Author Katherine Neville on "The Queen's Gambit"

 Hola everyone!  I meant to post this much earlier, but this time of year finds me very busy.  Christmas is one of my favorite times of the year and I go all out decorating my tree, my mantel, and my dining room, shopping for new ornaments (I swear every year I'm not going to do it and every year I do it anyway), etc. 

I especially want to share author Katherine Neville's November 30, 2020 Newsletter with you, about "The Queen's Gambit." I can't help but note that Neville was prescient in her September 21, 2020 newsletter about the United States being in a state of "flux" (you can read about it here, as well as my political rant in which I didn't pull my punches against Donald J. Trump and his enablers).  Perhaps Netflix's production of "The Queen's Gambit" during this particular time in our history will rejuvenate chess in the United States, particularly when it comes to female players, like Bobby Fischer's success did for chess more than 40 years ago.

Katherine Neville's Queen's Gambit Newsletter
November 30, 2020

The Black Queen

Here I am [photo not included from Newsletter], with Chess Grandmaster and World Champion, Susan Polgar, at our book launch party for The Fire (sequel to The Eight) held in Washington DC!  Grandmaster Polgar was one of our co-hosts for that event; she also found for us the great Black Queen that appears with us here.  And Susan's husband Paul Truong took many of the wonderful photos of that evening, which appear on my web site, in my Author section.

Hundreds of you–my friends and fellow readers, from every age and every walk of life–have been writing to me, asking if I’ve seen the new television miniseries, The Queen’s Gambit, which is based on the novel of the same name by Walter Tevis (author of The Hustler, The Color of Money.) I read the book long ago, as well as every piece of fiction ever written about chess, since I was about to write my book–The Eight–where the entire plot, a swashbuckling adventure story, is based on a major chess game taking place over a period of two hundred years, all around the world.

By contrast, Walter Tevis’ book is the story of a troubled young woman, obsessed with chess, who overcomes all obstacles and goes on to become World Champion. Not only have I watched the series, but seeing it converted to screen was a real inspiration to me. In short, the screenwriters, actors, and director really did a great job, and they have even improved upon Walter Tevis’s original book! The screenplay sparkles with adventure, suspense, and action that’s hard to convey in such a cerebral story.

It is also of genuine interest to me, that not only the original author, Walter Tevis, but nearly all of the film’s developers–producers, director, and screenwriters–are men. This goes to show that really intelligent men can see inside a woman’s mind–at least in fiction! 

This story also shows that a strong, intelligent woman can benefit by the gallantry and support of the men around her–even when competing against them! Chess, like the Kama Sutra, originated in India as a cosmic dance. From medieval times–in literature like Roman de La Rose, to Shakespeare’s The Tempest–women played chess with men as a romantic courting ritual. 

It’s an Alchemy that we need to bring back, today!

(Go to the link to read the rest of the Newsletter and see the photographs included in the article).

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I am inclined not to agree with Ms. Neville's statement that chess originated in India.  This is, in my opinion, a myth that has been accepted by chess historians as truth rather than the unproven supposition it is, based on no actual physical (archaeological) evidence of which I am aware directly linking an ancient form of chess to India, and even more questionable reasoning and rationalizing by H.J.R. Murray, author of the famous (infamous) "History of Chess" written at the end of the 19th century.  There is more physical evidence for chess or a forerunner of the game actually being played in ancient Persia (today's Iran) or at the very least, along the ancient trade route from China to the Middle East and beyond (the Silk Road) in the form of actually excavated identifiable chess pieces from Afrasiyab, a ruined city said to have been founded by one of Persia's ancient kings in then Persian territory (northeast Persia).  The ruins, surrounded in part by the modern city of Samarkand (Samarqand), are in the country now called Uzbekistan along the now long gone ancient Silk Road route.  

But I agree with Neville that the true beauty of chess is to be found in the dance of the pieces on the board, and the intellectual and emotional acrobatics and interaction that takes place when two players sit across from each other to match wits, skill, and spirit.  The dance can become particularly interesting when it is a female and male sitting across the board from each other, for many different reasons.  

The ancient Egyptians called their gaming pieces jbAw, pronounced something like ebau (abau) or ebou (abou) - "dancer."  The ancient Egyptians, who loved their word play, carved their oldest gaming pieces out of elephant ivory (bw), pronounced something like ab "elephant," and abu, "elephant's tooth."  Our English word "ivory" comes from the Latin  ebor or ebur, which came directly from the Egyptian word(s) for "elephant."  

