Cheyenne was a rather popular wild west television series produced by Warner Brothers in the fifties and sixties. It deals with the adventures of the titular character, a wandering cowboy with a strong sense for justice and a penchant for getting into fist- or gunfights, as the case may be. In this particular episode, he takes a temporary job as foreman on a large farm.¹

He gets on quite friendly terms with the farmer. So friendly that they decide to play a nice game of chess together. We only see one position, but the shot is very clear. The board is set up wrongly, of course, although it’s more forgivable here than usual, since the Wild West was a lawless region where the niceties and conventions of polite society hadn’t fully penetrated yet.²

The position is as follows:³I wonder whether this might just be the result of a directing error. Perhaps they set up the board correctly and perhaps they knew that the kings started on opposite-coloured squares, but the image got reversed because of some camera shenanigans.

But perhaps not, since Cheyenne seems to be very confused by the rules. He picks up his g6 bishop and asks:

Cheyenne: How does this doomadiddle go again?
Matt: Diagonal, on the black squares.

Cheyenne then pushes his bishop to c2 and claims checkmate. Strangely, his opponents seems to acquiesce in this fraudulent claim. My leading theory is that he just wants to get it over with. My following theory is that he’s a moron.

Realism:1/5 It’s still just barely legal, but only if black’s h-pawn promoted to get captured by one of white’s queen’s side pawns. Or one of black’s pieces now on the board is really a newcomer.

Probable winner: Black. Even if white had seen it wasn’t checkmate, he’d still be a piece down after Kxc2 Qe4+ and Qxg4+.

<sup>1. [I think that means he plays the head in one of those 2-person pantomime horse costumes.] ↩
2. [Perhaps they were even playing Bird’s opening.] ↩
3. [Apronus Bravo.] ↩</sup>