Coach Barry Switzer refuses. I get the sensation that here in Texas, that would somehow be a pussy move. With less than a minute remaining, Dallas prepares to go for the touchdown.

At this point the entire southern United States is gnawing on its knuckles. People in our suite are pacing like jungle cats at the zoo. All of Texas Stadium, from the Platinum Suites down to the lowly bleachers, is vibrating. I even sense concern from the Hooters girls.

On third down, with seconds left, Aikman fades back, looking for receivers. Through my binoculars it looks like he could easily run for the touchdown himself. But he doesn’t. He whips the ball into the end zone – directly into the arms of Eagles linebacker James Willis, who sprints about 30 yards, then laterals to teammate Troy Vincent, who speeds the length of the field for a touchdown that seals the game.

An awful, instantaneous silence washes over the horde of 65,000. I’ve never heard this many people shut their mouths at once. Our suite is quiet as a tomb, save for the low volume of TV monitors, heartlessly replaying the action, and then the final insult:

“The extra point brought to you by the all-wheel drive Subaru Outback! For extra safety — see your local Subaru dealer.”

Nobody south of Oklahoma is going to buy a Subaru today. The clock ticks to zero and I stand around dumbly, as grown men hug each other. Several are actually crying. At this very moment, somewhere in front of a TV, a dog is kicked.

People quietly trudge out of the stadium with heads bowed, as if walking to a refugee camp. Three drunk guys in Eagles jerseys taunt them from an upper deck: “A HUNDRED AND FOUR YARDS, BABY — WE KICKED YOUR ASS!” Not one person has the strength to yell back.

I quickly find a taxi and get the hell out of there, shocked at the emotion of the experience. In all honesty, I actually did get off on the ancient appeal of bloodshed in the arena. Humans squirming under insane pressure, the sudden and dramatic peak that explodes everyone’s brains. And buried deep in my lizard-skull, a small tingling sensation, almost orgasmic, at the well-deserved humiliation of the Dallas fucking Cowboys.