History Main / CrazyPeoplePlayChess

* {{Durarara}}'s Izaya doesn't just play chess. He plays chess-reversi-cards-alcohol-matches. And he is definitely crazy.

* Meta example,; there is a real chess game on record on which somewhat mysteriously is claimed to have been between the fictional CthulhuMythos character wilbur whateley, and Aleister Crowley.

-->-- '''Magnus Carlsen''', Highest rated chess player of all time

* Ami in Anime/SailorMoon plays an opponent, Berthier, who is such a lunatic that she freezes different parts of Ami's body as Ami loses her pieces. Granted, Berthier was going through a DespairEventHorizon, thinking she was worthless and preparing to die. She eventually {{Heel Face Turn}}s and loses the 'crazy' part.

->''It's easy to get obsessed with chess.''

->''Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do.''

* ''[[TwoThousandAndOneASpaceOdyssey 2001: A Space Odyssey]]'' -- A GeniusBonus for chess enthusiasts is found in the game that HAL 9000 and Poole play; although HAL predicts mate, there's actually a way for Poole to avoid it. A subtle hint at HAL's error-prone nature...

* ''[[Literature/AliceInWonderland Through the Looking Glass]]'', the sequel to ''Literature/AliceInWonderland'', features a chess-crazed Wonderland. Wonderland, of course, is populated mostly by those who are as mad as hatters.

* ''Series/MidsommerMurders'': "The Sicilian Defence" revolves around a chess tournament and a computer chess game. As it takes place in Midsommer, needless to say there are more than a few unbalanced personalities involved. The killer leaves chess notations in the pockets of the victims.

* Freddie Trumper in ''Theatre/{{Chess}}''. In some versions of the play, including the official one, his anti-Soviet rantings at a press conference convince the press as well as most of the Russians that Freddy is delusional. In the Broadway version, he gets worse, with Florence angering him to the point where he goes through a drawn-out breakdown while filming a TV interview.

** AleisterCrowley, himself a good example of this trope, at one point had the ambition of becoming chess grandmaster, until [[http://hermetic.com/crowley/confessions/chapter16.html he saw some leading chess players up close]]: 'I saw the masters --- one, shabby, snuffy and blear-eyed; another, in badly fitting would-be respectable shoddy; a third, a mere parody of humanity, and so on for the rest. These were the people to whose ranks I was seeking admission. "There, but for the grace of God, goes Aleister Crowley," I exclaimed to myself with disgust, and there and then I registered a vow never to play another serious game of chess.' He did, however, play some decidedly non-serious games. He was particularly noted for his unusual variant on "blindfold chess" - he would disappear into a bedroom with his current girlfriend and call out his moves through a closed door while they were presumably... [[UnusualEuphemism engaged in an activity not traditionally associated with chess.]]

* Unsurprisingly, [[Series/DoctorWho The Doctor]] plays a game called "[[ElectricTorture Live Chess]]", which ramps up the voltage to over ''four million volts'' just to '''move''' a piece. [[UpToEleven Really crazy people play crazy chess.]]

** A chess team from Bethlem Mental Asylum (the place that gave us the word "bedlam") once defeated a team from Harvard University.

* ''LawAndOrderCriminalIntent'' used a mentally damaged chess expert as a villain in one episode.

->''It's easy to get obsessed with chess.''

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* ''[[TwoThousandAndOneASpaceOdyssey 2001: A Space Odyssey]]'' -- A GeniusBonus for chess enthusiasts is found in the game that HAL 9000 and Poole play; although HAL predicts mate, there's actually a way for Poole to avoid it. A subtle hint at HAL's error-prone nature...

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** Akiba Rubinstein. Another famous player who was among the first of the endgame experts. His schizophrenia became so bad that, at one point, he would leave the chess table and literally go curl up in a corner and try to hide while his opponent was considering his next move.

