The real-life Queen's Gambit

November 27, 2020 9:56 AM

How Georgia's Nona Gaprindashvili conquered the chess world (SL Calvert Journal).

You’ve probably already heard of Netflix series, The Queen’s Gambit, which follows the life of American chess prodigy Beth Harmon in her quest to take on the world’s top Grandmasters — all while battling her own inner demons.

When Harmon finally faces the Soviet heavyweights in Moscow for the first time, the camera pans briefly to a female Soviet chess player, Nona Gaprindashvili. While Harmon’s story is fictional, Gaprindashvili is a real chess player from Georgia who became the Women’s World Chess Champion five times. In the show, Gaprindashvili is introduced by the commentator as “a female world champion, who has never faced men” — something that surprised the real Gaprindashvili, who was no stranger to playing chess against male opponents.

posted by mandolin conspiracy (10 comments total)

As the article notes, Georgia has a long history of very strong women chess players. Jennifer Shahade, an American woman chess champion, wrote a great book called Chess Bitch: Women in the Ultimate Intellectual Sport. One of the big questions she tackles is why women chess players aren't as strong in tournaments as men. She cites sexism as a broad explanation, that in many countries (including the US) girls and women are discouraged from being serious chess players and there's not enough supportive infrastructure. Georgia is the exception that proves the rule: women's chess has much stronger community support and not-coincidentally there are more strong women players. I found the argument pretty compelling.
posted by Nelson at 10:03 AM on November 27, 2020 [5 favorites]

I have a memory, I hope genuine, I must have have been about nine or ten or so, of passing through a public park in Germany where a dozen or so chess tables were set up in a semi-circle and one player on the inside was striding from board to board, playing simultaneous games against a dozen or so men.

We arrived near the end of the exhibition, in time to hear the final voicings: “Schach.” “Schach.” “Schachmatt.” “Schach.” And so on until all challengers were beaten.

The champion, as you will have guessed, was female, no older than her early teens, if that.

She smiled, the crowd clapped, at which point the reel of my memory runs out.
posted by BWA at 11:05 AM on November 27, 2020 [6 favorites]

Susan Polgar playing ten at once at an event at the Hungarian Embassy in DC.
posted by Fukiyama at 12:57 PM on November 27, 2020 [3 favorites]

...a year after her first title win, Gaprindashvili was invited to an exclusive chess tournament in Hastings, England, attended by the world’s top players: from Capablanca and Alekhine to Spassky and Botvinnik.
This makes it sound like they were all there at the same time, but two of them were dead by the time she got there.

She was on top of the world around the time I was most active in tournaments, so I knew the name, but not any story.
So thanks.
posted by MtDewd at 3:02 PM on November 27, 2020 [1 favorite]

Here's the Tarjan game from Lone Pine, along with Robert Byrne's NYT column about it.
posted by MtDewd at 4:59 PM on November 27, 2020 [2 favorites]

It is frustrating to know that women could compete at every level in chess; and yet go to tournaments and see that 90% of the players are men. Chess is often seen as a proxy for intellectual ability and tactical ability and women are not being encouraged to play it in the way that men are.
posted by interogative mood at 8:28 PM on November 27, 2020

"Since the 12th century, it has been traditional for Georgian brides to receive a chess set..."

Somehow reading this makes me happy.
posted by storybored at 8:59 PM on November 27, 2020 [3 favorites]

Young Judit Polgar vs First Woman GM Nona Gaprindashvili - agadmator's Chess Channel
posted by flabdablet at 3:51 AM on November 28, 2020 [2 favorites]

The Washington Post has done a couple of articles about chess in the last 10 days:
One about the Netflix show, Five myths about chess by Jennifer Shahade, one about how the pandemic is causing a chess boom, and a piece similar to the FPP about Vera Menchik.
(All WaPo, of course)
posted by MtDewd at 4:37 AM on November 30, 2020 [3 favorites]

Here's the Tarjan game from Lone Pine

That was a weird tournament....as I understand it, it was funded mostly by a single wealthy patron, who seems to have had a dream to bring world-class chess to pretty much the middle of nowhere. I heard that the locals and proprietors of the inn that players stayed at didn't like having Russian GMs there, and didn't care for the American ones very much either.
posted by thelonius at 6:39 AM on November 30, 2020 [1 favorite]