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The Queen's Gambit

If you have access to Netflix, and you're not watching The Queen's Gambit, you should. Based on the novel of the same name, the plot of this 7-episode adaptation concerns a girl, orphaned at a young age, who develops into a chess genius while along the way struggling with her inner demons of alcohol and prescription drug abuse.

It gets the chess milieu right in the same way that Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings adaptations got Tolkien's Middle Earth milieu right, and by that I mean by no means perfect, but reasonably close enough, and there's plenty of fan service for the nerds. In this case, the chessboards are set up right and it looks like they're playing actual games. In fact, some chess experts have spotted famous games used in some of the scenes.

The problem with a movie about chess is that you have to make it look more exciting than it actually is. Chess is not really a spectator sport. Because a typical tournament game might last 1-2 hours or even longer, that's tough to show dramatically. So a lot of the games in TQG look like they're playing speed chess. But it's not terribly annoying and the YouTube clip above shows one way the director used to solve this problem: a montage that does a good job showing progress through the rounds of a tournament, helped along by a kickass soundtrack.

So all in all, I think it's a pretty good chess-themed series, even for non-players, and well worth your time.

Advanced Problem - White To Play (1234)

In order to win this game, White needs to force a capture of the black queen. How can this be accomplished?

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— Dr Kate Strasdin (@kateStrasdin) July 7, 2020

(click for larger version)

Greetings from Bulgaria

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Problem Solutions

Beginner Problem - White To Play

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1.Rf5+ gxf5

...and that's how the g-pawn is deflected, which makes possibly a rook check followed by mate:

2.Rg7+ Kh6
3.Nxf5#

Intermediate Problem - White To Play

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1. Bxc6+! bxc6

Best take the bishop with the pawn. If 1...Qxc6 then 2.Qxd8#

Blocking with the rook leads to a quicker mate: 1...Rd7 2.Rxe6+ (or 2.Qxd7+ Kf8 3.Qe8#) 2...Kd8 3.Qxd7#

2.Rxe6+ fxe6
3.Qxe6+ Kf8
4.Rf3# 1-0

Advanced Problem - White To Play

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The key is to use your knight and queen to force Black to have to choose between a knight fork or a skewer that will win the queen.

1. Ng3+! Ke5

Other possibilities lose quickly

1...Kf4 2. Ne2+ fork

or:

1...Ke3
2.Qf3+ Kd4 (2...Kd2 3.Ne4+) 3.Ne2+ fork

2. Qh5+ Ke6

or:
2... Kf6 3. Qh8+ skewer
2... Kd6 3. Ne4+ fork
2... Kf4 3. Ne2+ fork
2... Kd4 3. Ne2+ fork

3. Qe8+ Kd5

or:

3... Kd6 4. Ne4+ fork
3... Kf6 4. Qh8+ skewer

4. Qg8+ Kc6

or:

4... Ke5 5. Qh8+ skewer
4... Kc5 5. Ne4+ fork
4... Kd4 5. Ne2+ fork
4... Kd6 5. Ne4+ fork

5. Qc8+ skewer and wins

Hope to see you all next week!

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Note: that cryptic line of letters and numbers you see underneath each board diagram is a representation of the position in what is known as "Forsyth-Edwards Notation", or F.E.N. It's actually readable by humans. Most computer applications nowadays can read FEN, so those of you who may want to study the position, you can copy the line of FEN and paste into your chess app and it should automatically recreate the position on its display board. Or, Windows users can just "triple click" on it and the entire line will be highlighted so you can copy and paste it into your chess app.

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So that about wraps it up for this week. Chess thread tips, suggestions, bribes, rumors, threats, and insults may be sent to my yahoo address: OregonMuse little-a-in-a-circle yahoo dott com.

posted by OregonMuse at 05:32 PM

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