Chess controls my life somewhat, I’d be the first to admit, sometimes more than my unhealthy obsession with books. I can’t help just logging in to lichess and trying to decimate whoever comes online, and I rage badly when my opponent takes an important piece, or if I get stuck in a position that I know I cannot win, or the worst: getting checkmated. The small victories are more a relief than elation, every loss a small apocalypse. I want to tear my opponent and beat the shit out of them, convinced that I’m physically superior even though I don’t know who’s on the other side of the screen.
But I see chess as a microcosm of life — and I guess that is why I react badly when I lose. Chess is about strategising, thinking of the next move in advance before the action happens. It is deciphering factors that might end up in your victory or defeat, being graceful when you win and even more so when you lose. This last bit I still struggle to this day. I fucking hate losing. This is something that Beth Harmon, the heroine of The Queen’s Gambit understands very well. She’s got a talent overflowing from her ears, but she can be a bit of a dick as well. And she fucking hates losing too.
I can’t help that the experience of the book is tarnished by the Netflix show. We need to respect the original source, but sometimes the cover is just a little bit better than the original. Plenty of Tevis’s work had been adapted to screen, such as The Hustler and its sequel. I think it translates to screen because the action is direct, the conversations flow nicely and the plot simple. But there is a certain coldness in Tevis’s writing that falls short from the Netflix show. It’s like Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s all over again — Audrey Hepburn makes the movie adaptation shine brighter than the source material, Anya Taylor Joy is now synonymous with Beth Harmon.
But there is an aspect of the novel that is far superior than the Netflix show, the most crucial part of the story: the chess itself. Reading through Beth’s life, we follow her story as natural as you would follow the routines of your day. Chess is really the centrepiece here, and it is not until Beth started playing chess competitively that the story becomes far more engaging. We read through 60 pages of Beth’s life up to that point, and her tear through the ranks up to Harry Beltik takes up another 12 pages. And I loved reading those 12 pages because every game is described in detail, each surprises, each turn, each small victories and the ultimate defeat of Beth’s opponent. It is salivating to read her beat these men at their own game.
Beth is only a vassal to these games beautifully described. Even if you don’t understand chess notation, or only have a basic understanding to the rules of chess, I daresay you can still follow the drama in the game. For those who understands chess, I’d say that for some it is still quite hard to visualise unless you know what the mainlines and obscure lines of the Sicilian are, and even other more obscure lines. The queen’s gambit line is featured a few times in various parts of the book. It is also one of the most popular openings for white. It also helps if you understand chess notation, which I never really paid attention to but probably should. There are different notations and the one used in the book is not the one I’m most familiar with.
Beth herself undergoes a massive character arc from becoming a rootless orphan — a drifter of sorts, to a chess personality. I think this character arc is way more vivid and satisfying in the Netflix show, but we can say that Beth has matured when she played in the showdown in Russia — she rejects the temptation of vodka. A victory surpassing even the greatest of her games. In a life defined by chess, to battle the impulses of your nature for a greater victory is equal to the great games she’d play against the toughest opposition.
Beth Harmon is a product of her situation. The green pills used to subdue the orphans made her addicted to the effects of the drugs for the remainder of her life. Naturally, she is more receptive to alcohol and other drugs, especially fuelled after her losses. But she never got to a point where she became dependent on the drugs, only perhaps in her early life when she attempted to steal the jar full of these pills after a cold turkey ban by the state. Even in stealing the jar, her movements are chess-like — how to open, enter, manoeuvre herself in a tight space, and exiting. Except she lost that game.
In fact, Beth’s life is a whole chess game where she started as the pawn and walking through the length of the board to become the queen. This is evocative in the Netflix show when she dressed up similar to a white queen. This makes the characters around her as pieces on the board as well. Beltik and Watts are bishops or knights on the chess board. They are expandable, and we hear little from them after they’ve given her the knowledge that she needed to progress. Mrs Harmon was another expandable piece (the rook perhaps) providing her the shelter of a guardian.
For a long time, chess was not a cool thing to know. The blokes in the chess club are these geeky skinny or fat nerds with glasses, and though they know the staircase mating pattern to trap the king, are powerless to trap girls into having coffee with them. But that’s all changed now — chess streamers are the new cool kids playing their house music to the crystalline pressure of bullet chess, my social media feed is plagued by young chess masters showing well-known traps. The Netflix show has opened up chess to more players, and anybody can analyse their games to death with Stockfish. The perceptions of chess is changing, but the game itself remains the same.
