Adding humor to this great game

Chess is such a serious game, and rightfully so. Can we incorporate chess jokes? We have to spend a lot of time practicing tactics, strategy, memorizing openings, and all sorts of things. However, it's easy to forget that as serious as chess is, it's supposed to be a fun activity! After all, we played chess in the first place because we enjoyed it, right? We had a good time!

Why are chess jokes so relatable?

Something about chess jokes just strikes with us, that they normally wouldn't with other people, and other jokes don't oftentimes do as much. It really resonates.

The reason that chess jokes capture us like that is that chess has so many terminologies that are unique to chess, and only we are familiar with it.

As one example, earlier, I referred to how chess jokes capture us like that. Do you get it? :) Captures is a term that chess players use to take an opponent's piece out. In real life, to capture can also mean to grab or take possession of. This article will mainly be focused on longer chess jokes, but we might throw in a few more short ones!

Chess opening humor

This is a great joke for players who know something about chess openings. This, again, goes with some of the terminologies that chess players know, but may not be applicable or even be known outside of chess. It's about chess openings, and it goes as follows.

“I improved my English, Spanish, French, Russian, and Italian!”

“Wow, then you must be a genius!”

“Why is that?”

“You learned so many new languages!”

“Oh, they are only chess openings, not languages.”

This joke deserves a good laugh! The point is that so many chess openings have similar names to that of languages. So when we tell our peers that we spent an hour last night learning French, it very well may be that we spent an hour learning the French language. But it's also very possible we were staring at positions after 1. e4, e6!

Throwing some shade at Anish Giri

World-class Grandmaster Anish Giri has been the subject of many jokes and ridicule since his 16-draw performance in the 2016 Candidates Tournament. It is a world-elite tournament to decide who gets to challenge Magnus Carlsen for the world throne, so we probably should give him a little bit of a break. :) But we can still laugh at the jokes made about his draws at the Candidates!

The position above is obviously an easy checkmate in one puzzle, and you can achieve the checkmate in multiple ways. The joke goes, when three players are asked what the best move is:

Nakamura — Qg8#

Caruana — Qg7#

Giri — Qg6

Do you get it? :) In this hypothetical world, Anish has such a big drawing tendency, that he is willing to go for the stalemate in a completely winning position!

The Knight can't walk in a straight line!

As we all know, the Knight moves in an “L” shape, so the Knight does not move in a straight line, like the Queen, Rook, Bishop, etc. How can we put the fact that the Knight cannot move in a straight line into a joke?

Well, a Knight is busted by a cop DUI, driving under the influence (of alcohol). The cop pulls the Knight over, but the Knight denies driving under the influence. So the cop orders the Knight to walk in a straight line!

Do you get it? When people are pulled over in real life for such reasons, they are ordered to walk in a straight line, to prove their soberness. If they're innocent, they will be able to do it with no problem.

The Knight cannot move in a straight line, he can only move in an L-shape!

Short chess jokes

Short and sweet jokes can be really humorous and enjoyable. Without further ado, let's recite some of them! :)

“Knock knock”… who's there? “Queen”, “Queen who?”, “Queen your room, it's a mess!

Where do chess players trade pieces? At a pawn shop!

Why are chess players so boring to be around? Because they play a bored game!

Chess can be funny!

Since some chess concepts we know and love are generic to chess specifically, they give us an extra boost of laughter. Maybe you have some chess friends? Do you need a way to entertain them when chess becomes so serious? I think you have found some jokes to relay to them!

Do you want to find some more chess jokes? You can google for more chess jokes. You can also go to the Chess.com forums where people relay jokes to each other.