Comments on The Queen's Gambit

I have finally watched “The Queen’s Gambit”. It was ironic that it took me so long – I have been a tournament chess player since the 1960’s, but it seemed that everybody around me saw this miniseries before I got around to it.

It’s an interesting and entertaining story, but the really remarkable thing about this show is the accurate depiction of tournament chess. As all tournament players, and even some less experienced players, understand, most depictions of chess in movies and on television don’t even get the basics of setting up a board right. They tend to inadvertently rotate the board, and set up the pieces on the wrong squares in the starting position, or to set up game positions that are impossible to reach in a real game. And having gotten those things wrong, movie and television directors often go on to depict unlikely behavior by the players – elementary violations of sportsmanship and etiquette, for example. Occasionally, a producer will pay a “technical consultant” for advice on avoiding such gaffes, but even then, one seldom sees anything close to realism.

The producers of “The Queen’s Gambit” hired the best consultants they could have found. One, Garry Kasparov, is a former world champion of chess. The other, Bruce Pandolfini, is a strong player, a well-known teacher, and, perhaps importantly, he is the right age – he would have been a near contemporary of the protagonist, Beth Harmon, if she had existed. Pandolfini and Kasparov played active roles in the production; Pandolfini describes their work in the November 2020 issue of Chess Life, the print magazine for members of US Chess. The result of their collaboration was truly a pleasure for me to watch, accustomed as I am to seeing basic errors on screen.

To put this in perspective, I have to admit that they didn’t hire technical consultants to give them advice on the effects of tranquilizers, or on race relations in the United States in the 1960’s; I suspect that they were flying by the seat of their pants, or relying on the late Walter Tevis, the author of the novel, to have done his research well. I learned in high school English class about the “willing suspension of disbelief”, and I had to do plenty of it here.

But it’s still marvelous to see a reasonably lifelike fictional depiction of the chess milieu. Following in the footsteps of the New York Times columnist, Dylan Loeb McClain, I’m going to describe some of the things they “got right”, and some of the things they “got wrong”.

I enjoyed seeing “period” issues of Chess Review, which was the leading chess magazine in the United States for decades, but has not been published since the late 1960’s. The chess books that are mentioned are also appropriate for the era, and in the case of Modern Chess Openings, which has gone through 15 editions since it was first published in 1911, they depicted just the right edition for the early 1960’s. I was also amused by all the cigarette smoke in the air at the Kentucky tournament. I used to come home from the Pittsburgh chess club, in the mid 1960’s, smelling like an ash tray – it was a family joke. For several decades now, almost all chess tournaments in this country have been “no smoking allowed”, but there was nothing like that in the 1960’s.

A nice touch was to have both Matt and Mike at the registration table at the Kentucky tournament. It used to be a good idea to have two people at the table – one to look up people’s ratings, the other to do the paperwork. Nowadays it’s just one person and a laptop. Thoughtful of them to think of that.

In adult tournaments in the U.S., players are expected to bring their own boards, sets, and clocks. So the scenes from the Kentucky, Cincinnati, and Las Vegas tournaments, in which boards are already set up before the start of each round, are not quite right. By comparison, in Europe, boards and sets are expected to be provided by the organizer, or at least that’s how it was when I was playing chess over there in the early 1980’s. Of course, in kids’ tournaments, the smart organizer will not expect the kids to bring enough equipment, because they are kids.

It’s highly unrealistic that people talk to each other during the games. That’s very rare in adult tournaments. You can get in trouble for harassing your opponent. Again, Pandolfini and Kasparov would have known this (it would have been burned into their brains when they first started out in chess). I realize that in kids’ tournaments, it’s another story.

Other than the occasional talking during games, the general depiction of the comportment of players and spectators, and the etiquette, is correct. This includes the brief moment when Beth starts talking with another person near to a game that’s going on, and one of the players turns around, gives them a very annoyed look, and says, “Do you MIND?” I chuckled at that, because I’ve played both roles in that scene many times!