History bit:  The Mitre, the headdress worn by Bishops in the Catholic Church, is an ancient symbol of power and authority which was adopted from the even older use of a horn or horns in a headdress that was worn only by those who held great positions of power, such as Kings and their closest advisors.  Interestingly, ancient depictions of shamans and what some archaeologists have suggested may be "gods" depicted in ancient cave art and on ancient rock carvings appear to be wearing horns, so the link between "power" and the horn or horns from a mighty animal is extremely ancient, pre-dating writing by thousands of years.  The Egyptian word "Pharaoh" which is generally translated as "great house" began life as some form of tent/hut which was ornamented above the door with a set of elephant tusks or bovine horns.  I assume that as the climate along the Nile changed over the millennia and elephants moved further south in Africa, bovine horns (Hathor, anyone?) replaced the elephant tusks.  

Of course, chess pieces dance!  Even I, not even a competent enough player to call myself a patzer, know that.  Here's an interesting article from 2018 from the Southwest Journal (a Minneapolis, Minnesota based publication) entitled "A Dance of Chess Pieces."  Fantastic article by Nate Gotlieb.  

And I always go back to one of my favorite videos from the 1980s musical "Chess," One Night in Bangkok sung by Murray Head.

Netflix's "The Queen's Gambit" Sends Sales of Chess Sets/Accessories Soaring

Holy Hathor!  So all it took was a Netflix mini-series dramatizing Walter Tevis' excellent novel about the flawed but excellent fictional chessplayer Beth Harmon, portrayed by a gorgeous young redhead actress, broadcast during a pandemic when people are more than ever hunkering down at home, to wake people up to the wonders of chess!  HA! 

From The New York Times.

‘The Queen’s Gambit’ Sends Chess Set Sales Soaring

The Netflix show about a chess prodigy has reignited interest in the game and fueled demand for sets, accessories and timers.

By Marie Fazio
November 23, 2020

Poela Keta started binge-watching “The Queen’s Gambit” as a break from studying for her final exams at Rhodes University.

"I think I’ve always respected chess,” Ms. Keta, 21, who lives in South Africa, said on Saturday. “I just thought I wasn’t smart enough nor patient enough for it."

That is, until she saw Beth Harmon, the main character in the Netflix show, masterfully school her opponents as a woman in the male-dominated world of chess.

Anya Taylor-Joy as Beth Harmon in “The Queen’s Gambit.” An eBay official said the company had recorded a 215 percent increase in chess set and accessory sales since the show debuted in October.Credit...via Netflix

"Beth’s can-do attitude, the way the board presented itself to her on the ceiling in a drug-induced haze, her mastery, her ego, made me add my own set to my shopping cart and get playing,” Ms. Keta said.

When the chess set she ordered arrived, her 11-year-old sister, who is part of the chess club at her school, helped her position the pieces. Ms. Keta said she planned to dive deeper into the game “the minute I’m done with exams."

"The Queen's Gambit" follows Beth, a chess prodigy who rises through the ranks of the chess world as she struggles with addiction.

At Goliath Games, a toy company that sells several varieties of chess sets, set sales are up more than 1,000 percent compared with this time last year, the company’s director of marketing told NPR.

A spokeswoman for eBay, Kara Gibson, said the company had recorded a 215 percent increase in sales of chess sets and accessories since the debut of the show in October. Of the different types of chess sets, wooden are the most popular and sell nine times more than plastic, electronic or glass on eBay, she said.

Vintage set sales have increased seven times, as have sales for equipment, including chess clocks and timers, which are up 45 times since last month.

Before “The Queen’s Gambit,” Ms. Gibson said, chess sets at eBay were already selling 60 percent more than last year, which the company attributes to people spending more time at home during the pandemic.

"More and more people are playing more and more games than ever before in history,” said David Llada, a spokesman for the International Chess Federation, known as FIDE.

At the beginning of the year, as many as 11 million chess games were played online every day, Mr. Llada said. When the pandemic hit, the numbers grew to an estimated 16 million to 17 million games per day. Sites that required users to be registered reported an increase in new membership of around 40 percent, he said.

