An absolute beginner challenges a GM and wins

Long time ago, in the period between the two World Wars, there was a great and famous chess grandmaster in Poland. One day he received a letter (yes, the actual hand-written letter on paper, since back in those days e-mail did not exist!) from a simple waiter working in a little restaurant, in a little town, in the middle of nowhere. This waiter, oh horror, was challenging our GM to a chess game. "Ha!" thought the GM and almost threw the letter away - but he kept on reading and noticed that the challenge was reinforced with money. A win would get the GM a sum of money, say X, while a loss would cost the GM Y, with Y much greater than X. "Hm.." thought our GM, "I am the best player in the country, so there is really no risk... And X sounds nice. Why not?" And so the game has started where each move was hand-written on a piece of paper and sent by snail-mail.

To make the long story short, the grandmaster lost, to the great surprise of all, and had to pay up... Next, the waiter challenged another GM and won again. In fact, he issued these challenges a few more times, collecting Y every time. The waiter has instantly become a local celebrity in his town. Naturally, lots of townspeople started challenging him to a chess game. He was dodging these as long as he could, but finally yielded to the pressure and accepted the game from a simple unemployed townsman. A crowd of people gathered in the restaurant to watch the game. The waiter made moves like a beginner and quite easily lost... The folks were wide-eyed: "Wow, you who beat grandmasters lose to this guy? How come?" The waiter just sat there, silent.

The story would end here, except that many months later our great GM went to a chess tournament. At dinner table he told other GMs of his infamous game and monetary loss. "Interesting", said one of GMs, "the same thing happened to me!" Other GMs looked upon themselves. "Yeah, we played this guy, too!" It turned out, some of them had won, some of them had lost - in about 50/50 proportion. They started discussing details of their games and quickly discovered that pairs of GMs played the same games: one of the pair was a winner and collected X, the other was a loser and paid Y..

And that's how the great chees scam was discovered: the waiter always challeneged a pair of GMs at a time and was simply switching envelopes and pocketing the Y-X difference.

This story was shown in a TV movie I saw long time ago. Supposedly, the movie was based on authentic events - but I don't remember who, when, and where. Does anyone?

derren brown used a similar technique to play a room full of gms and ims at once.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evZmpsl3jI0

good story, but yea i saw derran brown do it

Very smart from this guy but seems strange that the GM's didn't realise that the "challenger" plays like a Master and not like a beginner.

its like cheating using computer on chess.com

thanks for the link... it was gr8 watching.... but still wondering how in the world he guessed the number of ending pieces,before the start of the match!!!

Hi didn't. It was probably a switcheroo - got the paper with the right numbers right after the game from his assistant.

And kloech: the GM didn't know the guy at all. Just received a nicely sounding letter, that's all.

There's a short story in which the Devil plays a pair of games against Capablanca and uses the same trick, making Capablanca play against himself. But Capablanca manages to trick the Devil and win. Can anyone identify this short story?

See here http://blog.chess.com/Dozy/capa-and-the-devil

lol

  Waiter sounds like a good Chess player to me.

im not sure how this is cheating at all. don't we all follow (or try to follow) games of grandmasters?

Having some one play for you would probably go under the rule of having outside assistance, which is cheating, both online, and in proper chess tournaments. If you don't believe me try to walk up to an ongoing game in a chess tournament and shout out move recommendations, see what happens.

This is why in simuls the simul-giver always gets the same color (usually white) in all the games.

This exact trick was used by a player here on chess.com in a tournament. He was in a group with two strong players, and played both of the strong players against each other. Needless to say, one of the strong players (me) noticed this when browsing the tournament games, and the trickster forfeited both games.

This is inaccurate as you state that a Granmaster lost to beginner in between the two world wars. Howevr, the GM title only came about in 1950, 5 years after the end of WW2