Just finished it. Loved it.
Loved this. We did a one day binge and this was AWESOME.
I liked this, but was a bit disappointed that i didn’t really learn anything about chess and they didn’t show a full match once. When i read that this show “made watching chess fun” i guess i got the wrong impression.
It was a very touching moment when she found the photo.
One thing after watching this show is now I think someone needs to cast Thomas Brodie-Sangster in a David Spade biopic
It bothered me too because I played chess quite a bit when younger and I wanted to see the moves. I mentioned the same to my SO, who knows VERY little about chess and she mentioned it was the perfect amount of discussion about it, but not homing in on the specifics of it to drag the story or scenes down.
After thinking about it, the more they would have shown, the more it would have gotten into the weeds. I think I agree with my girlfriend. It was better focusing on the players, not the game.
I liked this a lot more than I thought I would. I watched it all day during out Go-Live.
I’m halfway through it. I really dig it as a period piece and also enjoy the performances, especially ATJ and Marielle Heller (Mrs. Wheatley).
I agree with some of the above sentiments that it doesn’t really make chess shine. While a large amount of the show is spent on people playing chess, it’s ultimately still just a part of Beth’s character arc rather than the center of the show. I don’t know about the second half of the show yet, but so far all the matches have been just rather disjointed in that you can’t really follow the flow of a given session and really understand what’s going on. Maybe it works for absolute chess nerds. At this point, there was only one attempt at her visualizing several outcomes in a timelapse - but it’s hard to follow whatever general insight she might have gotten there. (I don’t count the stuff she constructs on the ceiling at night because so far that’s exclusively been specific set pieces without any meta.)
Still, really liking this so far.
Though you don’t really get that again (from what I recall,) her story arc does shift and you understand why later.
no, I couldn’t follow the games on the board, either. I knew what was happening only through the actors and the dialogue. They used real historic games, I looked them up.
Easily the best film about chess I’ve seen. Shamelessly indulgent, great character driven drama, gorgeous lead, reinvigorated my interest in chess.
If chess is a metaphor for life then this show is a metaphor for chess, more specifically how the lives of players relate to it.
Her comments in the show to Life magazine were amazingly relevant to her as a character but also probably to professional chess players.
I’ll spoil this just in case but it was such a great quote:
“Chess isn’t always competitive. Chess can also be beautiful. It was the board I noticed first. It’s an entire world of just 64 squares. I feel safe in it. I can control it. I can dominate it. And it’s predictable, so if I get hurt, I only have myself to blame.” - Beth Harmon
This series reminded a bit of the Anime series March comes in like a lion - which is about a young pro Shogi player dealing reality of being an orphan teenage pro-Shogi player.
I’d recommend it to anyone who wants something in the same vein - I think it does a good job of showing the ‘real’ pro scene as well.
Finished it. Thumbs up.
Wasn’t a big fan of episode six because the thread about the alcohol problem felt a bit forced and sudden. Just so there can be a down-on-her-luck setup for the last act. Obviously, Beth always had unhealtly relationship with tranqs, so they could have expanded on that. That bit about her getting crunk prior to the match in Paris and experience a bit of a fall from grace … wasn’t exactly my favourite part of the plot.
The final episode had quite some cheese in it, but I’d be lying if I said that moments like her receiving that phone call from her friends didn’t feel heartwarming and satisfying. Bonus points for the final scene (and possibly more) being shot in my hometown.
Liked the production values and thought that the show captured the late 50s and early 60s nicely like Mad Men did. I also appreciated that the character of Beth was this chess prodigy, but did not receive the personality traits and arc that movies and tv shows so often like to attach in these cases. Often enough, these characters are made overly eccentric and socially awkward–sometimes partially on the spectrum–in a way that they have a hard time connecting with others. And then their arc is largely about having to come to terms with and overcome that. To me it felt that The Queen’s Gambit largely avoided that.
I recently picked up Shogi on a lark, partly due the callout in Midway (2019). I’d seen boards before, having grown up in Japan, but never played. I have very little idea what I’m doing, but it is quite fun and I like how the pieces promote differently.
I will check out the series when I have an opportunity.
One thing I like about March Lion is that it goes into detail about how different pros help each other and what they do in ‘study groups’. Queen’s Gambit touches on it a bit with the Soviets collaborating during the adjournment but it’s a regular part of the storyline in the other series - it even goes into some theorycrafting about which move to use for a sealed move to minimize utility of overnight study, which I thought was a nice touch.
I found that intriguing, and I kind of wanted to know if it was true. If chess is a solo sport in the USA, but a team sport in Russia.
That entire call scene from all her past contacts was just beautiful though, really heartwarming on screen.
I’m not familiar with pro chess but in I imagine it being similar to Go and Shogi in Asia where this is definitely a thing. The key factor that drives this is three things for those two games
- There is a formal pro federation that gives pros a modest stipend
- There are tons of tournaments and the ‘purses’ for winning is quite substantial, meaning there’s a bigger pie to share
- Access to the larger tournaments is gated by hitting certain pro ranks and winning more minor tournaments.
This means that in most cases, senior pros are always in the lookout for up and coming talent they can recruit to join their wing - they offer tutelage (and sometimes room & board) in return for helping analyze games in between matches and tournaments. They rarely face off in the tourney circuit until they outgrow the relationship so it works pretty well.
Well she beat everyone that helps her later, but it’s still an interesting way to run a sport.
On a more termy note, does anyone know why Netflix calls them limited series instead of miniseries? I looked it up, of course, and it was kind of wishy washy about the differences.
I don’t jump into new series very readily, but if Netflix continues to release stuff like this, with an ending and not as likely to hit a premature cancellation, I might seek out more of those on that site.
In the era of the show, Russian chess was very much a team sport, and American chess was more solo. This was because the Russian State supported the players like they were on the hockey team.
It was not uncommon for a lot of Russian Grandmasters to purposefully draw in their matches so the stronger Russian player could advance to the finals. The scene were everyone was helping the one Russian was very, very common.
Nowadays, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, I don’t think so.
that makes Bobby Fischers victory against the whole russian machinery even more impressive. Soviet chess was at its height in the 60s, 70s and 80s.