Portrayal of chess players in film and on television

[John Hickman]

To date this is the best novel I know of (on chess).

I know that novels are slightly off topic here, but I also enjoyed the Queen's Gambit. My absolute favourite chess related novel is "Carl Haffner's Love of the Draw" by Thomas Glavinic, but there's also "The Luneberg Variation" by Paolo Maurensig, "The Royal Game" by Stefan Zweig (I noticed it was recently re-packaged as "Chess"), "The Flanders Panel" by Arturo Perez-Reverte, "The Chess Players" by Frances Parkinson Keyes and "The Eight" by Katherine Neville.

I really enjoyed "The Eight". It made a 12 hour flight pass very easily.

I've also seen the Luzhin defence, although it doesn't exactly portray a good image of chess players

[IM Jack Rudd]

The Flanders Panel is the one combining a whodunnit with a retro-analytical problem, isn't it? Good book, that.

[Ljubica Lazarevic]

This reminds me of my (professional) ornithology friends that get up in arms when some species of bird appears in a film and it's not actually from that area.. oh dear...

[Alistair Campbell]

Fans of the West Wing will be aware of the chess scenes in the Hartsfield's Landing episode of series 3. As well as the usual confusion of moves and half moves, pieces being set up incorrectly (intermittently), announcement of "mate in 12" and bogus openings (the Fibonacci) there is a slightly surreal sequence when President Bartlett plays Toby Ziegler. Toby opens 1.e4. "Ah - the Evans Gambit" says the Pres, "Invented by Captain WD Evans in 1820". "I just moved my pawn" says Toby. Then the game does turn into an Evans Gambit... Either evidence that the President's genius extends to clairvoyance or that the timings of the action and the script were de-synchronised for dramatic effect.

[Eoin Devane]

Fans of the West Wing will be aware of the chess scenes in the Hartsfield's Landing episode of series 3. As well as the usual confusion of moves and half moves, pieces being set up incorrectly (intermittently), announcement of "mate in 12" and bogus openings (the Fibonacci) there is a slightly surreal sequence when President Bartlett plays Toby Ziegler. Toby opens 1.e4. "Ah - the Evans Gambit" says the Pres, "Invented by Captain WD Evans in 1820". "I just moved my pawn" says Toby. Then the game does turn into an Evans Gambit... Either evidence that the President's genius extends to clairvoyance or that the timings of the action and the script were de-synchronised for dramatic effect.

Indeed - I was impressed by President Bartlett's prescience. Perhaps a career in chess would have been worth considering! If I remember it correctly, he also plays a game with Sam earlier in the episode. I think the script writers were using the games to mirror the President's tactical maneuvering with regards to some political situation and also to explore his relationship with the two staffers. Chess is mentioned in a couple of other West Wing episodes - the implication always seems to be that it is one of the President's favourite pastimes.

Great show, by the way - I'd recommend it to anyone.

[Andrew Farthing]

For those with long memories (or access to Comedy Central), there were regular chess scenes in the doctors' tent in M*A*S*H. Occasionally, there are even references to real players such as Zukertort and Alekhine (even Mrs Alekhine, though they don't say which one).

No Elo ratings were given in the credits, but as far as I can tell Hawkeye was the weakest, BJ second and Major Charles Winchester III strongest. Winchester was also the pompous bald intellectual of the group. (Hmm.) All things are relative, and in one episode Winchester played a visiting South Korean intelligence officer. The workings of the Oriental mind proved vastly superior and he soon hoovered up Winchester's pieces and delivered mate. In this game, Winchester failed to see that he was facing mate in one (something Hawkeye consistently does as well), so perhaps he was a little shy of GM standard.

On the book front, I quite enjoyed Ronan Bennett's "Zugzwang", which explains why Rubinstein did so poorly at St Petersburg 1914, and Rex Stout's old Nero Wolfe story, "Gambit" is good fun. If you can track it down, "Endgame" by Dev Stryker has a Fischer-style American prodigy caught up in a spy plot. The author's name is a pseudonym (I believe for Warren Murphy and a collaborator). Murphy also wrote "Grandmaster" and "High Priest", which have a brilliant chess-playing Russian spy, but realism is some way off the agenda in these. Anyone interested in the increasingly popular Scandinavian crime field might want to check out "Borkmann's Point" by Hakan Nesser. It has a chess-playing police detective and several scenes of social chess with his mentor, done in a way which suggests the author knows the game.

[Neville Twitchell]

People may be interested that there is a book by Bob Basalla called "Chess in the Movies", published by Thinkers Press in 2005 that itemises every film or TV play that has a chess scene or chess reference of some sort - at any rate all of those that the author is aware of though doubtless that there will be others. He classifies them according to the extent and nature of the chess content into "Chess Encounters" of the "First", "Second" and "Third" Kinds, (CE1, 2, 3) with only the last representing significant chess content. Of course countless films have some peripheral chess scene - a couple of old men poring over a board in the background, that sort of thing.
Believe it or not I once acted as a "technical adviser" (!) on the film "X Men 3" because there was a very brief scene at the conclusion of the film (a post-credit sequence in fact) where people are playing chess in the park and the director wanted a convincing set up on one of the boards!! Such is the level of preparation that goes into big budget productions these days. I saw the film on release and spent ages standing in the cinema at the end of the film fruitlessly scanning the end credits for my name!

