Hacker News Reader

Comment by sedivy94 | Hacker News Reader

Highly, highly recommend "The Queen's Gambit" on Netflix. Like wow.

It's not very realistic when it comes to the chess, except the actual games. I also found it frustrating that they obviously were inspired by Bobby Fischer whose real life would have made a great story, but decided he wasn't hollywood friendly.

The Netflix series was an adaptation of a 35 year old novel of the same name.

There are parallels to Fischer but if you want that movie "Pawn Sacrifice" is a decent movie.

As for realism when it comes to chess, as a (former - covid bleh) competitive league player they absolutely nailed the "feel" of the Chess world for me, better than anything else I've seen - yes they compressed the games and showed players moving far too quickly but that was a necessary compromise - hard to show a 7 hour game in real time as a TV show.

The camaraderie and eccentricities of the Chess world where displayed really well.

To be fair, Bobby Fischer life, while not totally uneventful wouldn't really be dramatic enough for a serie. At least, not without focusing on the geopolitical aspect of when he played spassky, which the serie apparently didn't go with.

Also, using a woman character was a good idea in my opinion, since chess is such a man world.

"I would have liked to watch a different movie" is an understandable reaction, but not a valid criticism of the movie you watched.

Not very realistic? I thought the depiction of tournament play was spot on, with the obvious exception of a few 'dramatic moments'. Have you played OTB tournaments?

Have you seen the top 100 chessplayer list? Now, 10 years ago?, 50 years ago? Have you see the women top 100 list? The few American women there are Asian-Americans or FSU. Only in Hollywood a cute WASPY girl is the GOAT of chess, and yes I know this is based on a 1980s novel.That does not make it realistic.

It's like making a movie where the best 100m sprinter in the world is a Guatemalan woman. Nice story, 0 credibility.

I understand your point, I guess I'm not one to feel that 'realistic' in the sense you described is a very important metric when critiquing media. For example, would anyone say that the musical Hamilton is 'realistic'? Probably not, but that hasn't decreased its massive popularity.

As a tournament player myself (of course, a rather shoddy amateur) I felt the series got the details of tournament play right. The fact that the prodigy was a teenage girl was besides the point.

That's fair. Do you know whose story would have been awesome, the Polgar sister's, specially Judit.

Their story demonstrates 2 things.

Within an specific limited discipline, "genius" can be manufactured if specialized long training and time is invested since childhood.

Individual variability still matters a lot. Out of all the 3 sisters, Judit was the only who went to become a truly world-class player.

I've always found the Polgar story a bit weird, despite the way their father obviously characterised it. Was their chess education really that different from any other resulting chess pro?

Well,his method is not that different of what I have seen other parents have done with their talented kids. Tiger Woods, Ichiro Suzuki, Son Heung-min, Andre Agassi, the Williams sisters, among others, were coached relentlessly since they were almost babies. You can discuss how healthy it is, but the results are there. Judit is by a ridiculous margin the strongest female player in the history.

I suppose my point is, it just feels slightly patronising that the story is presented as this weird brain experiment when I don't think we bat an eyelid at the same upbringing for male players. This is (for better or worse) what it takes to reach 2700.

Also, do you categorise the gulf between Polgar and Hou Yifan as a ridiculous margin (about 50 Elo)? Obviously Polgar was better at her peak, stayed there longer, and clearly had a dedication to the game than Hou never seemed interested in, but I think on the level of natural talent they'd actually be close.

ELO inflation is a real thing in chess.Caruana ELO is 60+ points over Fischer. Polgar reached top 10, Yifan will never be a top 50 player. A top 10 player is in the rounds for the candidates tournament, a top 60 player is lucky if she or he is invited to a 19+ category tournament.

And a bunch of oil drillers wouldn't be the best people to send to an astroid headed for earth. Since when does Hollywood have to be realistic to be entertaining or good? In fact, making it unrealistic often makes it more entertaining.

You are adding nothing to the conversation, I already said that. It's curious though that most of the unrealistic scenarios are the ones who portray the Americans are great and never the other way around. Ideology masquerading as entertainment.

