Yogurt, Toilets, And Fistfights: Craziest Chess Moments

Chess drama this, chess drama that… If you’ve been on Twitter/X in the last couple of months, you’ve probably been inundated with discussions over whatever the latest scandal is that day. It can get tiring… maybe you’re even thinking, “Can’t we go back to the old days when polite gentlemen wearing suits pushed around pieces?” 

Hate to break it to you, but the chess world has always been a lightning rod for hilarious, noteworthy, and downright bizarre drama.

Here are some of my favorites:

• World's First Grandmaster Fistfight
• Karpov And The Hypnotist
• Yogurt-gate
• Toilet Engines
• Kanye Kasparov
• Number 2 American Chess Player From Behind Bars

World's First Grandmaster Fistfight

Before chessboxing was all the rage, two players were ahead of the trend. In the early 1960s, legendary grandmasters Bobby Fischer and Pal Benko decided to duke it out, but this time off the board. Frank Brady detailed the incident in his Fischer biography Endgame. 

According to Brady, Benko walked into Fischer’s hotel room as he was working with his second (GM Arthur Bisguier, whom they both shared). Fischer tried to get the Hungarian-American grandmaster to leave, telling him he couldn’t come in to which Benko replied, “Yes, I can. Bisguier is also my second.” 

“Yes, I can. Bisguier is also my second,” Fischer mimicked in an accent. Benko then asked if the young grandmaster was making fun of him. Bobby again repeated the statement. This exchange continued until Fischer once again commanded Benko to leave. It’s unclear who threw the first punch, but it devolved into a fight, in which Benko emerged the victor. He later stated his regret in beating up Fischer, adding somewhat pettily, “He was a sick man, even then.” 

A grainy YouTube video shows Benko briefly discussing the event much later. He downplays it a bit, which to us only confirms that he must have handily won the fight.

Brady notes that: “This was the first fistfight ever recorded by two grandmasters.”

Karpov And The Hypnotist

Many chess players have their superstitions: Wear a certain pair of socks, knock on wood, pick out your favorite lucky shirt and you’re guaranteed a win. GM Anatoly Karpov, however, didn’t want to leave anything to chance in the famously scandalous 1978 World Championship match against GM Viktor Korchnoi: One of the observers from the Soviet camp was a hypnotist by the name of Dr. Vladimir Zukhar.

“His only job seemed to be to sit up front and stare at Korchnoi with his bulging, scary eyes,” The New York Times reported. Korchnoi became, understandably, distracted by the man, and complained that he was being hypnotized. He was so upset that his concerns were dismissed that during round seven he “started to yell, saying he would descend from the stage and poke Zukhar in the nose.” The “parapsychologist” was moved out of the front row after the incident.

Yogurt-gate

That same 1978 World Championship was not lacking in drama. Tensions once again came to a head after Korchnoi claimed that his opponent's food choice was a secret code meant to feed him signals about the position. 

During the games, Karpov would have someone deliver him yogurt in varying fruit flavors. This, Korchnoi claimed, was a secret message designed to help Karpov cheat. Thus yogurt-gate began.

The claim was taken seriously, and an investigation commenced. The first yogurt (raspberry, for anyone curious) was found to have been delivered early in the game before any critical position had been reached. They decided on a compromise: yogurt could be delivered in the future, but only in a single flavor and at the same time during each game.

Toilet Engines

Yogurt-gate was by no means the only cheating scandal to happen at a World Championship. In the 2006 match between GMs Veselin Topalov and Vladimir Kramnik, the former accused his opponent of cheating by taking a sizable amount of trips to the bathroom. According to Topalov’s team, upwards of 50 although this was never confirmed.

In response, the two players' private bathrooms were locked. Any future visit would have to be in a public shared space. Kramnik, dismayed, protested this by sitting outside of his former restroom, asking for it to be unlocked. He was not cheating, according to this NY Times article, he was simply well-hydrated. The bathroom stayed closed, and he forfeited the next game.

Cheating using the loo may seem like an insane accusation, but in 2019 a prominent grandmaster was found to be doing just that. IM Igors Rausis was stripped of his grandmaster title after he was caught using an engine while on the toilet during a tournament. According to Director General of FIDE, GM Emil Sutovsky, Rausis had been suspected of cheating for a while after his quick rise to almost 2700 Elo.

Kanye Kasparov

Remember that iconic moment in pop culture history when Taylor Swift won the 2009 Best Female Video award, only to have her speech interrupted by an angry Kanye West? Well, a similar chess incident happened six years earlier. What can I say, the chess world is a trendsetter. 

Let’s set the scene: It’s 2003 in Linares, Spain, where some of the world’s top players are waiting to hear who has been recognized for the most beautiful game of the tournament. The winner was a controversial one… to put it lightly. 

The game chosen was GM Garry Kasparov vs. 16-year-old GM Teimour Radjabov, where the latter won after an unfortunate blunder from the world number one at the time. Kasparov was unhappy, to put it mildly. 

While this incident (unfortunately) wasn’t recorded, eyewitnesses shared his remarks. While some of the wording may have differed, according to Chessbase, the gist was something like, “How could you give the beauty prize to a game in which I lost a piece because of a stupid mistake? It has been selected only because it was the only game that I lost and I consider this to be a public insult and humiliation.” 

While no one wants to see their blunder immortalized, this reaction may have been a bit extreme. To make matters worse, he then aimed his critiques toward journalists who’d voted for the game, claiming they were “damaging chess” with their reports.

To be fair, the game played came out of the French Defense, so could it have really been that beautiful? See for yourself.

Number Two American Chess Player From Behind Bars

How did an inmate who murdered his own mother become the number two chess player in the United States? Buckle up—this one's a doozy. 

After being in and out of prison, Claude Bloodgood was once again sent behind bars—this time for life, after his mother had testified against him in a prior case, and he responded by killing her with a screwdriver.

As an already-experienced chess player and organizer, he decided to hold tournaments behind bars. As many of his opponents were novices, he, as expected, won his games. This is where it gets wild. 

Many of the prisoners didn’t have a rating yet, which allowed Bloodgood to concoct a scheme. Rated prisoners would repeatedly lose on purpose to unrated prisoners. As provisional ratings have a large k-factor, this would cause the unrated prisoners to have an extremely high initial rating. They would then lose to Bloodgood, who would farm them for every inflated point. By the end of this scheme, he was rated 2789, only slightly lower than GM Gata Kamsky.

There’s a twist to this story. A friend of Bloodgood's claimed that the inmate phoned him several times asking him to tell the U.S. Chess Federation of his fraud. He’d hoped that they would take notice and change the rating system loophole that allowed him to get such a high rating. They did, in fact, take notice. He was removed from the rankings, and US Chess made the appropriate changes to make sure this didn’t happen again. 

Note: Bloodgood was known for his odd gambits and even wrote a few books on them!

That's all for now! Which is your favorite crazy moment in chess? Let us know in the comments below!