Mr. Llada said it was too soon to measure the full impact of “The Queen’s Gambit” on chess, but said it was already comparable to the buzz usually generated around world championships, held every two years. Some matches, like the championship match between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky played during the Cold War, “gave birth to a whole new generation of millions of chess fans,” Mr. Llada said.

"The chess community fell in love with the series because it successfully portrays different aspects of chess in all its richness: It’s easy enough to be fun to play, but also complex enough to pose a challenge,” he said. “It is nerdy, but also cool and fashionable. It is intensively competitive, but full of interesting, creative and colorful characters."

Streaming platforms like Twitch have also had skyrocketing viewership of chess games.

From March through August, people watched 41.2 million hours of chess on Twitch, four times as many hours as in the previous six months, according to the analytics website SullyGnome. Last month, people watched 4.2 million hours of chess, compared with 2.4 million the same month last year.

In June, an amateur chess tournament called PogChamps was briefly the top-viewed stream on Twitch, with 63,000 people watching at once, SullyGnome said.

A nd membership in chess organizations, such as the U.S. Chess Federation, the governing body for chess competition in the U.S., is also on the rise.

"This month, we’ve had our first bump in membership since the pandemic hit, and we are hearing from our members that many of them are renewing or rejoining specifically because of the series,” said Daniel Lucas, a senior official at the federation.

General interest in the game is “always there under the surface,” Mr. Lucas said, but membership has fluctuated over the years. It boomed after Mr. Fischer won the 1972 world championship, but by the 1980s interest had waned, Mr. Lucas said.  The federation reached a high of 97,000 members this year.

White men still make up the largest demographic of members, he said, but efforts have been made to recruit players from underrepresented communities, especially through scholastic programs. Female membership has increased to 14 percent from 1 percent in the early 2000s, he said.

Mr. Lucas, whose father taught him to play chess when he was six, watched “The Queen’s Gambit” over a weekend with his wife and daughter. He said it showed “some of the best chess ever put on screen."

Time will tell whether chess is merely the latest pandemic fad, fated to go the way of banana bread baking and binge-watching "Tiger King," but Mr. Lucas believes the heightened interest in the game is here to stay.

"I’m fond of the axiom that ‘the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior,’” he said. “And people have been playing chess for 1,500 years."

A Chess Scene from "The Queen's Gambit" by Walter Tevis

Thirteen year old Beth Harmon, recently adopted from an orphanage in rural Kentucky where she had lived since the age of 8 after her mother was killed in a car accident, is playing in her very first chess tournament.  It happens to be the Kentucky State Championship.  Beth learned how to play chess at the orphanage, taughter by the janitor, Mr. Schaibel. 

She wins her first three games, finishing at 3:30 p.m. the first day.  An evening round is scheduled for 8:00 p.m., with three more the following day:

That evening Beth was on Board Six opposite a homely young man named Klein.  His rating was 1794.  Some of the games printed in Chess Review were from players with lower ratings than that.

Beth was White, and she played pawn to king four, hoping for the Sicilian.  she knew the Sicilian better than anything else.  But Klein played pawn to king four and then fianchettoed his king's bishop, setting it over in the corner above his castled king.  She wasn't quite sure but thought this was the kind of opening called "Irregular."

In the middle game, things got complex.  Beth was unsure what to do and decided to retreat a bishop.  Se set her index finger on the piece and immediately saw she had better move pawn to queen four.  She reached over to the queen pawn.

"Sorry," Klein said.  "Touch move."

She looked at him.

"You have to move the bishop," he said.

She could see in his face he was glad to say it.  He had probably seen what she could do if she moved the pawn.

She shrugged and tried to act unconcerned, but inside she was feeling something she hadn't felt before in a chess game.  She was frightened.  She moved the bishop to bishop four, sat back and folded her hands in her lap.  Her stomach was in a knot.  She should have moved the pawn.

She looked at Klein's face as he studied the board.  After a moment she saw a little malicious grin.  He pushed his queen's pawn to the fifth square, punched his clock smartly and folded his arms across his chest.

He was going to get one of her bishops.  And abruptly her fear was replaced by anger.  She leaned over the board and placed her cheeks against her palms, studying intently.

It took her almost ten minutes, but she found it. She moved and sat back.

