Despite efforts to make chess scenes believable, there are still some areas in which the series falls short. The most obvious is how fast the players move forward during the tournament. As one tournament director tells Ben before a competition in Cincinnati, each player has two hours to make 40 moves, which was the standard time control for such games. But in every match, Beth and his opponents make their every move after only a few seconds of thinking about them. At such a tempo, they will finish their games not in hours, but in minutes. The motion is understandable for filmmaking because sitting on the board for hours watching, barely moving, is not moving. But even that is not accurate.
Competitors are not talked about during some games. Except for offering a draw – essentially agreeing that the match ends in a tie – the players do not speak to each other during the match. Not only is it considered bad sportsmanship, it is also against the rules. But more often than not, as in Beth’s game against Harry in Episode 2, she glottes up close, and in her game against a young Russian rookie in Mexico City in Episode 4, Beth and her opponents take a verbal exchange. The dialogue makes the games more understandable and spices up the play, but once again that is not true for life.
However, ‘Queen’s Gambit’ is a fictional work and the characters in it never exist, with references to players such as world champion Jose Raúl Capablanca, Alexander Alekhin, Mikhail Botwinik and Boris Spassky.
There is also a strange moment when Harry Bell is compared to Paul Murphy, an American who played that famous game at the Paris Opera in 1858 and is considered one of the greatest players of the 19th century. The comparison seems like no wrong direction. Despite her self-destructive tendencies, Beth does not get along with Murphy. She is close to the female version of the second champion: Bobby Fisher.
It may not be accidental. Verter Tevis, who wrote the 1983 novel on which the series is based, was an ardent and knowledgeable amateur player. The protagonist was playing a female game that has long been dominated by men – and which continues to this day, although no one knows the reason – Tevis may be hoping that one day there will be true gender equality. Plank.
