2002-12-03 - 10:23 p.m.

He's Dead! (No, he's not.)

Yesterday I had one of those Internet moments.

I got an email from a chess journalist, informing me that Hungarian grandmaster Peter Leko had been killed in a car crash in Budapest. A portable set was found under his body with a position from a recent game between him and another top grandmaster, Alexey Shirov.

I thought that this was a great shame, although a top ten rated player Leko was still a young guy, only 23. He had recently gotten married, and he had recently won a tournament that made him a candidate for the World Championship. What a pity. In my mind, I was already composing an obituary to use in my column.

But wait! A few hours later I got another email, apologizing for the first. Apparently GM Leko was still alive and well. The car accident story was wholly false. In fact, Leko doesn't even know how to drive a car.

Where did the first story come from? I have no idea, but it was repeated enough times so that it had the ring of truth to it, so everyone started believing it. Then again, the "pocket set found under the body" part of the tale sounds too melodramatic to be true.

Sometimes I think the Internet is a big game of "telephone" played with a million computers.