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The Worst Losers in Chess History

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Lady-Jane

I was reading this book called Chess For Dummies, and there was this funny section.  Here it is written exactly as in the book:

The Worst Losers in Chess History

Mike Fox and Richard James, in their delightful book "The Even More Complete Chess Addict", nominate the following three candidate for the title of "worst loser in chess history".  In their own words:

Taking the Bronze:  Former world champion Alexander Alekhine, a notoriously temperamental loser.  At Vienna in 1922, Alekhine spectacularly resigned against Ernst Grunfield by hurling his king across the room.

In the Silver Medal position: Another famous loser, Aaron Nimzowitsch.  At a lighting chess tournament in Berlin, he said out loud what everyone has at one time felt.  Instead of quietly turning over his king, Nimzo leapt onto his chair and bellowed across the tournament hall: "Why must I lose to this idiot?"

The Gold Medal, plus John McEnroe Award for bad behavior at a tournament: The lesser-known Danish player(reported in the Chess Scene and who was unnamed), who lost as a result of a finger slip involving his queen.  Unable to contain his despair, he snuck back into the tournament hall in the dead of night and cut the heads off all the queens.

Swindlers_List

gold medalist indeed

913Glorax12

HA! I enjoyed that! thank you!

KvothDuval

lol I like the silver medle

913Glorax12

Yeah, but I'm sure we all though the same thing (just never said it out loud)

ivandh

I like the third one, I think it is a totally reasonable reaction and even a good strategy at times.

913Glorax12

i agree, it does, to bad :(

You would think, that someone that was a former champion would have better restraint

913Glorax12

Lol, I hate connect four... possibly cause I am horrible at it!:)

theoreticalboy

I wonder if the Danish guy made all the Kings watch?

913Glorax12

:) Thats just cruel!

Bamilus1

This guy is the worst loser ever (leaves 2 pawns en prise and then accuses me of cheating lol)

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/chess-openings/explaining-my-new-opening?page=1

Lady-Jane
913Glorax12 wrote:

Lol, I hate connect four... possibly cause I am horrible at it!:)

haha, yeah.  Me too.  

Oh a side note, my thread somehow resurrected.  Definitely wasn't expecting that.  

913Glorax12

Actually this happems quite a lot, after some all of suden weeks/months or even year old forums pop back up and grow

Who said that you were cheating, I couldn't find it, is it on the first page?

bean_Fischer

Anand and M. Carlsen.

TKACHS

The worst losers are the oldsters, who are losing games because they are losing their memory.

madhacker

How about throwing up all over the board? There was a case of that in my local league once. To be fair to the guy (a serious alcoholic, sadly now deceased), you can hardly say it was an intentional resignation!

Rational_Optimist

if you want to name unknown players, a lot of chess.com members will be nominated for gold medal.

you cant judge by only one case.all players in all sports can get mad and do sth irrational once in their life.this happens to all players.yes alekhine did it once but did he do that regularly? i believe one of the worst famous losers in chess history is Fischer.i actually believe he is the worst since you can find a lot of bad behaviors and crying after his losses.

gaereagdag

What about Ivanov? In the sense that he has to avoid losing by being helped out by..ahem..microchip monster.

madhacker

Well that's more of a case of bad winner than bad loser. But it does make you wonder if he's the only one. Ivanov was pretty blatant because his moves more or less exactly matched the computer. But could there be other players cheating more intelligently? I.e. following the computer's advice but from time to time making weaker moves and even losing games, to avoid arousing suspicion....?

SmyslovFan

Some other nominees:

Blackburne once defenestrated a player who beat him!

IM Michael Schliefer got up and urinated on a chess board while drunk. He was so drunk, he didn't notice whether he was winning or losing though.

Here's Bill Wall's blog on sore losers:

http://www.chess.com/blog/billwall/sore-losers-in-chess