The governing body of chess has announced, with great relief, that it has shrugged-off all traces of sexiness attained from association with The Queen’s Gambit TV series.
“It’s been hell!”, commented world number 2, Martin Hampton, “The pressure of competing at a high-level in chess is bad enough without the added stress of being regarded as a solid gold f**kmaster!”
The Queen’s Gambit was a Netflix mini-series based around the life of a female chess prodigy and featured scenes of a sexual nature. By televisual osmosis It imbued previously sexually inert chess players with a degree of sultry sexual prowess never before seen in the long history of the strategy game.
Grandmaster Sergei Romanov explained, “Quite frankly, it was affecting my game. Every time I gripped the bishop’s head to make a move it would end up on the front cover of PlayChess magazine. I only had to punch the time clock a spectator would moan, ‘Oh yeah!’.
“There would be crowds of young female groupies outside tournaments, tossing aside nerds like spotty pawns to take a piece of us. My 2020 advent calendar ‘The 64 squares of Christmas’ was pure filth. There are images of me in full armour on a horse holding my lance that I’m not proud of.
“But all that’s gone now. I can walk down the street and not be dragged down a dark alley for a meaningless ‘en passant’. I no longer receive nude photos with messages, like: ‘Castle me, hard!’ and ‘Come and breech my Sicilian defence’.
Martin adds: “It was a wild ride while it lasted. But thankfully, the girls have moved on to footballers and life is so much simpler. My hedonism is under control, my marriage is back on track and I feel my game has improved.” He thinks Netflix should compensate him for demeaning his craft with lurid images and bad puns, though. 'I asked for compensation but they just asked if I wanted a cheque, mate. Bastards.'