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Chess Violence and Crime
One of the Charlemagne romances that may not have any historical importance is the following incident, related by Murray in the History of Chess, page 413. The son (Charlemagne?) of Pepin the Short (714-768) was playing chess against the son of Okarius (Okar), the prince of Bavaria, and became so enraged at repeatedly losing, that he hit the prince in the head with one of the chess pieces (rochus or rook) and killed him on the spot. In those days, chess pieces were usually made of rock crystal. The Arab historian al-Masudi (896-956), writing in his travel diary in 950 A.D., described how they played and bet on chess in India. Players would wager their fingers on a game of chess. If a player lost, he would cut off a finger with his dagger, then plunge his hand in boiling water with special ointment to cauterize the wound. Then he returns to the game. Another loss would mean another loss of another finger. Sometimes a player who continued to lose would cut off all his fingers, his hand, his fore-arm, his elbow, and other parts of his body. After each amputation, he could cauterize the wound and return to another game of chess. (Murray, page 37)
Around 1060, William the Conqueror (1027-1087), was playing chess with the Prince of France and got checkmated. The king then took the chessboard and hit the prince over the head with it.
Around 1213, Jeanne or Joan (1194-1244), Countess of Flanders and the daughter of Baldwin IX (1172-1205), count of Flanders and first emperor of the Latin Empire of Constantinople, beat her husband, Ferdinand (1188-1233), prince of Portugal, in a game of chess. He got so mad that he hit her. In revenge, she left her husband in French captivity from 1214 to 1226, refusing to ransom him. (Murray, 436). In 1251, the first known court case involving chess and violence appeared. It dealt with a chess player who stabbed his opponent to death. A quarrel arose between two players of Essex over a chess match. One of the players who lost was so angered that he stabbed his opponent in the stomach with a knife, from which he died. In 1264, another court case was opened when a man stabbed a woman to death with his sword after a quarrel over a chess game.
In 1549, Archbishop Don Antonio de Valdivieso of Nicaragua was assassinated while playing chess in the courtyard.
In 1892, world champion William Steinitz discharged his private secretary, Arthur Williams, and hired a new private secretary, Edward Treiter. Williams was angry at having been discharged and threatened to kill Treiter if he did not leave the Steinitz premises in Upper Montclair, New Jersey. The next morning, Williams shot Treiter with a double-barrel shotgun, blowing away Treiter’s left arm.
In 1921, 9-year-old Sammy Reshevsky and 5-year-old Jackie Coogan posed for a snap-shot with boxing gloves. Soon after, Coogan punched Reshevsky in the eye. In 1923, Alekhine smashed all the furniture in his hotel room after losing a game to Rudolf Spielmann. In 1948, grandmaster David Bronstein (1924-2006) survived an assassination attack during the first chess Interzonal in Saltsjobaden, Sweden. On the last day, Bronstein was playing Tartakower when, suddenly, a Lithuanian made a lunge at Bronstein to kill him. Several spectators grabbed the would-be assassin. The attempted killer wanted to murder a Russian because he claimed the Russians were responsible for sending his sister to Siberia and murdering her.
In 1950, Walter Bjornson of
Vancouver was cut with a knife by his opponent during a chess game, leaving
a 4 inch gash in his forearm. In 1954, the Argentine Chess Federation called off the national chess tournament after a player punched a referee. In 1960, a U.S. sailor got in a fight with a spectator in a Greenwich Village bar when the spectator criticized the sailor’s chess game. The sailor struck the spectator with a broken beer bottle, which struck his jugular vein. The sailor was eventually acquitted of murder and was charged with accidental death instead. In 1962, chess master Abe Turner was stabbed to death by Theodore Smith at the office of Chess Review magazine.
In 1964, chess master Raymond Weinstein killed an 83-year old man in a nursing home. He was judged mentally ill and was confined to Ward’s Island for the mentally ill. In 1966, Mikhail Tal was beaten up and hit on the head with a beer bottle during the 1966 Olympiad in Havana. He was drinking and had been flirting with a woman in a bar when her jealous boyfriend got in a fight with Tal. He missed the first five rounds of the Havana Chess Olympiad because of his injuries. In 1969, Danny Kopec, who later became an International Master, lost a game to a person he beat in his first tournament. In a temper tantrum, he threw all his chess sets and magazines down an incinerator.
