Hi Willie,

You may be right, I was thinking of an episode from the 'The High Chaparral'

There is chess in one show and the producer/director was a chess enthusiast so added a line when John Cannon asked a cowboy who taught him to play good chess he replied it was a little fellah from New Orleans.

The lad said he wanted that bit in so only chess players would get it.

see: World Championship Candidates (2020) (kibitz #600)

Hi Willie,

Looks like I am wrong. In the original 1982 book Tevis gives the opening as an Albin Counter. So they got it from there. (maybe Tevis was giving chess players a nod back in 1982!)

I just finished reading "The Queen's Gambit". And that was no "good player" who played that against her, it was Vasily Borgov (a nod to Smyslov?), the reigning world champion for the previous 5 years. And it was indeed a "serious" game. It was the last round of a Moscow tournament when Harmon and Borgov, both undefeated, met in the final round to determine the tournament winner.

There seems to be some question as to whether Borgov played the Albin Countergambit or not since the opening was described as the "Albin Counter". But the book is clear that the opening started with 1.d4 d5 2.c4 e5. And, furthermore, after a few comments the game was described as continuing by 3.dxe5 d4 which is definitely the Albin Countergambit. I am familiar with the Albin Countergambit as a result of my participation in Team White vs Team Black, 2012, when I was part of Team Black.

As to whether Borgov was indicating his contempt for Harmon, which he had recently beaten twice before without apparent difficulty, by playing a defense in an important game which for players rated 2500+ is dubious (the ChessTempo database has 125 games with 3...d4 between players rated 2500+ and the results are that White wins 44%, Black wins 24.8%, with 31.2% draws) I'll others decide.

I liked the book. It accurately captured a lot of the essence of chess tournament play. I particularly enjoyed "in-jokes" such a reference to a "Mr. Byrne" which I don't think could have been a coincidence and Harmon winning the US Championship with a score of 11-0 which is clearly an homage to Fischer. And some of the boorish behavior of some of her opponents when they lost were familiar, although I've been associated with far worse when my opponent got up from the table and threw his king across the board, knocking down many of the pieces, and stormed away. And when (spoiler alert!) Harmon wins the final tournament game against Borgov, Borgov gets up and begins to applaud her, followed by the audience. A clear reference to Spassky vs Fischer, 1972 when, after he resigned, Spassky stood up and started to applaud Fischer, followed by the audience. Too bad that we don't have a video of that scene.

Hi AylerKupp,

You are correct about FIDE rating lists but there were rating lists long before ELO. Here is a BCF 1958 list.

https://www.saund.co.uk/britbase/pd...

I've been using the old ones to decipher Aitken's handwriting regarding opponents.

Yes, of course. Many countries had their own rating systems before FIDE officially introduced theirs in 1970, although Dr. Elo had provided FIDE with rating lists from 1966 through 1999. For example, the USCF used the Elo rating system starting in 1960 and the Harkness rating system before that. And, of course, the different countries' ratings are not directly comparable. But I doubt that either the BCF or the USCF would have assigned a rating to the world chess champion who happened to be a Soviet at that time, and there would be no question of comparing the ratings of participants from different countries in an international tournament. So I could only assume that they were referring to the non-existent FIDE rating based on the Elo rating system.

Hi AylerKupp,

I knew you knew, others we know may not have known what we know. (but I suspect you knew that.)

Quite a few of "The 100 Most Influential People Who Never Lived" were based on or inspired by real people, but you knew that as well.

The document says that by 1968, the year in which the episode is set, she had faced at least 59 male players.> https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainm....

https://lichess.org/@/Kingscrusher-...

It seems a bit bad of Netflix do these historical fiction dramas but with license to apparently pick on real name characters around the same time, and then kind of erase their achievements. She was actually a breakthrough women player - the first Woman Grandmaster and the 5th Women's world champion. Also the Netflix series did not feature any of her games.

In this case it is a male ex-laundry worker claiming his life and Beth Harman are too similar for it to be a coincidence citing many ridiculous examples.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertai...

It appears a judge has ruled Netflix has to go to court.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33i...