Chess Rage

Bobby Fischer once said, “Chess is war over the board. The object is to crush the opponent’s mind.” And as for his greatest satisfaction, Fischer explained, “I like the moment when I break a man’s ego.” There are few things quite as humiliating as a chess loss. No wonder losers throughout history have flipped out and engaged in murderous violence.Most anecdotes of sore losers involve royalty. Pepin the Short was said to have killed his opponent, Prince Okarius of Bavaria, by bludgeoning him with a rook. In AD 1027, Earl Ulf lost his temper and overturned the board when his opponent, King Canute, took back a move. Canute ordered the earl executed. William the Conqueror clobbered a French prince with a chessboard after he was checkmated. A brawl between King Henry I of England and France’s Louis VI over chess in 1120 supposedly triggered a 12-year war.Even further back, an Ummayad caliph named Al-Walid killed his courtier by throwing the firzan (a queen) at his head. What prompted this little outburst? Well, he found out that his courtier was deliberately losing their chess games, and this didn’t sit well with Al-Walid. We may question the authenticity of such accounts, but there are too many stories to discount them all. Based on the evidence, it seems likely that some rulers reacted badly to defeat, or in Al-Walid’s case, victory. In those days, chess sets were made of stone and were surely tempting weapons in the hands of a frustrated player. Today, we are more sportsmanlike, and besides, chess sets are now made of wood or plastic. So we have relegated such violence to the medieval past, right?Many modern players vent their anger by throwing tantrums, like Alekhine hurling pieces across the room or destroying furniture. But occasionally, games still end in blood and gore. The most extreme case was in Dublin in 2014 when Saverio Bellante stabbed his landlord, Tom O’Gorman, to death. Why? Well, Bellante grew incensed after O’Gorman called his king move “stupid and perverse.” Bellante then proceeded to cut open his victim and eat part of his heart. A jury eventually ruled Bellante not guilty by reason of insanity.