On Jun 19, 3:41 pm, samsloan wrote:
Here is an old chess joke. I do not remember where I first read it, so
I am reciting it the best I can from memory. If anybody knows where it
was published please let me know.

It starts from an actual historical event, which was that at the great
Grandmaster tournament at St. Petersburg 1914, where the grandmaster
title was first awarded, Rubinstein was repeatedly woken up by the
Czar's Secret Police so as to disturb his sleep (perhaps because he
was Jewish). As a result, Rubinstein had one of the worst results of
his life and did not make it to the finals. (This was told to me by
none other than Glenn Hartleb.)

So here is the joke:

During the great Grandmaster Tournament of St. Petersburg 1914, at
2:00 A.M. in the morning, Rubinstein was woken up by a loud knocking
at his hotel room door.

Rubinstein had to wake up and answer the door.

At the door stood an old Russian peasant, chessboard in hand, loudly
and excitingly exclaiming.

"I have done it. I have solved it. White has a win by force in 19
moves!"

Rubinstein was perturbed and tried to push the old Russian peasant out
the door. But, the old man persisted. Finally, Rubinstein had no
choice but to sit down and play the man.

Rubinstein took black. The old man took white.

And what should happen but on exactly the 19th move, the old man said
checkmate. Rubinstein had been checkmated!

Naturally, Rubinstein was shocked by this development, so he said to
the old man, "We had better show this to Alekhine."

So, Rubinstein and the old man went down the hall of the hotel and
knocked on Alekhine's door.

Naturally, Alekhine was upset at being woken up in the middle of the
night, but finally he agreed to play the old man.

Alekhine took black and what should happen but on exactly the 19th
move, the old man delivered checkmate.

Now, the situation was serious so they decided that they had better go
to see Capablanca about this.

The three of them went down the hallway of the hotel, knocked on the
door and woke up Capablanca.

Capablanca was not happy either but finally he too agreed to play the
old man.

The end result was that Capablanca was checkmated on exactly the 19th
move.

That is the end of the story.

"But what", said the listener. "What happened to the old man?"

"Oh, well. We had to kill him, of course."

Sam Sloan

That joke is based on the plot of "Mate in Nineteen," a short story
by Vincent Fotre, in which a French peasant (iirc) comes to a
grandmaster, or world champion maybe it was, with analytical proof
that White has a forced mate in at most 19 moves from the opening
array. The GM is convinced, but does not say so. Rather than kill the
peasant, the GM merely dismisses his many pages of analysis as
unsound, sends the peasant away, then burns the analysis to protect
his livelihood as a chess player.
Read it over 40 years ago, probably in some anthology edited by
Chernev, Reinfeld or Horowitz, so my memories of some details may be a
bit inaccurate. The original version has only fictitious characters,
as I recall; someone later must have grafted Alekhine, Capablanca et
al onto the story.