In 1971, when Tigran Petrosian lost his match with Bobby Fischer, Petrosian’s wife, Rona, put the blame on his trainer, Alexey Suetin, and slapped him. In one of the US Opens of the early 1970s, a chess player had just lost his game and, by himself, set up the pieces to analyze his game. A player sitting next to him told him to leave the playing area, that this was not a skittles room. Ignoring the player, the other person quietly replayed his lost game. The player again told him to leave. The lone kibitzer replied, “Who died and made you king?” The player then swept all the pieces off the other guy’s board with his hand. The kibitzer responded with a right hook that knocked the player off his seat. A fight then started, which had to be broken up by the tournament director. In 1975, International Master Bernard Zuckerman was playing in a chess tournament in Cleveland, Ohio. A loud spectator was nearby and Zuckerman told him to shut up. When the spectator refused, Zuckerman hurled a captured bishop at him. The TD reprimanded Zuckerman for his unsportsmanlike conduct. In 1978, grandmaster William Lombardy was attacked in New York City by a mugger who had a knife. Tendons in two fingers were severed and he underwent a long operation to repair the severed tendons.
In 1981, future grandmaster John Fedorowicz and grandmaster András Adorján got into a fistfight at the Edward Lasker Memorial on New York. Fedorowicz was upset that Adorján beat him when Adorján was drawing all his earlier games. Most of the blows landed not on each other, but on the tournament director, Eric Schiller, who was trying to break up the fight.
In 1982, at a chess tournament in London, one of the players complained to the tournament director that his opponent was rocking the table. After that situation was worked out, the same player complained to the TD that his opponent was making noises and threatened him with physical violence. The player then demanded his entry fee be refunded. The TD said no, so the player picked up someone’s chess clock and ran away. Later, the organizers received a call that if he didn’t get his entry fee back, they would never see their clock again.
In the 1980s, chess was forbidden in Iran. One strong Iranian player received 90 lashes of the whip after being caught playing chess.
In the 1989, a Russian scientist
killed another colleague with an axe after losing a chess game at the Vostok
Research Station in the Antarctic. In 1990, Grandmaster Gregory Kaidanov of the Ukraine arrived in New York for the first time. On the first day in New York, his wife’s luggage was stolen. The next day, he was attacked by a gang and robbed of all his money, airline tickets, and 10 years of chess analysis. In 1991, Kaidanov emigrated from the Ukraine to the U.S. and settled in Lexington, Kentucky. In 1992, Grandmaster Artur Yusupov returned to his Moscow apartment to discover several burglars in his apartment. A struggle broke out and Yusupov was shot and was in critical condition, but survived. In 1992, Robert Bryan of England shot Matthew Hay over a chess game. Bryan had ‘had enough’ after losing to Hay and was jailed for 10 years after admitting attempting to murder Mr. Hay by shooting him in the neck with a shotgun.
In 1993, a person was shot and killed while playing chess in Bosnia, the first to die from sniper file while playing chess. In 1994, Martin Wirth of Fort Collins, Colorado, shot to death Vernie Cox after the two argued over a chess game. Cox died of two gunshot wounds to the chest. Witnesses said that Wirth had lost a chess game with Cox, knocked over the chess board and some furniture, then began to argue with his opponent. Wirth went across the street to his home and returned with a gun and shot Cox to death.
During the early 1990s, Rustam
Kamsky, a former boxer and father of Gata Kamsky, would often go to chess
tournaments with his son and threaten anyone who he perceived was disturbing
the concentration of his son. In 1994, Rustam threatened to kill
grandmaster Nigel Short at a restaurant during a Kamsky-Short chess match. In 1994, grandmaster Igor Platonov returned home to his apartment in Kiev when two thieves ambushed him and murdered him. The killers were never caught. At the 1994 chess Olympiad in Moscow, the Macedonian team captain was beaten into unconsciousness and robbed twice. The first time, he was robbed of $7,000 inside a bank that was across the street from the playing center. A U.S. player was mugged, and robbers threatened his life if he did not come back the next day with more money. Other chess players reported that thugs pounded on their hotel doors in the middle of the night and threatened them. In 1995, International Master Gilles Andruet, a former French champion, was murdered in Paris over gambling debts. He was found dead in a plastic bag.
In the 1990s, Soviet Grandmaster Semion Dvoirys had thrown his shoe through a chess tournament hall in the Netherlands and was known to beat his head on the floor with great force when he lost.
In 2000, Laurence Douglas of
Puoghkeepsie, New York, stabbed Craig Williams to death over a chess game.
Williams had just beaten Douglas in a chess game that had a $5 wager.
Williams took a$5 bill from Douglas after the game. Douglas then pulled out
a knife and stabbed Williams 16 times. In 2002, two players got into a fight at the World Open in Philadelphia when one of the players threw a basketball at another player between rounds. In 2003, Simon Andrews of Falls Township, Pennsylvania, stabbed to death Jerry Kowalski during a chess game. Authorities said that Andrews was disturbed by Kowalski’s constant talking during their chess games. Andrews then pulled a knife from under a sofa-bed mattress and stabbed Kowalski in the neck. Andrews was sentenced from 15 to 30 years in state prison. In 2003, grandmaster Svetozar Gligoric, age 79, was attacked by burglars at 3 a.m. in his Belgrade home. The robbers beat and tied him up, then robbed him of his money, wife’s jewelry, chess trophies, silver chess sets, and other valuables. Gligoric suffered a black eye.
