Any of my friends who’ve played me in chess probably cried after because I always beat them. Were my opponents grandmasters or mean-mugged Soviets who look like they probably belonged in the mob? Thankfully no, but I still enjoy the thrill of absolutely dominating somebody else in a game based on skill and cleverness. 

First, you gradually take their pieces, then duke it out in a long grueling battle of pawns and deadlocks and make them think they have hope, then demoralize them utterly, kill all their pieces, and mate them. Now picture that but x1000 and way smarter. That’s Beth Harmon when she was 15. Then 18, then 20, and then the greatest chess player in the world.

The Queen’s Gambit (A Walter Tevis novel, now a mini-series on Netflix; only 7 episodes, so you’ll get through in a couple days) is a phenomenal work of art. 

Tevis writes the book in a very child-like point of view in the beginning when Beth is turning into a genius, girl-wonder hyped up on ecstasy and only just discovering the game of chess, and the writing then transforms into more of a YA-style as Beth gets older, matures, learns about the world, experiences things for the first time, and is inured to the wild pleasures and pitfalls of adolescence. The style reminds me of Anne Laure-Bondoux’s A Time Of Miracles where our protagonist starts out as a child, and then progresses and gets older and the writing style itself matures. Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes also comes to mind, although that deals with intelligence rather than age, but has the same transformative writing style that changes as our protagonist does.

What made Tevis’s novel a great read for me was the simplistic, linear path our protagonist takes, wasting almost no time on subplots or side character’s lives outside of a few pages. While he efficiently manages to wedge in some of the major events and values of the 1960s, chess remains the main crux of the entire story. Beth’s drive and ambition became a hunger; her constant curiosity to know more and more about the world of chess until she consumed it whole.

“She had been told it would take time for the rating to reflect her real strength; she was satisfied for now to be, finally, a rated player… The next big step was Master, at 2200. After 2000, they called you an Expert, but that didn’t mean much. The one she liked was International Grandmaster; that had weight to it.” (page 92).

Beth’s genius is both her pride and sorrow, the same way people once described the real-life chess player Paul Charles Morphy, who was considered a genius and perhaps the greatest chess player ever, yet he willingly relinquished his own legacy, and did not wish to continue his chess career in favor of his law career.

“The Pride and Sorrow of Chess” – YouTube

The symbolism between Morphy and Harmon reminds me immediately of the line from Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “Though it be madness, there is method in it.” And it brings up the valid question of where the line between genius and madness is really drawn?

“Elizabeth, Mr. Ganz tells me that you are a… gifted child.” (page 23).

I’ve heard (some) criticism of Beth Harmon’s character as a ‘Mary Sue’, because she dominates in every competition she faces, and rarely encounters a loss. However, I don’t see this as the case the same way I never viewed Chen Zhen from Fists of Fury as a Mary Sue, despite the way both characters dominate their opponents and competition, they both ‘suffer from success’, since their greatest struggles are a direct result of their genius. Chen’s unmatched martial arts led him down a path of arrogant revenge that put his school and his loved ones at risk and got himself arrested; Beth’s genius brought with it drug & alcohol addiction and a deep sense of loneliness from being unable to connect with others.

There was something childishly saddening about the way Tevis writes Beth’s realization of her addiction, and how it’s affected the one thing she was truly spectacular at, following a chess match she had lost to a low-rated player in her hometown who she greatly overlooked.

“She must not drink… What if she had shaved away from the surface of her brain whatever synaptic interlacings had formed her gift?” (page 189).

Beth’s ‘spiral’ into self-indulgence was not one of pleasure or pain, but merely because she felt there was nothing else to do once her drive and ambition finally got her to the “top”. She had no one in her life, orphaned from the beginning, separated from the other orphans she befriended, her foster father ran out on her, and her foster mother died, and all her love interests were ill-fitted, and any other chess player was far too inferior to connect or relate to, and this made her painfully lonely. 

Beth said the reason she liked chess was because it was about control, but what happens when she can’t control herself or her own actions? When no one is there to keep her in check? She was likely on pace to die of alcohol poisoning or drink herself so bad she’d lose all her chess skill. It reminded me of Daisy Jones from the Taylor Jenkins Reid novel Daisy Jones and The Six. Daisy, a young, immensely talented singer, is so far gone, absorbed in drugs and alcohol, she literally begins to self-destruct and sabotage her own life (and her band). 

It all leads back to the theme of addiction, and how real and terrifying it can be. Beth’s eventual “come to her senses” moment, reuniting with Jolene from the orphanage and learning of Mr. Shaibel’s death, the one who taught her chess, acts as the pivotal moment for her character in Act IV to pull herself together, take on the Russian Grandmasters, and triumph over her addiction. This scene was monumental, as Beth recalls at Shaibel’s funeral the $10 she owed him for getting her into a local chess tournament, and then she finds the basement and how Shaibel had been collecting and documenting all of Beth’s successes and newspaper-worthy victories, she breaks down into tears, realizing she didn’t just own him $10, she owed him everything.

When we learn about Beth’s accident with her mother, we realize she shouldn’t have even survived in the first place, or ended up orphaned, or by sheer chance discovered the game of chess and her own genius, until she gradually worked her way up to defeating Vasily Borgov and crowned the champion of chess. 

While Beth is fictional, there is much reason to believe the book loosely bases itself off Vera Menchik-Stevenson, who had also been a female chess prodigy, who was anti-social and enjoyed chess for its anti-socialness and had also fallen into a slump of addiction. You can’t help but admire Beth and her real-life inspired counterpart in Vera for sticking to their guns and staying confident in a near “fish-out-of-water” environment the chess world had unfortunately been during that era. Their ability to challenge gender norms as they were something that still shines light on issues today and is deeply moving for many women.

The progression felt so natural; it felt like something that truly happened, it felt like rewatching history the history of chess. The story flow was like magic. 

Not to mention the influence the series generated; this series is so stellar it actually made chess sexy again. Of course, chess was already an incredibly famous game that everyone knows, but only a month after The Queen’s Gambit aired, chess sets were up 250% on eBay, chess.com has 5x its new player rate, and the original novel is now a best-seller despite being published 37 years ago.

She’s a zero-to-hero classic underdog, despite her talents and genius, because everything in her life came down to chance, and she dominated in a male-dominated world, and blew everyone’s expectations of her out the water.