Whether you’re a chess player or not, chances are you’ve at least heard of The Queen’s Gambit. Indeed, it is difficult to not have heard something of it. The Netflix series, released in October 2020, is widely credited with creating a new boom in the chess world and, with 62 million viewers in its first 28 days alone, has been a record-breaking success.
Listening to the buzz surrounding this series, I must admit to being a bit skeptical initially. I found myself wondering if, from a serious chess player’s perspective, the series would be as good as its reputation? And how realistic and relatable would it be to those of us who are more or less immersed in the modern day world of chess?
After binge watching the series (as no doubt many others have – it’s hard to stop watching!) I would begin by saying that the praise is very well deserved.
Real-life chess players have no doubt approached this series with an especially critical eye. So many films set against a backdrop of professional-level chess seem to miss the mark in terms of the actual games being played and the realism of the situations portrayed. In this sense, I think The Queen’s Gambit has set an admirable level of quality.
The tournament scenes were well shot, and (unlike some other chess movies), the players did not simply blitz moves late in the game. No boards were set up incorrectly; there were no black a8 squares!
At many moments throughout the series a sharp-eyed chess student can follow the action on the board. Undoubtedly many chess players can relate to this, and it adds something extra to an already intriguing story. Indeed, none other than Garry Kasparov and Bruce Pandolfini were brought in as consultants and the attention to detail certainly shows. Several brilliant discoveries in critical games were showcased, such as this example from the series:
As reviewer Dylan Loeb McClain writes in The New York Times: “The games portrayed in the series are not just realistic, they are real, based on actual competitions. For example, the match in which Beth defeats Harry for the Kentucky state title was from a game in Riga, Latvia, in 1955; the last speed chess game in which she beats Benny was played at the Paris Opera in 1858; and the game in which she faces the Russian champion Vasily Borgov (Marcin Dorocinski) in the series finale was played in Biel, Switzerland, in 1993.”
Other areas of the series are, to be sure, considerably less realistic. Most would agree that the level of drug and alcohol addiction (especially to the extent portrayed here) would in all likelihood have made achieving the high level of chess mastery that Beth Harmon attained impossible.
Likewise, it is fairly unrealistic in real-life chess to gain the opportunity to challenge the World Champion after such a short amount of time playing. But then, this is a mini-series, and some dramatic license and compression of time might be expected.
And of course, one can’t watch The Queen’s Gambit without at least giving some thought to the unique challenges that women face in the real-life world of chess. The debate has been going on for ages, but the persistent question remains: why are there not more women competing at the highest levels of chess? Perhaps this series will help bring attention to this issue, too, and result in a new upsurge of female players. In my opinion, this is long past due.
Viewed as a whole, The Queen’s Gambit is tremendously captivating, thought provoking, and thoroughly entertaining (if not entirely realistic) The scenes were beautifully shot, whisking the viewer away in a time portal to the smoky tournament halls of 1958-1968, letting us imagine what it may have been like to be a chess player in the years just preceding Bobby Fischer’s domination of the sport.
And for seasoned chess players, there’s an even deeper level of enjoyment: an especially accurate and realistic portrayal of the sport we love, in a genre that often gives that aspect less focus than it deserves.
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