Queen's Gambit

GM Larry Evan's column at the Sunsentinel.com Chess: Rereading 'The Queen's Gambit' March 9, 2008 "I don't have a boyfriend. I'd be more interested in a non-chess player now just because I know all the chess players." — Jennifer Shahade, USA women's champ in 2002 before graduating from New York University. This remark tempted me to reread The Queen's Gambit (1983), the last novel by the late Walter Tevis, who captured the world of pool so brilliantly in The Hustler. Tevis once told me he liked writing about intelligent misfits. Will this book be made into a film? At various stages director Martin Scorsese and Bernardo Bertolucci were involved in the project. Before Heath Ledger died in January, the 28-year-old Australian star of Brokeback Mountain planned to direct and act in it. A skilled chess player, he had offered the leading role of a female chess prodigy to Ellen Page. The author said he learned chess at 7 and wasn't a strong player (1423 rated). "You don't get the girls in high school by being a chess or a pool player. Neither game is a team sport, both are male-dominated, and many players are loners trying to escape from personal problems," he said. His novel anticipated the three fabulous Polgar sisters in Hungary, who battled chess bureaucrats for the right to play in mixed events. The queen of the title is Beth Harmon, an orphan whose parents were killed in a car accident. She storms the male bastion of chess by age 19. "I think chess should be a sexless game. It would be good if women don't play in women's tournaments at all. Doing so only reinforces the notion of their inferiority," said Tevis. "People who say that chess is trivial aren't looking very hard at their lives doing what they claim is important. You can't get by in chess on bull." [You can't get by in chess on bull - so true.] Larry Evans is a five-time U.S. chess champion and nationally syndicated chess writer. Write to him at P.O. Box 1182, Reno, NV 89504.