[John Hickman]

"Here is an outstanding compilation of chess scenes from movies and television series, elegantly edited and set to beautiful classical music by Lucio from Rome, Italy."


http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=5436

[Jon Mahony]

Hi Jon,

Re the missing pawns in From Russia with Love.

It's a moot point but:

John Henderson, writing in The Scotsman, stated on Tuesday 12th December 2006.
That the producers thought there was copyright on chess games so they removed
two pawns to make the positional original.

Cheers Geoff - I knew it was something like that, they really should have got a Chess player in to make some inconsequential change to the position though - MacAdams didn’t exactly look like a GM after Kh6

[Jon Mahony]

I've also seen the Luzhin defence, although it doesn't exactly portray a good image of chess players

That was also a novel (originally printed in Russian) but I’ve not got around to reading that one yet - if it’s anything like the film I don’t think I’ll bother, I saw it for the first time recently - too sentimental and a bit weird - there was about an hour of literally nothing happening, then when it looks like the climax is finally approaching *spoiler* Luzhin decides it’s a good idea to sling himself out of a window

I was thinking “… he can’t be dead… surely not…oh okay, he is because they are burying him…”

No one yet seems to have mentioned Searching for Bobby Fischer or Innocent Moves as it’s called over here, yet. What did people think of that one? Again I'd say too sentimental - I do watch it from time to time, but there’s certain cringe worthy parts I have to fast-forward.

[Mick Norris]

I've also seen the Luzhin defence, although it doesn't exactly portray a good image of chess players

That was also a novel (originally printed in Russian) but I’ve not got around to reading that one yet - if it’s anything like the film I don’t think I’ll bother, I saw it for the first time recently - too sentimental and a bit weird - there was about an hour of literally nothing happening, then when it looks like the climax is finally approaching *spoiler* Luzhin decides it’s a good idea to sling himself out of a window

I was thinking “… he can’t be dead… surely not…oh okay, he is because they are burying him…”

I liked the book a lot more than the film

[Arshad Ali]

That was also a novel (originally printed in Russian) but I’ve not got around to reading that one yet...

You mean Nabokov's "The Defence."

No one yet seems to have mentioned Searching for Bobby Fischer or Innocent Moves as it’s called over here, yet. What did people think of that one? Again I'd say too sentimental - I do watch it from time to time, but there’s certain cringe worthy parts I have to fast-forward.

Book was okay but the movie made me squirm. Melodramatic gestures like sweeping the pieces to the floor serve no purpose. And did you see who played Pandolfini?

I've yet to come across a movie that does even a bit of justice to the inner processes of the chessplayer. Mostly they seem merely to be pandering to the misconceptions and stereotypes of the public.

[Jon Mahony]

That was also a novel (originally printed in Russian) but I’ve not got around to reading that one yet...

You mean Nabokov's "The Defence."

That's the one

Book was okay but the movie made me squirm. Melodramatic gestures like sweeping the pieces to the floor serve no purpose. And did you see who played Pandolfini?

What Ben “CALL ME SIR!!” Kingsley? Yes I’ve no idea what possessed them to cast him as Pandolfini, I’ve never been keen on much of anything Mr Kingsley has done, but that performance was borderline ridiculous.

The kid who they got to play Jeff Sarwer was just embarrassing too - I shudder at the scene in the park where he goes “Check, Check, Checkmate…. Trick or treat!”

[Keith Arkell]

Well,if Monk is portraying us as ''highly educated, cultivated, well-dressed, debonair,living a life of rather ostentatious luxury, and in the habit of sprinkling witty aphorisms and classical quotations into their conversations'',then,however innacurate it is,still it is better for the inaccuracy to be flattering rather than the usual highly unflattering stereotying of us as insane,obsessive and hopelessly clueless socially!
Of course the truth is somewhere in between.I would say that we are not so different to a typical cross section of none-chessplayers;except perhaps in a couple of areas:
Firstly the average IQ of strong chess players is substantially higher than that of none-players;and secondly there is a greater likelihood of top players having at least some characteristics of the autism spectrum disorders(ASD),and interestingly this latter difference may go a long way in camouflaging the first

[Geoff Chandler]

Hi Keith.

I've often said if you line up 20 guys and tell me one is a chess player then after
5 minutes I could pick him out. It's the 'haunted look' that would betray them.

Years of looking out for traps, tricks and total mistrust at every one of your opponents
move leaves it's unique mark.

Chess on TV.

I recall an episode of the High Chaparral that had chess running through it.

http://www.thehighchaparral.com/ep252.htm

There is one line which proves someone somewhere knew something about chess.

"Who taught you to play chess like that?"

"It was a little fellah in New Orleans,"

The TV version of Mission Impossisble had chess as a theme.

Someone there too was having a laugh as the baddie Grandmanster was called
Nicholas Groat - which is an anagram = 'has cool rating' too much of a coincidence.

One of the team picks up the moves from an unbeatable chess computer
vis an earpiece and he beats GM Nicholas thus.

The GM is White: .e4 e5 2.Nf3 Bc5 3.Nxe5 Qh4 4.d3 Qxf2 mate.