It bothered me somewhat that Beth wins the state championship in her first tournament. I doubt that there is any precedent for someone winning the championship of a medium-sized state like Kentucky in their first tournament. Although I have to admit, I knew a guy (here in Pittsburgh) whose first published rating was 1900, strong enough to win the championships of some of the small states. He had “paid his dues” by hanging around Pittsburgh area chess clubs, playing unofficial games with the strongest area players, for some time.

As Beth gets stronger, she plays in stronger tournaments, and goes abroad. My own experience with international tournaments was limited – I never attended an event where there was live commentary, for instance. But in the scenes from the tournaments in Mexico City, Paris, and Moscow, I noticed that the procedure for adjournments was portrayed correctly. I didn’t like the scene in which Beth and the young boy, Georgi Girev, play off their adjourned game. Beth gets up from the board but hovers nearby, communicating clearly (but without words) that she thinks her opponent is hapless and his position is resignable. Poor etiquette does sometimes happen in strong tournaments, but the show shouldn’t depict it as if it were normal.

In these contests, Beth always meets her hardest opponent in the last round. This is actually rare in chess tournaments. For instance in a round-robin event, like the one in Moscow, pairings will be drawn by lot, and she could get paired with Borgov in any of the rounds, even the first one. This is one of the things that I am sure they deliberately got wrong, that is, they slightly fudged the realism, in order to improve the drama of the fiction.

Another thing that they deliberately got wrong: players move much too quickly (i.e. they don’t spend any time thinking). Of course, it wouldn’t be possible to depict tournament play at realistic speeds, where a single game could take several hours. There is a similar problem in portraying other sports in a movie. For example, a realistic baseball game consists mostly of called balls and strikes; but whenever baseball is depicted in a movie, all you see is people hitting, running, catching – anything but called balls and strikes.

In this miniseries, no drawn (tied) games are depicted. In high-level tournaments, including the Las Vegas tournament and the international tournaments, perfect scores are impossibly rare. Indeed, much of the drama arises because even the strongest players end up with several draws each. It is not unusual to see a player win a tournament in spite of having lost a game to another player (as Beth does in Las Vegas). Often, the leading players draw with each other, and the one who has the best record against the rest of the field wins the tournament.

It was also noticeable that the pieces made too much noise when the players moved them from one square to another. Nowadays, equipment used in adult tournaments normally features felted pieces and plastic roll-up boards, so that the sound made by setting a piece on the board is not noticeable. I admit, though, I don’t remember if equally quiet equipment was used in the 1960’s. It’s possible that for the movie they deliberately selected noisy equipment, for the benefit of the movie audience.

The crucial position in Beth’s game against Luchenko was due to some inspired tinkering by Kasparov, starting with the score of a game played in 1988 by two Armenian grandmasters. The story of the behind-the-scenes work is told by Pandolfini in the article for Chess Life.

In the dramatic scenes of the Moscow game between Beth and Borgov, that game is the only one going on. That’s clearly wrong, there should be three (as in the previous rounds).

I learned from another review on the Web that this game was based on a game played in 1993 between two grandmasters, Patrick Wolff and Vasyl Ivanchuk. The opening of that game was a Queen’s Gambit Accepted. But in the movie, the commentator announces a different opening, “Queen’s Gambit, Albin Counter Gambit”, and gives the moves of that variation (translated to modern notation, 1. d4 d5 2. c4 e5). This is a huge and surprising gaffe. Also, the first position you see on the camera is one that didn’t actually occur in the Wolff versus Ivanchuk game, though it is a legal position; it could only have arisen from fairly bad moves by both sides. So this is not the kind of flawless example that I expected from Kasparov – in fact I noticed it immediately when we were watching. By the way, if you can read chess game scores, you can look up that game on the Web – just type the last names of the players and the year number.

I really didn’t like it, after that last Harmon vs. Borgov game, that he embraced her. NOBODY feels like that after losing a game. Sportsmanship is good, but a hearty handshake is the standard thing. The story goes that after one of the games of the Fischer vs. Spassky world championship match, when the audience started applauding after the game, Spassky (who had lost) joined in with the applause. Fischer commented favorably on Spassky’s sportsmanship in doing so. But, a hug? Where did that come from?