Klein hardly seemed to notice.  He took the bishop as she hoped he would.  Beth advanced her queen rook pawn, way over on the other side of the board, and Klein grunted slightly but moved quickly, pushing the queen pawn forward again.  Beth brought her knight over, covering the pawn's next step, and more importantly, attacking Klein's rook;  He moved the rook.  Inside Beth's stomach something was beginning to uncoil.  Her vision seemed extremely sharp, as though she could read the finest print from across the room.  She moved the knight, attacking the rook again.

Klein  looked at her, annoyed.  He studied the board and moved the rook, to the very square Beth had known, two moves ago, that he would move to.  She brought her queen out to bishop five, right above Klein's castled king.

Still looking annoyed and sure of himself, Klein brought a knight over to defend.  Beth picked up her queen, her face flushing, and took the pawn in front of the king, sacrificing her queen.

He stared and took the queen.  There was nothing else he could do to get out of check.

Beth brought her bishop out for another check.  Klein interposed the pawn, as she knew he would.  "That's mate in two," Beth said quietly.

Klein stared at her, his face furious.  "What do you mean?" he said.

Beth's voice was still quiet.  "The rook comes over for the next check and then the knight mates."

He scowled.  "My queen - "

"Your queen'll be pinned," she said, "After the king moves."

He looked back to the board and stared at the position.  Then he said, "Shit!"  He did not turn over his king or offer to shake Beth's hand.  He got up from the table and walked away, jamming his hands into his pockets.

Beth took her pencil and circled HARMON on her score sheet.


That's what he gets for that nasty little smirk of a smile...

Queen's Gambit

Hola!  I have finally started reading The Queen's Gambit by Walter Tevis.  I do not remember who it was who recommended the book (sorry) - it was someone at this blog - so whoever you are, thank you!

I knew Tevis had written The Hustler and The Color of Money but I'd no idea he had also written The Man Who Fell to Earth - which as a movie years ago absolutely blew me away.  Some of the imagery in that film is still vivid in my mind although I did not always understand what was going on in the film.  Astoundingly, David Bowie played the man who fell to Earth from the sky - yeah, the musician David Bowie.  The film was a stunning experience.  I'd no idea beforehand what it was about, except that it was classed as "science fiction" and I'm a big fan of science fiction - not the blood and guts stuff (alien monsters ripping humans or each other apart) but I like a good story like Star Wars type stuff - and so I went to see it on a date.  I don't remember who the date was - but I remember that film :)

Tevis, who once was an English professor, died in 1984; The Queen's Gambit was published in 1983.  Prior to his death he did some interviews, two of which I found recordings of online, and they are absolutely fascinating.  You can find them at Wired for Books: interviews with Walter Tevis.  The MP3 worked for me.

I forced myself to put down the novel (which I started last night after working on the Family Tree project for hours) to do a few other things this morning - like blogging, LOL!  It was difficult, let me tell you!  I am totally captivated by the character of Beth Harmon and her world, which is all too shudderingly vivid.  Tevis' prose is "dense" - he packs tons of emotions and imagery into rather a few words (relatively speaking), it's absolutely amazing what he does with words.  Not the type of novel prose I'm used to reading but for this story it absolutely works - I "get it" at a visceral level and see the scenes inside my mind in technicolor. By the way, Beth is NOT plain.  Today she would be "Top Model" material.  But by the standards of the 1950's/early 1960's she is not "cute."  Any person who has that kind of intensity radiate out of herself  would be a powerful magnet, and to express her power through the moves of chess pieces - Damn, I wish Tevis was still alive, I would love to have a sit down with him and ask him more about this female character he created. 

It is interesting that over the years several projects to bring the novel to film petered off into nothingness - the most recent (2008) involved Keith Ledger, who died before much of the project came to fruition. 

Turning this book into a film would involve unique challenges, I think, because so much is interior and cerebral/mental - but after seeing how "Searching for Bobby Fischer" was put together, a film that also captivated me and is one of my all-time favorites, I believe The Queen's Gambit could be done.  The right sets, the right music to evoke the emotions that accompany the incredible revelations she discovers in blinding flashes, and the emotional roller-coaster that is Beth's interior life.  There is a scene, her first visit to Morris' book store, where she sees, all lined up in rows, dozens of books on chess - Goddess!  I know that feeling - oh, not about chess books, but what those books represent.  I know Beth.  The challenge would be to find the right actresses to portray her. 

