For centuries the world of professional chess has been riddled with sex and scandal. Just kidding (obviously), though I can imagine it does have its share of hot, nerd-girl groupies and a few stories to go with it, unlike all those boring sports like football and wrastlin’. So imagine my surprise (and delight) when I read breaking news with both “chess” and “anal beads” in the headlines — it’s the stuff SCREW lives for! And the challenge of coming up with chess-based innuendoes for our own headline (and headings) is every SCREW publisher’s wet dream. “Innuendo,” by the way, is Italian for anal sex. Get it, in-you-endo? (I’m here all week.)

The Irregular Opening

In a shocking upset that rocked the otherwise quiet (ssshhh!) world of professional chess, 19-year-old Hans Niemann (a fancy chess player name despite being from the US) defeated 31-year-old world champion Magnus Carlsen of Norway on Sept 4th in the Sinquefield Cup, a $350,000 tournament in St. Louis. Perhaps even more shocking are the allegations that followed; that Niemann cheated (who knew you could even cheat at chess?) but even more shocking than that (to everyone but us), was the way in which he (allegedly) did it…

The Greek Game

During a stream on the Chessbrah Twitch channel, host and fellow chess grandmaster Eric Hansen jokingly hinted (read: suggested) that Niemann cheated by having a third party transmit moves to him via wireless, remote-controlled anal beads shoved up the Old Benoni — his asshole. That’s fucking genius! Hansen’s suggestion ultimately took on a life of its own, online and off, leading to even more accusations of cheating and resulting in what has now become the biggest scandal in the anals of professional chess history. It’s even bigger than Igor Yackinoff using the stinky finger in his controversial Dirty Sanchez Attack on Grand Master Bates’ Queen to win the Dve Devushki v Odnoy Cup in 1861.

OK, I just made that last part up. (Click it, though!) Actually, I know jack shit about chess but again, this whole story is just too good to pass up and leads me to ask the one question on everyone’s minds: what combination of chess moves creates the greatest ass-gasm?

My money is on the Locock Gambit.

The Derriere Defence

Of course Niemann denies cheating and has since filed a defamation lawsuit over the allegations despite having admitted to cheating in the past. He’s even reportedly gone so far as offering to allow officials to do a full-cavity search of him before each game. (We’d love to be there for that.)

An investigation conducted by Chess.com — the all-knowing, all-seeing mystic eye of professional chess — has also recently concluded that Niemann, “likely received illegal assistance in more than 100 online games” as recently as 2020, including in events where prize money was at stake. But (pun intended), there’s a little more to the story…

Check, Mate

This whole “scandal” gets even shadier when you factor in Chess.com’s parent company, Chess Growthco, recently purchased Magnus Carlsen’s company, Play Magnus Group (PMG), for $83 Million in cash. That’s a fat check, (mate), and leads one to wonder just how impartial Chess.com could actually be in their “investigation” of Niemann — now Carlsen’s nemesis.

Expert Anal-ysis

Chess, cheating, anal beads — wow! — all of this got me hard, just kidding, it got me to wondering if the entire scenario is even at all possible. Surely, someone somewhere has tried it before; if not at the chess table, perhaps at the blackjack table. I needed an expert opinion.

On a whim, I reached out to one of the former members of the infamous MIT Blackjack Team — known for its sophisticated card-counting techniques and “creative strategies” for beating casinos worldwide out of millions of dollars in the 90s. Don’t ask how I know him/her, and no, I can’t say his/her name, but I can tell you that he and I — oops, I mean, we — go way back. Let’s just call him, they. Here’s how they said they would do it:

“First off, anal beads wouldn’t be my first choice,” they told me. “A good, solid butt plug would be much better. You’d want something low-profile and comfortable with a wireless remote small enough to conceal, that utilizes WiFi, versus infrared or radio frequency, for longer-range.”

“Next,” they continued, “If it’s an actual, physical tournament setting, you’d need two partners. The first would be The Spotter, who watches the game and relays the play-by-play to The Wizard who’s hiding somewhere, like in a bathroom stall, with a chess engine app opened on their phone. The Spotter relays all the moves, The Wizard tracks the game-play and uses the chess engine to determine the best counter-moves, then transmits them in Morse Code back to you by way of pulsations to the butt plug. With lots of practice, it’s certainly do-able.”

“Of course,” they added, “you have to consider that chess players at this level are already highly-skilled and know every move like the back of their hands. There’s very little luck involved versus, say, a game like blackjack. They’d only need to utilize such as system as an absolute last resort, if at all.”

Which means for the rest of us, our buttholes would likely be buzzing to the point of noticeability (or ass-climax) from the very first move. Boy, he’s quite fidgety this game. Oh, but he, I mean they, said “blackjack” — now that’s something I can get behind, or, get my behind in-to.

In The End-o…

It was as if they had done it before. (No judging.) Actually they, too, thought it was genius. We then began searching the internet for suitable, wireless remote-controlled butt plugs and he — I mean, they — helped me compile a list of the Five Best Butt Plugs for Cheating at Chess because, well, fuck off, this is important, investigative stuff we do here at SCREW. Then we decided to book two tickets to Vegas, but I can’t tell you why…

Anyway, see you soon!

— P.