I remember getting a chess set for Christmas when I was about ten years old. I’m not sure how I learned to play, since no one in my family was into chess. I “taught” myself, and then my sister so I had someone to play with. I imagine my playing was pretty abysmal, since I think everything I learned came from the instruction booklet. I gave  up pretty quickly on the pursuit, feeling I had no gift for it. My rationale was that I didn’t think strategically enough. Of course, in those days, the internet wasn’t even a glimmer in someone’s imagination, and somehow, it never dawned on me to check the library for books on the game. Also, none of my friends played chess. It wasn’t considered a “girl’s pursuit.”  How many activities did both boys and girls miss out on in those days because of “gendered” roles?

This past week, my husband and I watched the miniseries, The Queen’s Gambit, where a nine-year-old orphan named Beth Harmon, played by Anya Taylor-Joy, learns chess from the janitor in her school. It turns out, she is a prodigy. She somehow rises above innumerable  obstacles in her life to ultimately take on chess masters across the globe. In several nail-biting scenes, she takes on the Russian Grandmaster Vasily Borgov, played by Marcin Dorociński.

After watching it, I found myself wondering whether I didn’t enjoy chess because I wasn’t a left brain thinker, or whether I’m not a left brain thinker because I didn’t train that part of my brain through games like chess. I also wondered if I would have enjoyed it, had I really studied how to play it, and found like-minded friends.  I guess we’ll never know. But I was encouraged to see, in a zoomcast with the filmmaker Scott Frank and Russian Grandmaster Garry Kasparov, who consulted on the film, that Kasparov launched the Kasparov Chess Foundation in 2002 to bring the “many educational benefits of chess” to both boys and girls, across the globe. 

I won’t tell you how the film turns out, but I will tell you that The Queen’s Gambit  (on Netflix) is no gamble of the time it takes to watch it. It’s a must-see show whether or not you enjoy chess. There’s simply no match for a great story, with terrific acting and stunning visuals.