Playing with Beth Harmon

We finally sat down and watched The Queen's Gambit over the last two weeks.  It was good to see a whole mini-series based on a game, though of all the games most likely to figure into TV shows and movies, chess must be the one -- its unique combination of simplicity and infinite combinations just naturally lends itself to stories about those mortals who have tried to conquer it.  Anya Taylor-Joy was exceptional, being so far into the character that it to a lot of effort to remember that she wasn't real.  The supporting cast all turned in fine performances of characters with differing levels of quirks and compulsions.  I give the series a 9 of 10, but don't want to turn this into a Netflix review.  

I wondered how many of the players in the story were real players.  I would expect the core cast to be fictional, and all the masters they looked up to, who wrote all the books, to be real.  They mentioned Capablanca, Alekhine, Morphy ... I had read about those when I was young.  Did they mention Bobby Fisher at all?  Plenty of people were online saying the whole story was a take on the career of Fisher, but except for starting young, being hard to understand, and playing a key Russian grandmaster at the pinnacle of a career, I saw no parallels.  The Russians dominated the game for decades and they were the ones to beat.  It feels more like The Queen's Gambit was set in an alternate universe where there was no Bobby Fisher, so someone else had to fill the void.

About the accuracy of the chess action, it was impeccable.  They had Garry Kasparov as a consultant and have claimed that every actor knew their moves.  The emotions and audiences during the games came through as authentic.

I felt that the ease with which Beth worked her way into tournaments was a bit of a stretch, but it would not have made the story better if it got bogged down in rules lawyering.  I don't recall the games being receptive to women when I was growing up in the 70's, but then again, I only went to a few low-level competitions and didn't talk to other people much, and it turns out that there were vast social inequalities that just flew under the radar for half my life.  I think this piece at Vanity Fair is a good discussion of where women were at in the history of the game and how the series help inspire new players; it's an interview with Jennifer Shahade, the women's program coordinator for the U.S. Chess Federation and two time women's U.S. champion.

I am personally tired of the idea that smart or artistic people must also have mental problems.  I suppose we get more emotional bang for the buck when we see characters overcome hardship.  When asked  about the frequency of mental health issues in chess, Shahade said, "I don’t think there is more than in the normal population," and suggested that, due to the amount of focus and discipline required, there would probably be less.  Substance abuse?  More likely to relieve stress than to boost performance.

How about parents with mental health issues?  Again from Shahade, "I think that the parents of the successful chess players are usually incredibly supportive and usually sacrifice a lot to allow their kids to fulfill their dream."  In the series, Beth finds a supportive mother, and they make a great team for a while, up until the point (no spoilers) where it ends for no good reason -- and I did not like that story choice one bit.

In the end, history is made up of individuals, with all the variables.

Some of the ways the series affected the public or the perception of the game:

I can only guess how many millions of viewers thought that Beth Harmon was a real, historical player.  She was always a fictional character from the book (1983) by Walter Tevis, so a better analysis of the details would be some future analysis of the book.  But Google was obviously flooded with the question "Was Beth Harmon real?"

Chess.com setup some Beth Harmon bots you could play against, at different levels of her age and skill, but these were taken down on Jan 31, 2022.  I don't know how they can program a bot for "someone" with no actual games to put into the database, but I would hope it would be more than just a generic ranking.  The site also reported a few million new users.

There has been a run on sales of chess sets as a result of the series, according to NPR.  The article mentions different venues and time periods reporting sales boost of 178%, 215% and 1048%.  The sales gains are hard to separate from a general increase due to the pandemic, but some amount of it was due to the show.

On the legal side, real-life chess grandmaster Nona Gaprindashvili is suing Netflix for damages after they oddly threw her under the bus -- the articles are everywhere, but here is one from Forbes.  It was strange to see such a meticulously researched production just call out a real person by name and discredit her career with one line.  In our case, I knew the line was coming and although it came through in a fairly heavy accent, yes, they said Nona never played men, when she had, in fact been doing so since at least 1968.

The series reminded me that there is another whole dimension of gaming out there, the treatment of different games in the media, and I will try to introduce some future installments on that broad topic.  I guess I already did, back when I discussed that Poirot episode where he was playing Monopoly.  More to follow.