** AleisterCrowley, himself a good example of this trope, at one point had the ambition of becoming chess grandmaster, until [[http://hermetic.com/crowley/confessions/chapter16.html he saw some leading chess players up close]]: 'I saw the masters --- one, shabby, snuffy and blear-eyed; another, in badly fitting would-be respectable shoddy; a third, a mere parody of humanity, and so on for the rest. These were the people to whose ranks I was seeking admission. "There, but for the grace of God, goes Aleister Crowley," I exclaimed to myself with disgust, and there and then I registered a vow never to play another serious game of chess.' He did, however, play some decidedly non-serious games. He was particularly noted for his unusual variant on "blindfold chess" - he would disappear into a bedroom with his current girlfriend and call out his moves through a closed door while they were presumably... [[UnusualEuphemism engaged in an activity not traditionally associated with chess.]]

-->-- '''Viktor Korchnoi''', grandmaster

* Freddy Trumper in ''Theatre/{{Chess}}''. In some versions of the play, including the official one, his anti-Soviet rantings at a press conference convince the press as well as most of the Russians that Freddy is delusional. In the Broadway version, he gets worse, with Florence angering him to the point where he goes through a drawn-out breakdown while filming a TV interview.

** In the book it's explained that HAL is programmed to lose a certain percentage of the games, but so well that the human players can't tell that the defeat was deliberate.

** Bobby Fischer, the 11th world champion. The man who took down the Soviet chess machine. Also a raving anti-semite ([[BoomerangBigot despite being Jewish]]), ConspiracyTheorist who thought that the Soviets (and later, the Jews) were trying to assassinate him or at least screw up his games, and all-around nutjob.
*** [[BasedOnAGreatBigLie Rumor has it]] that Fischer and his opponent Spassky hated each other so much that the championship organizers had to put a board under the chess table to stop them from kicking each other between moves.
** Akiba Rubinstein. Another famous player who was among the first of the endgame experts. His schizophrenia became so bad that, at one point, he would leave the chess table and literally go curl up in a corner and try to hide while his opponent was considering his next move. According to ([[BasedOnAGreatBigLie a completely unverified but nevertheless popular]]) legend, the Nazis didn't take him to the concentration camps (despite his Jewish heritage) because he was so delusional and pathetic that they didn't see the point.
*** Considering that the mentally ill were quite high on the Nazis' "to kill"-list, this seems decidedly improbable.

** Paul Morphy, often considered to be one of the best chess players of all time, is often considered to have been at least a little mad. There's no real evidence for this, but it's why they call him 'The Pride and Sorrow of Chess'
*** Morphy's case is a bit more complicated, and something of an [[InvertedTrope inversion]]: unlike the others here, Morphy ''wasn't'' obsessed with the game, but rather with getting ''away'' from it. A ChildProdigy, he graduated from college and was awarded a law degree before he was actually old enough to be admitted to the bar, and turned to chess to pass the time until he could enter his chosen profession. He was a very talented attorney (he had the entire Louisiana Civil Code committed to ''memory'') and wanted to be remembered more for his legal career than his chess career (this was at a time when chess was considered a somewhat disreputable pasttime in the United States). He was frustrated that chess had overshadowed his law practice and gave up the game completely ([[BoringInvincibleHero he'd also beaten everyone even remotely in his league]] and would [[SelfImposedChallenge only play by giving odds of pawn and rook]]). Unfortunately he was never able to set up a successful law practice because his chess fame kept potential clients distracted from their actual cases.

** AleisterCrowley, himself a good example of this trope, at one point had the ambition of becoming chess grandmaster, until [[http://hermetic.com/crowley/confessions/chapter16.html he saw some leading chess players up close]]: 'I saw the masters --- one, shabby, snuffy and blear-eyed; another, in badly fitting would-be respectable shoddy; a third, a mere parody of humanity, and so on for the rest. These were the people to whose ranks I was seeking admission. "There, but for the grace of God, goes Aleister Crowley," I exclaimed to myself with disgust, and there and then I registered a vow never to play another serious game of chess.'
*** He did, however, play some decidedly non-serious games. He was particularly noted for his unusual variant on "blindfold chess" - he would disappear into a bedroom with his current girlfriend and call out his moves through a closed door while they were presumably... [[UnusualEuphemism engaged in an activity not traditionally associated with chess.]]

