English Chess Forum

Thanks Paul,

I thought some of the non-FaceBook crowd deserved to see it.

"I would dearly love to discover the sources of the other games portrayed."

John Henderson in the latest CHESS has a good stab at gathering the games used.

I'm sure that "turning your king over" to concede a game was more common when I started chess around four decades ago.

(these days, I agree that stopping the clocks is the "normal" way of resigning - but you still see it occasionally)

Paul McKeown wrote: ↑

Wed Dec 30, 2020 8:39 am

[snip]

Nevertheless, it was clear that some considerable effort to make the chess as realistic as possible, and that I applaud. Particularly how the actors, none of whom are known chess players as far as I know, were able to memorise long sequences of realistic moves and even give simultaneous and blindfold displays with them.

[snip]

There was a brief discussion about actors and their ability to memorise chess moves here

viewtopic.php?f=29&t=5511

Geoff Chandler wrote: ↑

Wed Dec 30, 2020 11:14 am

John Henderson in the latest CHESS has a good stab at gathering the games used.

Erwin l'Ami, no?

"https://www.superprof.co.uk/lessons/chess/online/

This site alone has 737 coaches charging from £10-£60 an hour. I do not know what the number of coaches
at that site was before 'Queens Gambit' (anybody? has it gone up, just about the same, has it gone down!)"

I had a trawl through this. I claimed to be "advanced" and did a search and got a huge number of hits, some of which said things like, "I have been playing chess for four years and I can teach you." (I hope they can't.) There weren't many I recognized. The site is a good idea in theory of course.

Paul McKeown wrote: ↑

Wed Dec 30, 2020 8:39 am

I have read that the games were selected by Bruce Pandolfini and Garry Kasparov. I know of two of the games:
- Ivanchuk - Wolff, Biel iz, 1995
- Jakovenko - Stellwagen, Hoogovens, 2007, where Beth played 40. h5!! a winning improvement on the game

I would dearly love to discover the sources of the other games portrayed.

Danny King goes through the queen sacs used in the series:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pnYY1LNOGIo

Also: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GDnXAl4_Iw8&t=2s

First of a long series that gives the original games along with screen shots etc.:
https://chessbase.in/news/The-Queens-Ga ... e-1-review

Apparently I chose the right time to take a quick look at some Twitter feeds:

https://twitter.com/MagnusCarlsen/statu ... 12801?s=20

Magnus Carlsen (15 mins ago) posting a video of himself talking about his "favourite scenes from the Queens Gambit."

https://twitter.com/AlanKennedyttm/stat ... 3393095680 for the latest meme re Queens gambit and Bernie Sanders!

I thought there was some 'poetic license' in the fact that the players often moved without first recording the previous moves. I do realise they would have been playing according to the US Rules of the 1960s.not the FIDE Laws.

Hi Stewart,

...but they are using games played after the 1960's so because of this historical inaccuracy I shall not be watching it.

Also the pics of Beth Harman..



...remind me of that Martian woman from 'Mars Attacks' and I had nightmares for months after watching the scenes she/it was in.



Actually I might sub up to Netflix to watch it after Scotland gets it's Independence
as we will no longer have to pay a BBC license fee and I'll be quids in.

How many hours of watching is it (am also seriously thinking of subscribing, unless there is any other way to watch it)? Apparently it is seven episodes, from 45-60 mins each.

I have just finished watching it on Netflix and thought it was excellent
You can watch it for about £10 ( just take out a subscription and then cancel it within a month ) It is 7 episodes 45 to 60 min each
It was good in so many ways: the story , the characters , the acting , the filming, the period details, Beths struggles with addiction , and of course all the chess
Easy to see why it has been topping the charts on Netflix

Anya Taylor-Joy has been nominated for a Golden Globe for Queens Gambit (and another nomination for Emma)

Would a children's home in Kentucky in the Fifities have been unsegregated?

(EDIT: there's quite a detailed and interesting answer to that question here.)

When it comes "race" (which is now viewed as a construct, one way or another) many recent films contain contrivances of political correctness for the sake of inclusiveness.

The "unsegregated" nature of a Kentukian kids' home is being questioned above by the forum's main correctness crusader. (Such actions are not always what they might first appear to be.)

If in films situations depicted regarding "race" were not as the film makes them out to be what should be done? (Should such scenes be called into question?)

I watched the recent film David Copperfield and the actor who played the eponymous character clearly had a discernable degree of South Asian ancestry. Another character was played by an actress (pardon me) whose ancestry was clearly West Indian to a discernable degree.

In the original novel Dickens did not specify those characterists as being part of those made-up characters' makeup, but neither I nor anyone else came on here to question it.

In a fairly recent series of Shakesperian history plays (the one that had Richard III played by Dom Cumberbatch) I saw a soldier and a commander depicted in a reconstructed battle that actually took in France in the 15th c. both of whom were clearly of African ancestry.

Is that likey to have been an actual possibility? Did I, or anyone question it here - before now? (You can say there was no chess in either of the above examples but I believe you'd be mistaken.)

I expect that one day Mark Twain's runaway slave (the origin of that word is very revealing) "Jim" and the Shakesperian commander Othello will be played by "caucasians" to complete the circle.

I suspect the question (and edit) in the post above are also a contrivance - the actual purpose and motive for which are by no means obvious, at least not to me. (They could be something to do with what is being termed "cancel culture", but in this case it is the the "unsegregated" nature of said instition that may be deemed to be cancellable.)

Edit - "cancel culture" definition of -

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dicti ... el-culture