In March 2005, International Master Simon Webb was stabbed to death in the family kitchen by his 25-year-old son after an argument. Simon returned to his home at 1 a.m. after playing in a local chess match. He was then stabbed 20 times with a kitchen knife by his drug-crazed son. His son then tried to kill himself by ramming his car at high speed into a bus shelter. He survived with just a broken nose.
In 2005, junior champion David Howell of England (now a grandmaster) punched the organizer of the European Union Chess Championship when it turned out that Howell would not win a prize. It turned out that titled players were not eligible for junior prizes. In 2005, Canadian grandmaster Pascal Charbonneau was mugged at gunpoint at the World Open in Philadelphia.
In 2006, Angela Gilbert, the
mother of chess prodigy Jessie Gilbert who fell to hear death from a hotel,
was arrested for threatening to kill her ex-husband. In 2006, during the Turin chess Olympiad, UK grandmaster Daniel Gormally punched Armenian grandmaster Levon Aronian to the ground at a nightclub. The two got in a jealous dispute over 19-year-old chess playing beauty Arianne Caoili. Caoili’s energetic dancing with Aronian provoked Gormally to fight. In 2007, grandmaster Teimor Radjabov had to withdraw from the Morelia-Linares tournament because his hotel room was burglarized and many valuable items were stolen. In 2007, two players got into an argument at the Village Chess Shop in New York during a chess game. One player was using his piece to knock off the other player’s piece rather than using the hands to remove a captured piece. One player than picked up the wooden board and hit the other player in the mouth, which drew blood. The police were called. The player that was hit was pressing criminal charges and vowed to sue. In 2007, grandmaster Farhad Tahirov was kicked and punched by a gang of 8 thugs during the 82nd Hastings International Chess Congress. He was robbed of a thousand British pounds. On January 1, 2008, Philip Hogarty was struck by a patrol car in Dublin at 2:30 a.m. and died later that day. He was elected chairman of the Irish Chess Union in 2006 at the age of 18, the youngest person ever to be elected to this position. During mass offertory, gifts of chess boards and his silver chess trophy were brought to the altar.
In October 2008, David Christian
of Iowa City got in a fight with Michael Steward while playing a game of
chess at the rooming house where they both lived. He was sentenced to up to
10 years in prison for involuntary manslaughter. Christian choked Steward
to death. In February 2009, a man killed a friend with a sword after a chess game in Alameda, California. An argument broke out during their game, and the two started wrestling. Joseph Groom retreated to his bedroom and returned with a sword, which he used to stab Kelly Kjersem once. Kjersem later died. In 2010, someone fired a shot at The Chess Club in Syracuse, New York. A 16-year old boy received a gunshot wound to the foot.
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Canute
(995-1035), king of England, Denmark, Norway, and part of Sweden, was said
to have killed an earl over chess. The story is found in The Chronicles
of the Kings of Norway called the Saga of Olaf Haraldson. In
1028, the king, also known as Cnut the Great, was playing a game of chess
with his brother-in-law, Earl Godwin Ulfnadson (Ulf), the husband of the
king’s sister, when the king made a bad move, which led to a loss of one of
the king’s pieces (a knight). The king took his move back, replaced his
knight, and told the earl to play a different move. The earl got angry over
this, overturned the chess board and started walking away. The king said
“Runnest thou away, Ulf the coward?” The earl responded, “Thou wouldst have
run farther at Helga river if thou hadst come to battle there. Thou didst
not call me Ulf the coward when I hastened to thy help while the Swedes were
beating thee like a dog.” The earl then left the king’s quarters. The next
day, the king ordered the earl to be killed. The earl was stabbed to death
at Saint Lucius’ church. In 1035, Canute died at the Abbey in Shaftesbury,
Dorset. According to Henry Bird in Chess History and Reminiscences,
the king was killed while watching a chess game. Armed soldiers rushed into
the building and slew Canute while his friend, Valdemar, who was playing
chess, was severely wounded. Valdemar escaped using the chess board as a
shield.
In
1915, a chess automaton was set up at Coney Island. One player lost to it
and was so angry he took out a gun and shot at the automaton. It killed its
hidden operator, which was covered up. In another incident with Ajeeb, a
Westerner emptied his six-shooter into the automaton, hitting the operator
in the shoulder.
In
May 1962, during the Candidates Tournament in Curacao, Bobby Fischer and Pal
Benko got into a fight after Fischer asked Bisguier to assist him during an
adjournment. But Benko also wanted Bisguier to help with his own
adjournment with Petrosian. Fischer supposedly insulted Benko and made fun
of his accent. Benko responded by slapping Fischer.