Wikipedia info
Review by Michael Schaub (August, 2003) at Bookslut
Buy it at Amazon

Review: "The Queen's Gambit" by Walter Tevis

A fan had told me some time ago that I should check out this book - but I never did. Now, I intend to. In fact, tonight on the way home from the office, I stopped at a downtown used book store and checked their stock, but they didn't have it. So, I'll probably order it from Alibris.com. I came across this review today at inthenews.co.uk. I had no idea the book was written in the 1980s! The Queen's Gambit by Walter Tevis Thursday, 03, Sep 2009 11:25 Reissued by Penguin Books, paperback, 243 pages, £9.99. In a nutshell... Life is a game of chess What's it all about? Ever since she was a little girl, emotionally neglected under an authoritarian regime in an orphanage, chess has been a form of spiritual rapture for Beth, a form of escapism from the realities of her life and her addiction to tranquilisers (and later her alcoholism). The book follows her progress from prodigy to adulthood, her career and emotional development. Who's it by? Walter Tevis (1928-1984), the American writer perhaps most famous for his novels The Hustler and The Man Who Fell to Earth, both of which have been adapted for film. The Queen's Gambit was originally released in 1983. This Penguin edition includes an introduction by Lionel Shriver, the acclaimed journalist and novelist, who won the Orange prize in 2005 for We Need to Talk About Kevin. As an example... "She did not open her eyes even to see the time remaining on her clock or to look across the table at Borgov or to see the enormous crowd who had come to the auditorium to watch her play. She let all that go from her mind and allowed herself only the chessboard of her imagination with its intricate deadlock. It did not really matter who was playing the black pieces or whether the material board sat in Moscow or New York or in the basement of an orphanage; this eidetic image was her proper domain." - page 240 Likelihood of becoming a Hollywood blockbuster The problem of representing the highly cerebral chess scenes aside, most of the text is the internal reflections and feelings of the protagonist Beth, which would be hard to recreate for the screen. We doubt whether Hollywood has the subtlety or finesse for either. What the others say "The author's most consummate and heartbreaking work." - Jonathan Lethem So is it any good? Beth Harmon is not initially a warm, charismatic character: she is emotionally detached, at times amoral, and compulsive. However, there is something very rewarding about watching how she grows and develops, and the reader cannot help being in awe of her intelligence and genius. The novel has an immense cast of characters, and though some are not as fleshed-out as they may be, all add colour to the tapestry of the plot. The story itself is anti-sentimental and bleak, and an understanding of cold war tensions is necessary to fully appreciate the book's context and the importance of Beth's competition in the Soviet Union. Tevis' style is terse but evocative, with many throwaway comments that succinctly express an incredible amount of information, and he never condescends his reader. However, not everything can be taken as truth. Some readers may find the non-erotic and passionless sex scenes uncomfortable to read, and sometimes the chess scenes carry on for too long. Nonetheless the book is beautifully written, and full of tension and suspense. Two minor niggles: firstly, the introduction by Shriver, though an interesting read and accurate analysis, gives away too much of the plot and should instead be included as an afterword; secondly, the almost fetishistic photograph of a glamorous and beautiful woman on the cover of the edition is unnecessary and irritating, especially as the physical attractiveness of Beth is not an issue in the text. 8/10 (9/10 if you can follow the chess scenes) Louise Champion

Queen's Gambit

A book review from inrich.com (Richmond Times) Sunday April 27, 2008 By JAY STRAFFORD TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER When art and life connect, can the intersection of art and death be far behind? Not in Diane A.S. Stuckart's The Queen's Gambit (336 pages, Berkley Prime Crime, $23.95). It's 1483 in Milan, and Ludovico Sforza, the acting duke, has arranged a living chess game to settle a dispute over a painting with the French ambassador. The painter is none other than Leonardo da Vinci, whom the duke chooses to arrange the game. When one of the bishops is found fatally stabbed, the duke gives Leonardo the task of discovering the killer. With the help of one of his apprentices, Dino (the basis of a fascinating subplot), Leonardo solves the case. And there's a clue that's reminiscent of the O.J. Simpson murder trial. Stuckart creates her plot with confidence and describes Renaissance Italy with expertise. "The Queen's Gambit" is perfectly played.

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.