- It’s always suspicious when you win any game a bit too easily.
The World Conker Championships just can’t catch a break. It seems some new controversy rattles the annual U.K. chestnut-smashing competition every year.
In 2023, the year’s mushy chestnut harvest led to the contest’s organizers suggesting they bake the nuts to harden them. That sparked outrage, which relented only after the organizers announced they had found enough satisfactory, unprocessed chestnuts.
This year’s scandal, however, is much more serious. The champion of the contest is accused of cheating.
David Jakins, better known as King Conker, is a big cheese in the world of conkers. He’s the head judge of the World Conker Championships and has competed in it for nearly 50 years.
Yet, he’s never won — until this year.
During the matches, King Conker performed very well. Suspiciously well. He breezed through the contest, winning every game with one hit of a chestnut.
Afterward, when his possessions were investigated, they found a steel ball painted to look like a chestnut in Jakins’ pocket.
The discovery immediately caused other contestants to claim Jakins had won by sneakily using the metal conker instead of a real chestnut. Although an official investigation has ruled Jakins did not cheat, uncertainty remains.
What’s Conkers?
Alright, we should probably clarify what the game of conkers is all about. Without knowing that, this whole story doesn’t make much sense.
Conkers is an old English schoolyard game that first crops up in literary sources in the 19th century. To play the game, you need a conker — a hard chestnut dangling on a string.
Back in the day, schoolboys would prowl the local woods in search of the hardest nuts. They’d then drill a hole through the nut and tie it to a leather strap or a piece of thin rope.
In a conkers match, the player will take turns smashing their chestnuts against each other. Whoever’s nut cracks first, loses the game.
Got that? Good, let’s continue.
King Conker
David Jakins is an important figure in the conkers competition scene. The 82-year-old retired engineer has competed in the World Conker Championships since 1977.
Despite his long presence in the strange sport, he has never won the competition. Nonetheless, the man loves conkers and has been chosen to act as the championships’ main judge.
In this role, he has many responsibilities. One of them is drilling the chestnuts used in the competition and inserting leather strings into them.
To prevent cheating, competitors aren’t allowed to use their own conkers. Instead, before each match, they blindly pull one of the conkers Jakins has prepared from a bag.
Sure, some of the nuts will inevitably be harder than others, so the blind pull introduces an element of luck into the game. Still, a skilled conkers player can compensate for a softer nut with expert application of force and fine hand-eye coordination to hit the other player’s conker where it hurts the most.
Winning Too Easily
In addition to being the main judge, Jakins has continued to compete in the World Conker Championships. This year, his 47-year losing streak came to an end and he won the men’s division of the competition.
Jakins breezed through his matches, winning them almost instantly. He defeated several other players in one hit, which is almost unheard of in the contest.
Having a single one-hit win is lucky. Having two of them is a coincidence. But on a third win, people will start getting suspicious, and that’s just what happened here.
Contestants started arguing that Jakins, who prepared the competition conkers, may have somehow marked the strings of the hardest nuts. This way, he could feel his way around the nut sack before each match and choose the conker that’s more likely to win.
Due to the accusations, the organizers searched Jakins after his victory. In his pocket, they found something strange.
Jakins had a steel ball in his pocket. Not only that, it had been painted brown to look like a conker.
The situation seemed clear-cut to the players Jakins defeated. He had obviously somehow swapped his real conker for the metal ball to obliterate his opponents’ real chestnuts in one strike.
Official Investigation
For his part, Jakins doesn’t deny that the metal ball is a fake conker. However, he insisted he didn’t use it in the competition — instead, he said he uses the fake to play practical jokes on young, cocky conkers players.
“I was found with the steel conker in my pocket, but I only carry [it] around with me for humor value and I did not use it during the event,” Jakins told The Guardian.
Of course, it would be a huge scandal if the championships’ head judge was caught cheating. So, the World Conkers Championships carried out an official investigation into the matter.
The organizers reviewed photos and videos of the games Jakins’ played during the contest. Based on this visual evidence, they concluded that Jakins really did not use his metal conker.
“The investigation has found no evidence that the steel conker was used. King Conker has been cleared of suspicion, and his name is being engraved on the trophy,” the organization announced in a statement.
In response to the investigation, Jakins said he was relieved and reiterated that conkers is a “gentlemen’s” sport with no room for cheats. He also admitted again that he had brought the metal conker to the contest, but would not be doing so in the future.