> It's curious though that most of the unrealistic scenarios are the ones who portray the Americans are great and never the other way around. Ideology masquerading as entertainment.

Sorry I'm not sure what you're trying to say.

Are you saying that Americans should lose more in film directed at Americans? It's not that it doesn't happen. It's just that it's hard to do. An example that immediately came to mind is the ironically named (for this conversation) show, "The Americans", where the Russians definitely win more than they lose. From Wikipedia:

"The series's final season earned Rhys the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series, while Weisberg and co-lead writer Joel Fields won Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series; it was also awarded the Golden Globe Award for Best Television Series – Drama. Additionally, Margo Martindale won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series twice for her performance in the third and fourth seasons. It also became one of the rare drama shows to receive two Peabody Awards during its run."

It's easily my favorite show.

Looping back to Queens Gambit, I think the basic idea is that it's juuuust unrealistic enough without being too unreasonable to take you out of it. It's not unrealistic that Americans can be the best at chess. Hell, an American faced Magnus last world championship for the title and is still world #2. It's also not unrealistic that a Woman could get there as well. Hou Yifan is 84th right now.

But the combination is just unrealistic enough without taking you out of it, which makes it very entertaining.

A documentary about an orphan Russian or Chinese guy who ascends to the top? Might be more realistic, but not a good enough story for a Netflix #1 level of entertainment to a US audience.

How is it unrealistic? I've read several articles like [0] that say the chess is quite realistic.

[0] https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2020/11/queens-gambit-a...

The show is actually based on a book by the same name published in 1983 [0], never read it myself. The chess moves in it are apparently taken from Fischer and others, but it doesn't credit Fischer in any other way.

Which is kind of weird considering the show did even the comparing the protagonist to Paul Morphy thing that also applied to Fischer.

The book also tackles themes like drug addiction and feminism, but I found the show's take on these mostly pointless and superficial. Her drug addiction is never depicted as a struggle, she performs well drugged as well as sober, more of a comedic air to it than serious affliction.

It's also slightly historically revisionist when claiming there were no female chess clubs in the US back then, when there actually were whole female national championships since the late 1930s. The show also claimed how in the USSR women would never play against men, completely ignoring the history of Nina Alexandrovna Bluket [1], who's life would probably have made for a way more interesting and authentic story than a gender-swapped Bobby Fischer.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Queen%27s_Gambit_(novel)

[1] https://www.chess.com/blog/Spektrowski/pioneers-of-soviet-wo...

It is a cool series but nowhere near real description of chess. Of course it’s ok, but it’s worth to remember, that in order to get to the international level you need excellent coaches and years of brutal many hour practice. Talent is somewhat important but nowhere as important as training.

To have more objective outlook at “chess prodigy” story it’s interesting to look story of Joshua Waitzkin. He is a great and talented chess player but not at the level of grandmasters. He explained that he didn’t really wanted to “sacrifice” other things in his life to become a grandmaster.

For those who might be unaware, the movie "Searching for Bobby Fischer" is about Josh Waitzkin.

> Talent is somewhat important but nowhere as important as training.

Generally agreed on your post but I don't think I agree with this. You aren't making it to GM without an extreme amount of talent. Training is likely to be required too, but I'd say it's much more likely that an extremely talented but untrained person could make GM vs an not-so-talented person with rigorous training. Basically I'm saying that the vast majority of people would never be able to become a GM regardless of training.

It's a good argument but also consider the alternative that Waitzkin might not have enough talent and he is saying that to protect his ego.

Mikhail Botvinik who was the world champion between 1948-1963 (with two brief 1-year disruptions) also had a career as an electrical engineer during his peak chess years

Just watched it over the past week. I enjoyed it immensely. I don't care whether its depiction of chess is realistic. The lead actress is superb in her role. Its depiction of addiction and depression was spot-on with my experience; many of the scenes gave me chills, particularly when the adoptive mother is involved (whether directly or indirectly).

Highly recommended: "The Queen's Gambit", 7-episode miniseries on Netflix.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com