Chess is enjoying a major renaissance, thanks to the lockdown ... and a certain Netflix series.
‘The Queen’s Gambit’ and pandemic fuel a Bay Area renaissance
When I was about 10 and planning to be a chess champion — even though I barely knew my fianchettos from my fingerfehlers — I crafted my own chess set out of papier-mâché, the flour-and-water-and-newspaper kind, forming it into little amorphous clumps of varying sizes then sending them into battle on a board made of cardboard squares held together with Elmer’s glue. In later years, I upgraded to a “Pirates of the Caribbean” set with knights and kings in a barnacled-green metal, as if they’d just surfaced from watery graves.
Both sets worked fine, and that’s the beauty of chess — it’s a game of the mind, so there’s no need for the $1,995 Ralph Lauren “Sutton” version unless you want it for coffee-table art. In fact, there’s no need for a physical version at all these days, thanks to online sites with chess puzzles, casual games, classes and even tournaments — a blessing during a never-ending lockdown where we’ve been so bored out of our minds, we’ve been forced to actually use them.
Indeed, chess is having a moment. Early in the pandemic, the 1,500-year-old game was already seeing a surge, along with home-based activities like baking sourdough or learning Swahili. Then in the fall, along came the Netflix miniseries “The Queen’s Gambit” — a strategic move if ever there was one — which sent armies of rookies and grandmasters alike to online platforms like Chess.com, Lichess.org and chess-related Twitch channels. It also sent sales of physical chess sets soaring at the holidays. (If you didn’t get one from Santa, you were probably very, very naughty.)
While chess is currently crowned with popularity, especially for women and girls, there are so many ways to get involved — from online classes and tournaments to Diying your own homemade sets.
We checked in with the experts at the Mechanics’ Institute Chess Club in San Francisco, believed to be the oldest chess club in the country, where chess director Abel Talamantez says the club already had a vigorous online presence
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(www.milibrary.org), making it well-positioned to continue offering classes and games for every level of skill.
“We’d been really active this whole time (of the lockdown), running regular events and classes — I’ve been running mini youth tournaments daily,” he says. “But when ‘Queen’s Gambit’ came out, we doubled the number of participants in everything from our free Wednesday-night beginner classes to tournament play.”
“The Queen’s Gambit,” based on Walter Tevis’ 1983 novel, is a fictional story about a female prodigy, Beth Harmon, who becomes a chess champion amid the maledominated world of chess. Mechanics’ Institute CEO Kimberly Scrafano says there’s been a distinct spike of interest from women and girls in the ensuing weeks.
“Interesting thing was, we’d already received a grant from U.S. Chess earlier this year to expand our classes for women and girls,” she said. “It was all rather good timing.”
All of Mechanics’ Institute’s classes are interactive with actual live person-to-person Zoom time. You’re not just playing against an algorithm.
“The instructor shares the screen that they maneuver, so you don’t have to have an actual chessboard,” Talamantez says. “Some players still like to see the visual board, though. And the funny thing is, with all the online play and classes, there’s been a lot of nostalgia with people wanting to play live and in person. There’s a social element to the game, too.”
And it’s not just about learning the moves. The instructors impress upon students the value of things to learn from chess that can apply to other aspects of life, like perseverance, the ability to weigh different options, sportsmanship, focus and learning from losses.
To be sure, computer chess has come a long way since Deep Blue beat a human chess player in the 1990s, and way beyond the days of texting a cryptic “Qxd4 d5 cxd5 cxd5 Nf3” code to a nerdy opponent and shouting, “You sunk my battleship!” (Sorry, wrong game.)
It’s even become an e-sport, on par in popularity with things like Dota 2 and League of Legends. There are even chess “influencers,” like 25-year-old chess master Alexandra Botez, who has been playing the game since she was 6 and has been likened to “Queen’s Gambit” protagonist Beth Harmon.
Speed chess — also called blitz chess or fast chess — is on the rise, popular because it’s a game with controlled time limits per moves, hence no hourslong games, lending itself better to spectators.
If you’re only joining the chess surge now and going old school with a physical set, prepare yourself for the many choices that lie ahead. Chess sets come with a 64-square chessboard and 32 pieces — usually 16 black, 16 white, but you can get them in any color, style or price range. There’s themed chess, portable chess, magnetic chess. There’s Super Mario chess, “The Simpsons” chess. Sleek acrylic pieces like works of modern art or handcrafted sets made of nuts and bolts. You can defeat the Empire with Yoda and Chewie, or get all artisanal with hand-poured, handpainted resin pieces.
And all manner of DIY videos on Youtube will show you how to make your own, everything from woodturning pieces yourself to making a set in two minutes flat with graph paper and pushpins. You can print out paper boards and pieces from sites like Allfreeprintable.com. If you’re really creative, you can fold up a pet-themed origami chess set, with detailed instructions from Roman Diaz’s book, “Origami Chess: Cats vs. Dogs” (Thunder Bay Press, $30).
Or if that’s too much work, never underestimate the power of clumps of papier-mâché.