Thank you for taking the time to post your thoughts. I found them very interesting. I started playing tournament chess in the early 70’s and found many scenes in the show (as you did) very familiar. I enjoyed the show immensely

Bruce,
With the exception of the incredible CCA tournament every year in the DFW area,
ALL the major events I know of today provide chess sets, and often very nice wood pieces at that for play. But, I wonder in the 60’s at the national scene, was this common? Are chess sets provided at most of the major US Chess events (non CCA) in this nation?
I remember as a td with a major event many years ago now, getting an urgent call from the organizer with a request for chess sets, for the highest level section starting that
Thursday Nite, filled with GMs, IMs etc. Many from quite distant foreign nations.Well, as a scholastic TD, I had a car full of them, and so supplied. And not surprisingly most of the sets had pieces that did not really go with the other pieces in the set, having endured years of scholastic abuse. The next morning, as I was eating breakfast, I met a Chinese
master who told me “you would not believe the horrid sets we had to play last night”.
When I could not help but laugh, she said she did not mean to insult. “No” I told her,
you are correct - they are horrid. But they are all I had to offer the organizer 30 min
before the tournament was to start. (the bookseller could not make it).
Do most of you all supply chess sets at your events??

Rob

rob, i grew up playing tournament chess in the 70’s. sets and clocks were NEVER supplied. could occasionally borrow a clock if needed but couldn’t count on it. was always lugging pieces, boards, and clock. to my pairing board.

…scot…

To answer the question of yours that I highlighted in bold red, yes. One of the rare exceptions would be something like the US Open (which I think had the bid requirements include the organizer making sure they were provided in the days before the Federation did its own organizing of the event). When CCA began running its tournaments it was standard for players to provide sets and it now so expected that it does not seem like the company has any pressing need to change that business practice, and it would require a lot of boards and sets to store at the various sites around the country while significantly fewer would be needed overall when the players traveling around the country provide their own.

In the '70s I would bring a set to the rare scholastic tournaments that I could play in. I would do the same for adult tournaments. Chess clubs usually, but not always, had sets for their meetings and they generally depended on players to bring sets for tournaments that would have a lot more players than they would normally have on their club nights. In the '80s the multi-hundred player scholastic tournaments I was on staff for would depend on the participating schools to provide sets at the beginning of the event (keeping track of the board numbers each school’s sets were on) and then take them with them when they left. One of the reasons the US Open was impressive was that all of the boards and sets were ready before players even arrived.

In the Chicago area it wasn’t until the '90s that the combination of organizers and TD staffs would have enough sets to run their K-8 scholastic tournaments without needing to borrow sets from the participating schools. But even now at the high school level (under the aegis of the state high school association that governs all types of high school competition - and not USChess rated) the official tournament rules expect the player with Black to provide the board, set and clock (some schools have enough for all of the boards in the 8-player fixed-board team matches and are thus able to start all of the clocks if the opposing team arrives late to the round, an advantage on all 8 boards instead of just the 4 they were required to provide for). The local K-8 scholastic tournaments I’ve been doing for the past decade often have organizers with enough boards and sets to not even need the ones the TD staff has.

The replies by jwiewel and 10mostwanted say what I would have said. But I might add a couple of thoughts about what has happened since the 60’s. In recent years, I played various events at the Pittsburgh Chess Club. The club had a supply of sets and boards that was adequate for the seating that they had, which was fewer than 20 boards, so I never had to bring my own equipment. (Except maybe a clock.) But any time a larger event was held in the area, such as the state championship, I had to bring equipment; and likewise for monthly rounds of the Pittsburgh Chess League.

Here’s what amazed me when I was in Europe. I played in a tournament called Islington, which was in 1981 or 1982 the biggest Swiss around. There were several hundred people there. It was an annual event. And yet, somehow, boards and sets were provided. The organizer was a guy named Stewart Reuben, who was about as well-known over there as Bill Goichberg was (and is) here.

The early no smoking tournaments were controversial. People quit (or at least publicly threatened to quit) USCF over no smoking tournaments. It was a different world.