The king is dead. Thus, roughly translated, the original Persian for “checkmate”. But the male pretenders to the world chess throne at a recently concluded chess Olympiad in Turin were very much alive — as players, to be sure, but more particularly as men.

It was as if they sought to prove to themselves and to an insufficiently interested world outside the tournament that grandmasters are more than furnace-like intellects encased in low-emission personalities. Some have fire in their bellies, too.

No one accuses Levon Aronian, the Armenian world No 3, of any active role in this, but it seems to have been he who attracted the attention of the beautiful Australian chess starlet Arianne Caoili at a party thrown by the Bermudan delegation the night before the second rest day of the Olympiad.

Like a knight wrong-footed by a queen’s gambit, Danny Gormally, a Brit often seen in baseball caps, mustered what force he could and counter-attacked. His own favourite openings are the Sicilian and the Nimzo Indian. This time he chose the clenched fist. Aronian wasn’t hurt, but his dance with Caoili was cut shorter than Fischer v Panno in Majorca in 1970. Armenia’s outrage simmers on.

It is not clear if Gormally normally would be reprimanded formally; it is clear that his team was already struggling before its grumpiest member succumbed to the distractions of the dancefloor. British Chess Magazine bemoans an “end-of-Empire” feeling about the English game, and little wonder. We won our last match for nineteenth place — against the now defunct Serbia and Montenegro.