** He did, however, play some decidedly non-serious games. He was particularly noted for his unusual variant on "blindfold chess" - he would disappear into a bedroom with his current girlfriend and call out his moves through a closed door while they were presumably... [[UnusualEuphemism engaged in an activity not traditionally associated with chess.]]

* ''Film/SherlockHolmes2:AGameOfShadows'', An epic chess match between Holmes and the main antagonist serves as both the climax and a representation for the entire movie's events. It should also be mentioned that both of them were not using a chess board and playing throughout portions of the match.

* ''Film/SherlockHolmes2:AGameOfShadows'', An epic chess match between Holmes and the main antagonist serves as both the climax and a representation for the entire movie's events.

*** Morphy's case is a bit more complicated, and something of an [[InvertedTrope inversion]]: unlike the others here, Morphy ''wasn't'' obsessed with the game, but rather with getting ''away'' from it. A ChildProdigy, he graduated from college and was awarded a law degree before he was actually old enough to practice law, and turned to chess to pass the time until he could enter his chosen profession. He was a very talented attorney (he had the entire Louisiana Civil Code committed to ''memory'') and wanted to be remembered more for his legal career than his chess career (this was at a time when chess was considered a somewhat disreputable pasttime in the United States). He was frustrated that chess had overshadowed his law practice and gave up the game completely ([[BoringInvincibleHero he'd also beaten everyone even remotely in his league]] and would [[SelfImposedChallenge only play by giving odds of pawn and rook]]). Unfortunately he was never able to set up a successful law practice because his chess fame kept potential clients distracted from their actual cases.

*** Morphy's case is a bit more complicated, and something of an [[InvertedTrope inversion]]: unlike the others here, Morphy ''wasn't'' obsessed with the game, but rather with getting ''away'' from it. He was a very talented attorney (he had the entire Louisiana Civil Code committed to ''memory'') and wanted to be remembered more for his legal career than his chess career (this was at a time when chess was considered a somewhat disreputable pasttime in the United States). He was frustrated that chess had overshadowed his law practice and gave up the game completely ([[BoringInvincibleHero he'd also beaten everyone even remotely in his league]] and would [[SelfImposedChallenge only play by giving odds of pawn and rook]]). Unfortunately he was never able to set up a successful law practice because his chess fame kept potential clients distracted from their actual cases.

*** Morphy's case is a bit more complicated: unlike the others here, Morphy ''wasn't'' obsessed with the game. He was a very talented attorney (he had the entire Louisiana Civil Code committed to ''memory'') and wanted to be remembered more for his legal career than his chess career (this was at a time when chess was considered a somewhat disreputable pasttime in the United States). He was frustrated that chess had overshadowed his law practice and gave up the game completely ([[BoringInvincibleHero he'd also beaten everyone even remotely in his league]] and would [[SelfImposedChallenge only play by giving odds of pawn and rook]]). Unfortunately he was never able to set up a successful law practice because his chess fame kept potential clients distracted from their actual cases.

*** Morphy's case is a bit more complicated: he was a very talented attorney (he had the entire Louisiana Civil Code committed to ''memory'') and wanted to be remembered more for his legal career than his chess career (this was at a time when chess was considered a somewhat disreputable pasttime in the United States). He was frustrated that chess had overshadowed his law practice and gave up the game completely ([[BoringInvincibleHero he'd also beaten everyone even remotely in his league]] and would [[SelfImposedHandicap only play by giving odds of pawn and rook]]). Unfortunately he was never able to set up a successful law practice because his chess fame kept potential clients distracted from their actual cases.