Trivial to the point where I’m not sure it’s even worth a thread, but:
Has any professional chess player actually done this fiction-trope - gotten so enraged in a chess match with an opponent that he flipped/tossed the board and sent the pieces flying?
If someone did do this, how is this officially recorded? Forfeit, defeat, and opponent wins by default?
I have no knowledge that this ever happened in a tournament, but as I doubt that his king landed standing up, I’d think it you could simply record it as resigns.
An opponent did that to me once in a junior high tournament. It was ruled a resignation.
Relevant Dilbert. There was a time when playing with my son that the loser was allowed to end the game in this manner!
I’ve witnessed it in non-Professional tournaments. More than once. I saw it at the High School Nationals and at the States.
It is typical a resignation.
I understand that the great Russian Grandmaster Efim Bogoljubov once resigned a game by leaping to his feet and shouting “Why must I lose to this idiot!”
My high school girlfriend’s kid brother did it when I played him. I certainly considered him to have resigned.
And I did not agree to a rematch.
I’ve played a lot of chess over the last 45 years in national championships and international events.
I’ve never seen or heard of anyone flipping the board at that level.
The playing arena is very quiet (before digital clocks, all you could hear was the ticking of the clockwork ones.)
At club level, I have seen it once.
One of our members (Oliver) blundered, swept the pieces off the board and stormed out.
Our match captain immediately apologised to the unfortunate opponent (who was of course given the win.)
Later there was a committee meeting and Oliver was banned from our club for life.
I have been (quietly) sworn at (also just once in my entire career.)
I reported this to the tournament controller, who got my opponent to apologise and gave him a final warning (i.e. he would be defaulted if it happened again.)
On a more cheerful note, my mate Ron was once playing in a national championship.
In the first round he was drawn against a good friend (Andrew).
The introductory speeches were interminable, so Ron put his fingers under two corners of the chessboard and lifted it slightly. 
To avoid all the pieces sliding towards him, Andrew also lifted the board to balance things.
Ron then lifted a bit more, so Andrew did the same.
Ron now escalated by lifting the board in the air :smack: - so to avoid a lot of noise as pieces fell to the floor, Andrew did the same.
Finally Ron slowly stood up (still holding the board) :eek: - by now Andrew was committed to standing up also!
Nearby players started to laugh, which caused an interruption to the speeches. (I don’t think they could see what was happening, as Ron + Andrew were in a corner of the arena.)
So Ron gradually sat back down and replaced the board, much to Andrew’s relief.
Gary Kasparov would, in a losing position, get up and leave with his clock running. On paper, this made it look like he defaulted on time. A real dickish move, not sure if there have been any repercussions.
It’s perhaps worth mentioning, for those not familiar with chess, that most non-draw games end by resignation: It’s usually considered poor form to play a game out to the bitter checkmate, once you can see the inevitable. And likewise, most drawn games (which is a very large fraction of games) end not in stalemate or other forced draws, but by both players agreeing that neither can win.
Thanks for the responses.
Layman question (never played competitive chess): Is there any meaningful difference between resigning, defaulting on time, getting checkmated, etc.? A loss is a loss in the standings, isn’t it? (Ignoring good/bad form, just asking about points or advancement in a tournament)
You got it, a loss is a loss.
Have you got a cite for this?
I’ve met Gary several times and he was very polite and helpful, especially to the pupils at my school.
(In any case a loss is a loss - nobody cares if you lose on time.)
I heard about one once from the guy who won. He was a teen-ager playing an 8 year old. When the kid lost he threw the board and pieces across the room and, according to the teen-ager, said, “You dirty rotten bastard, you’ll never beat me again.” And he never did. Care to guess the name of the 8 year old.
Bobby Fischer
I can’t remember seeing anything like that. I do remember when Viktor Korchnoi got all salty when Sofia Polgar beat him in a game. But he was famous for the salt.
IIRC, Kasparov’s tantrum was when he lost – to Deep Blue, a fucking machine.
Somehow, I doubt the machine felt the indignation.
And it wasn’t that he was mad at the machine-- It’s that he was mad about the format of the tournament (which was set up by IBM, hardly a neutral party). It was a deliberately grueling schedule, designed to tire out a human player (but, of course, the computer didn’t care).
Well, if I recall correctly, he was also mad because he intuited that they had tinkered with the opening book during the match. So, right or wrong, he was irritated that the programming may have been changed midstream.
Can you elaborate for folks unfamiliar with international tournament chess? I ask because a lot of laymen-level articles about the Deep Blue-vs.-Kasparov matches simply say that they were played “under tournament conditions”.
“Tournament conditions” means simply things like how much time each player has to make their moves in the game (because the more time you have to think about your moves, the better you’ll play, but nobody wants a single game to last a week, so you have to set some sort of limit). It doesn’t include things like how many games are played each day. In a normal tournament, that number would be set at a level that would not tire humans out, because none of the players wants to be tired. But there’s not actually a standard “tournament rule” for how many games can be played a day, because ordinarily there doesn’t need to be.