In the deep of winter, the nights are long and dark… and we all need good books to read, good shows to watch.\u00a0\u00a0 We cannot go to the movies or to the theatre so long as the pandemic lasts (not if we are sane), but we still have television, with more choices than ever before.<\/p>\n
Looking for something good to watch?\u00a0\u00a0 Then let me recommend that you check out QUEEN’S GAMBIT, if you have not done so already.<\/p>\n
It’s an adaptation of the Walter Tevis novel about a chess prodigy in the 60s and 70s. \u00a0 A very faithful adaptation (yay) of a very strong novel (yay), beautifully written, acted, and directed. \u00a0 I think you will all like it. \u00a0 If there is any justice, the series should contend for awards.<\/p>\n
It also resonated with me very strongly.\u00a0\u00a0 I know<\/em> that world.\u00a0 Chess was a huge part of my life in high school, in college, and especially in the years after college, the early 70s.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 QUEEN’S GAMBIT brought it all back to me vividly.\u00a0\u00a0 Like the protagonist, I learned chess when I was still quite young, and got pretty good pretty fast (though never nearly as good as her).\u00a0\u00a0 I was the captain of my high school chess team, the founder and president of my college chess club.\u00a0 I wrote and edited the club’s newsletter, GLEEP.\u00a0 The first two great loves of my life were girls I met at the chess club (but that’s another tale for another time).<\/p>\n The heroine of the Tevis novel becomes a Grandmaster and contends for the world championship; I topped out at Expert, and that only very briefly before falling back down to a lower ranking.\u00a0\u00a0 There was even a time, back in college, when I played with the notion of devoting myself to chess after graduation.\u00a0\u00a0 I chose writing instead.\u00a0\u00a0 I think I made the right call.\u00a0\u00a0 If I had lived and breathed and studied chess all day every day for years, I could have become a better player, I have no doubt… but only to a point. \u00a0 It was not in me to climb the heights attained by the protagonist of QUEEN’S GAMBIT.<\/p>\n But even after I had stopped playing, chess was a big part of my life.\u00a0\u00a0 Back in the first half of the 70s, when trying to establish myself as a writer, I directed chess tournaments all over the midwest and south for the Continental Chess Association.\u00a0\u00a0 Indianapolis, Detroit, Ann Arbor, Madison, Milwaukee, Lincoln, Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Cleveland… I was living in Chicago then, but every Friday I was on a plane (or a Greyhound) with a suitcase full of score sheets to set up and run another tourney in another city, usually in the center of the city in some grand old hotel that had known better days where the rooms… and the ballrooms… were cheap.\u00a0\u00a0 Most young writers had to work day jobs five days a week so they could write on the weekends.\u00a0\u00a0 I was lucky; I worked on the weekends and had the week to write.\u00a0\u00a0 Running chess tournaments did not make anyone rich, even in the Fischer heydey, but I made enough to pay my share of the rent on the rundown Uptown apartment I shared with half a dozen college friends and roommates.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And there was one point where I crossed the streams, where my two lives met: my first sale to ANALOG was not a story, but rather an article about computer chess called “The Computer Was A Fish.”\u00a0\u00a0 (Half a century out of date now, of course).\u00a0\u00a0 The first thing Ben Bova ever bought from me.\u00a0 I never sold another article to ANALOG… but it opened the door for all the stories<\/em> I would place there in the years that followed.<\/p>\n It has been many many decades since I last ran a chess tournament or even played a game of chess, and the memories had faded… but QUEEN’S GAMBIT brought them all back.\u00a0\u00a0 It’s a fine series in all respects, I think, but I was especially impressed that the producers and directors got the chess right. <\/em>\u00a0 All too many of the chess games one sees in films and television are crap.\u00a0 Supposedly great players are shown making elementary mistakes, the pieces on the board are in impossible positions, the game is obviously over yet no one has resigned, and so forth, and so on.\u00a0\u00a0 Not here.\u00a0\u00a0 The games one glimpses in QUEEN’S GAMBIT are real.\u00a0\u00a0 It must have been a challenge for the actors.\u00a0\u00a0 Not only did they have to learn their lines, they had to learn their moves<\/em>, and make them in the right order.<\/p>\n All in all, a terrific piece of television, says this old patzer.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the deep of winter, the nights are long and dark… and we all need good books to read, good shows to watch.\u00a0\u00a0 We cannot go to the movies or to the theatre so long as the pandemic lasts (not if we are sane), but we still have television, with more choices than ever before. 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