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It’s that time again

When an Icelandic court announced last year that Bobby Fischer’s remains would be exhumed so that his DNA could be tested in a dispute over his inheritance, many chess fans knew it was a hoax.

They also refused to believe two years ago that GM Vasily Ivanchuk had proposed a new version of chess, “Kissing the Queen,” in which a queen could be “checked” like a king.

The reason these reports were dismissed was that they first appeared on April 1. For one day a year, Web sites that normally devote themselves to sober analysis of the 17th move of the King’s Indian Defense suddenly take silly pills.

Chessbase.com, for example, had many of its readers believing last year that Magnus Carlsen is the second cousin of Matt Damon.

In a previous year, the site convinced the gullible that the world chess federation was considering a new do-over rule, proposed by Fischer, which would allow a player to retract several previous moves.

Another April they had readers wondering whether to buy genetic “training supplements” composed of “actual synthesized DNA of a chess legend,” such as that of Garry Kasparov.

So be wary on Friday.