This reads like a Douglas Adams punchline

Is that what that story was about? When I was a kid the public library had it in an anthology called Mad Scientists, edited by Isaac Asimov. The book was bound incorrectly so that the first few pages of that story were repeated several times, and the rest was missing.

Yes, that's the same anthology where I read it. At the end, Von Goom plays a televised game against the world champ, killing him and permanently injuring millions of people in the TV audience, and, finding no other recourse, a gang of grandmasters takes him out in the woods and murders him. I believe there's a horror twist at the end where they mock his dead body with the nickname "Von Goon" and he regains consciousness long enough to correct them.

(There was a whole series of those Asimov-edited anthologies. The one about TV was where I first read "Eight O'Clock in the Morning", the short story that the movie "They Live" is based on.

Sounds amazing!