The Bramblewick Chess Club began livestreaming its Tuesday matches in the spring, initially to let housebound members follow the league. Commentary was added in June, followed by a post-match interview segment conducted at a small table in front of a bookshelf.

The interviews have since become the club's main attraction, and the pattern of results has changed with them.

"Nobody watches the wins," said club secretary Mr Douglas Fenwick. "A win is a handshake and someone muttering about a knight. A loss is a man sitting down, taking off his glasses, and explaining what went wrong in his life that week."

Mr Fenwick said the club had noticed that defeat interviews were being shared far more widely than victory footage. He stressed that the club had not asked anyone to lose. He said it had, however, moved the interview table closer to the board, installed a small lamp for mood, and begun keeping a box of tissues within reach of the losing player's chair.

The pattern

Members deny losing deliberately, and they deny it at length, on camera, often longer than the match itself lasted.

"I fought hard out there," said Mr Colin Petrie, after his fourteenth consecutive defeat, delivered in eighteen moves. "Chess is a cruel game. Sometimes you see the best move and you choose another one, for reasons that are between you and the position."

The club's reigning champion, Mrs Alice Kettering, has not lost all season. Her matches now attract the livestream's smallest audiences, and she has privately asked the committee to consider a "quick friendly" format in which she plays two players at once and loses to at least one.

The club's junior section has been unaffected, as the children are unaware the stream exists and continue playing for what one official described as "the old reasons".

What happens next

The county federation has opened an inquiry into a match in which a player resigned while holding a completely winning position, then gave an eleven-minute interview about his father. The federation's rules cover cheating to win, and contain no provision covering cheating to lose with feeling.

Mr Fenwick said the committee would discuss the matter at its next meeting, which will be streamed, and from which he expects to emerge defeated.

"It's not that anyone wanted this," he said. "It's that the audience was clear. People don't want to watch someone play well. They want to watch someone explain themselves afterwards, slowly, near a lamp."

The club has ordered a second box of tissues.