Checkmate took on a different meaning at the Queen’s Head pub in Ampthill after landlord Richard Hammond started a chess tournament.
For instead of picking up the £200 winner’s prize money, champion Sammy Leaver sent his cheque to the Macmillan Cancer support charity.
He made the generous gesture after one of the early favourites to win the competition was struck down with bowel cancer.
Father-of-two Sammy, 38, from Flitwick, said: “I was going to put the money behind the bar to buy all the other competitors a drink.
“But this seemed to be a far better cause. Macmillan do some wonderful work.”
Eight pub regulars competed in the tournament and played each other twice – once as white and once as black – with two points for a win and one for a draw.
Sammy scored 24 out of a possible 28 to just pip Chris Tracey with 22 points and third-placed Malcolm Tattersall on 20.
Regular Tom Fuller, who organised the tournament, is already thinking about holding another one this spring.
He said: “There are few better ways of spending an evening than playing chess while enjoying a couple of pints of good ale in the Queen’s Head.”
Plans to give the players nicknames like in the BBC’s new “Chess Masters” TV programme had to be abandoned, though.
It was feared that calling each other “The Filthy Pawn”, “The Naughty Knight”, “The Randy Rook” and “The Groping Bishop” might cause offence.
Landlord Richard, no mean chess player himself, has now thrown down a challenge to other pubs in the town and the rest of Bedfordshire.
“We’ll take on anybody,” he said. “Win or lose, I love playing chess.
“But forget all those fancy opening gambits and all that complicated strategy – I’m just a prawn in the game.”
Pub champion Sammy, who runs the Prime Mixed Martial Arts gym in Dunstable, has another idea.
He is keen to organise games which mix both playing chess and fighting.
“We’d have maybe five minutes on the chess board,” he said. “Then a five-minute grappling bout in the ring.
“Whoever checkmates his opponent or forces them to submit would be the winner.
“There’d be maybe six five-minute rounds of each.”
So far none of the Queen’s Head chess players – most of whom think a round means buying everybody a pint – have volunteered for that!