The new Netflix series which embodies chess as a sport, art and science is named after the popular chess opening, “The Queen’s Gambit”. It is a fictional story of a coming-of-age girl, Beth Harmon, who wants to become the greatest chess player in the world and is based on the novel The Queen’s Gambit by Walter Tevis and which was published in 1983.
World chess champion Magnus Carlsen gave the aired episodes five out of six stars and women grandmasters have spoken favourably about the series. Every once in a while, chess gets a boost which brings excitement and people to the royal game. It is my hope that the streaming of the Netflix series is one of those moments.
Sometime in the early 1990s, I secured the novel Searching for Bobby Fischer by Fred Waitzkin, whom I met at the World Trade Center (WTC) in 1995 when I was covering the world chess championship title match between Garry Kasparov and Viswanathan Anand for the Sunday Stabroek.
