HIT OR MYTH?
There are plenty of misconceptions about the much-loved game of chess
Chess is having a moment. Chess is also having a decade. The game has been on an upward trajectory in pop culture ever since the charismatic Magnus Carlsen, who has even worked as a model, won the World Championship in 2013. That same year, Congress declared St. Louis the U.S. “chess capital.”
Now Netflix's The Queen's Gambit has ratcheted interest to new heights. The female-led drama set in the 1960s chess world has become the streaming service's most popular limited scripted series, with 62 million households watching the show in its first 28 days. Since its debut in October, chess set sales have skyrocketed, and Walter Tevis's 1983 novel that inspired the series has returned to bestseller lists, according to Netflix.
As millions of converts download chess apps and buy boards, it's time to dispel a few myths about this ancient game.
MYTH NO. 1: CHESS IS DULL AND UNSEXY
“Does it seem to you like there just isn't enough televised chess on these days?” David Letterman joked sarcastically in 1989. More recently, coverage of The Queen's Gambit has expressed doubt about the visual and dramatic appeal of the game. Vanity Fair said that, to most people, the game seems “dull and buttoned-up.” And the Cut cried, “The Sexiest Show on Television Is About ... Chess?”
The Netflix series plays up the royal game's glamorous side and, yes, its sensual side. But the connection between chess and sex goes back centuries. Historian Marilyn Yalom writes that medieval artists — in manuscript illustrations, tapestries and stainedglass windows, among other art forms — treated the game as synonymous with seduction: “A chess scene between a man and a woman signified romance.”
MYTH NO .2: IT TAKES GENIUS TO WIN AT CHESS
The public often associates chess with intelligence — and chess champions with preternatural brilliance. In the second episode of The Queen's Gambit, a librarian tells the protagonist, Beth Harmon, that a grandmaster is a “genius player.” A Wired article about chess in pop culture cited the joy of “watching genius at work.”
Carlsen, the highest-rated grandmaster in history, has reiterated many times that he considers himself “a normal person.”
In an interview with Rainn Wilson in 2013, he said that the first sentence of his autobiography would be: “I am not a genius.” What differentiated him from his competitors, he explained, was commitment; he didn't treat chess as a “normal hobby.”
FIDE (the International Chess Federation) recognizes more than 1,700 grandmasters — and what they have in common is hard work. Chess playing is a skill more than a fixed trait; excellence takes dedication, time and a love for the process. Along with practise games and tournaments, and individual and group coaching sessions, a serious chess training regimen often includes the study of top players' games, opening strategies, endgames and checkmating patterns. Serious players also use computers to deeply analyze their own games.
MYTH NO. 3: STRONG CHESS PLAYERS SEE DOZENS OF MOVES AHEAD
It's an old cliché that the best players plot long lines of future moves. In a 2010 profile, Time magazine described Carlsen's “beautiful mind” and how he “often calculates 20 moves ahead.” A recent ESPN story about an eight-year-old chess prodigy similarly marvelled at his “ability to think 20 moves ahead.”
In fact, great chess players use a combination of strategic intuition, pattern recognition and calculation to decide their moves; intuition alone is plenty to beat much weaker players. Chess players do think deeply about a position and its possible outcomes. But they look sideways as much as straight ahead, scanning the board to see any possible moves they are missing in their current position.
Man plans, God laughs — or as we say in chess, “Long variation, wrong variation.”
MYTH NO. 4: DEEP BLUE'S WIN IN 1997 MEANT THE END OF CHESS
“What would it really mean if Deep Blue won?” Newsweek asked before the match between Garry Kasparov and IBM'S computer engine: “Some people have argued whether chess would be diminished by this upheaval.” I got a chance to visit the match in New York; I remember the audience's simultaneous horror and awe at Kasparov's loss — and the laments that the computer had “solved” chess. More recently, New Scientist claimed that computers had been “ruining” chess ever since Deep Blue and that AI was “conquering” the game.
It's true that, in time, the top computers dismantled the top humans so easily it was no longer competitive enough to be fun, and the epic man versus machine matches were discontinued. But the death knell was premature.
The game's popularity has soared, as players and viewers find new ways to connect online. According to the founder of Chess.com, the site's traffic has grown up to 50 per cent each year since its founding in 2007; it had a huge spike in registrations and site use in 2020, due to the pandemic and The Queen's Gambit.
At any rate, chess has not been “solved.” Even the top computers don't know the best sequence of moves in every position — they just play enough fantastic moves (and very few bad ones) that they beat humans over and over.
According to the founder of Chess.com, the site's traffic has grown up to 50 per cent each year since its founding in 2007.
MYTH NO. 5: THE KING IS THE MOST IMPORTANT PIECE IN CHESS
Teachers and how-to guides often reiterate that, while the queen is the most powerful piece, the king is the most important
— a principle repeated in online chess tutorials and enshrined on Wikipedia.
But eight-foot-soldiers have something to say about that.
The mighty pawn, the only piece that captures differently than it moves, trudges ahead one step at a time. Since it's the only piece that cannot move backward, every push is final. Pawns form the bones of the game: Play would be a mushy mess without them. Change the pawn, and you shake the very essence of the game.
In the words of 18th-century French chess champion Francois-andré Danican Philidor, “The pawns are the soul of chess.”