The Queen's Gambit

The Queen’s Gambit is the current big-thing on Netflix now, and given my non-chess friends (which is actually all my friends, but still) are telling me to watch it, I could hardly say no. I had already heard that Garry Kasparov had been an advisor on the show and that the chess games shown were legitimate, which has turned out to be absolutely true so far, with the first chess position shown at all in the show being a queen’s gambit game, a cute touch.

I’m only two episodes in, but I love it so far. They do such a great job of making the chess matches so dramatic even though by all accounts, they are usually far from it for casual onlookers - IRL the drama is on the board, not in the expressions and body language of the players. The acting and writing is superb, and I can see why so many non-chess players are hooked on it as well, as well as why so many are now wanting to learn the game, apparently to the extent that chess.com’s servers are having a hard time keeping up.