Sosonko & Shankland, Good News and Bad News
Jokes about Gennadi Sosonko as a sort of chronicler for the grim reaper have been going around for at couple of decades now. If Sosonko writes about you, there's a kind of good news, bad news to it: the good news is that if he does, you're somebody in the chess world; the bad news is that if he does, you're probably dead. (That may or may not be bad news for you, but it's at least sad for your loved ones.)
Sam Shankland may be the moderately grim reaper. If you lose to him in the last round of an event (or at least your last round), the good news is that you're clearly a really strong player. The bad news is that it might be your last serious game: he sent Judit Polgar into retirement in the 2014 Chess Olympiad (I can't believe it has been four and a half years! I initially wrote "2016", but then checked to make sure), and now he has sent Vladimir Kramnik out of professional chess as well. It's possible that there's no causal relationship between their losses to Shankland and their retirement, but you can't be too careful: make sure your favorite players don't face him in the last round of a major tournament.
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Perhaps the best known "retirement gift" is Topalov sending Kasparov packing after the last round of Linares 2005. This is fitting justice for Topalov after losing one of the great attacking masterpieces in the history of the game to Gazza. Of course, this scenario can go the other way as well. Here's a joke:
Q: What's the last thing Paul Keres did before he died?
A: Beat Walter Browne!
Keres defeated Browne in the last round at Vancouver 1975 and died of a heart attack 11 days later at the airport in Helsinki, Finland, presumably on his way home. The game itself looked like a pretty easy win for Keres as black in a Berlin sideline where Browne launched an improbable kingside attack with an unwieldy rook lift. Lots of hubris! The rook got kicked around and buried, and thereafter Keres picked up the weak white e4-pawn for nothing to reach a won ending. Made it look easy, at least for a Soviet GM against a brash American upstart not named Fischer.
In 2017/2018, a number of players lost against Shankland in the last round of an event and didn't get the message tht it's time to retire, nor were all of them "really strong players" (a matter of definition, and present-day situation rather than possible future). Names are IM Sosa, GM Bacallao, GM Liang, GM Ganguly, IM (now GM) Hambleton, IM Gaehwiler, untitled Advait Patel, GM Ivanchuk, GM Fedoseev.
[DM: Wow, you mean it wasn't a case of metaphysical necessity that Polgar and Kramnik retired after losing to Shankland in their final games? I'm really shocked. </sarc>]