This week will go down as the moment when—finally!—sports fans stopped obsessing about trivial hobbies like the NFL and Major League Baseball, and started caring about the three most important activities in American life:
Fishing, chess and poker.
Or more specifically: alleged cheating scandals in fishing, chess and poker.
Let’s start with the fishy fish. Video went viral over the weekend from a fishing contest on Lake Erie, where a pair of anglers stand accused of supplementing their winning walleyes with lead weights and filets from other walleyes.
That’s right: walleye in walleye.
The scam fish were gutted on camera, to great drama: A suspect looking on as egg-sized weights and slimy filets are extracted from fish submitted for prize consideration. The nearby crowd grows furious and mob-like.
“We got weights in fish!” an organizer yells.
“Get the blank out of here!” screams another voice. (Except he doesn’t say blank . A warning, if you haven’t seen it: The walleye video is more foul-mouthed than Pesci in a Scorsese.)
Now if you’re like me, you think of fishing as a leisurely activity in which you fail to catch anything between opening 12-ounce cans. But Lake Erie was big-time stuff: A five-figure prize was on the line. The alleged suspects had been on a lucrative tournament hot streak which is now under suspicion.I did not have Globally Scandalous Lake Erie Fishing Imbroglio on my sports lineup card for October. Nor did I expect the most widely-read sports saga in the Journal this month—and honestly, it might wind up for the decade—to be the cheating scandal currently consuming the world of high-level chess.If you’re behind (but you shouldn’t be, since this story has been aced by the Journal’s Andrew Beaton and Joshua Robinson , now the Woodward & Bernstein of chess): This dilemma concerns the American phenom Hans Moke Niemann, who unexpectedly toppled world champion Magnus Carlsen at an event last month.At their next match, Carlsen withdrew after a single move, and signaled strongly he did not believe Niemann’s play was on the level. On Tuesday, Woodward & Bernstein, I mean, Beaton & Robinson reported that an investigation by […]
Click here to view original web page at www.wsj.com
