Chess players are always the bad guys.

I watched one of those crime drama/mystery/who done it type detective TV shows last night. It featured a chess player as the villain. Why is that chess players, when featured in TV shows, movies, novels, etc. are almost always the bad guys? Chess players are all to often portrayed negatively as evil, sinister, malicious, selfish and mad (as in crazy not angry). Why can't chess players be portrayed as heroes, wholesome, valiant, caring, and good. Does anyone else ever notice this negative bias and prejudice toward chess players in the entertainment media.

By always, you mean that one time when a chess player happened to be the villain?

No, I mean usually, most of the time, far too often, not literally always per se, but certainly not just once. In the thread title I used a literary tactic called hyperbole, which is an intentional over the top exaggeration used as a figure of speech and not expected to be taken for its literal meaning.

Can you name an instance where chess players are portrayed as heroes, other than the movie "Independence Day"? In that movie, Goldbloom's character is a hero that plays chess. Also, movies and shows about chess such as "Searching for Bobby Fisher" and "Knights of the South Bronx" are also to be excluded from your list.

I was watching a British Show last night called "Inspector Lewis" and though at the end the chess player's character was not the actual murderer, she was depicted to be quite sinister and her actions were a catalyst for the crimes. She was a suspect and the audience was lead to believe she was the guilty culprit before the final plot twist.

In American TV and media chess players are often the bad guys.

I have seen chess players as villains on episodes of Criminal Minds, CSI, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Law & Order: SVU, & NCIS, to name a few. Recently I even watched an old "Colombo" TV movie with Peter Faulk, it would have been produced in the early 70's during the Fisher craze. And the sinister evil chess player is the bad guy going around murdering folks.

Maybe this phenomena of chess players depicted as villains doesn't happen in the state controlled media of the People's Republic of North Korea, where you are from. But it is quite common here in the USA. If you need further proof I'll research the years, seasons, episode #'s of the aforementioned TV shows. In the meantime check out this YouTube clip of a CSI promo from an episode in titled "Killer Moves".

http://youtu.be/HUl66Rk4E_w

Good!

Probably because chess players represent the manipulative mastermind motif. In the anime code geass, all of the central villains and anti-heros are chess players with their closest subordinates representing certain pieces. 

I was waiting for Netflix or PBS or BBC to pick it up, but never happened. Was it any good?

Law & Order: Criminal Intent - Season 4, Episode 11 - "Gone"

Searching For Bobby Fischer had both. And then there's the movie "Fresh" - the good guy was a kid chess player.

Btw, some TV shows use chess to demonstrate how smart their heroes are. Chess showed up quite often in West Wing, and was an occasional guest on The Mentalist (where the good guy would match wits with the bad guy, who was usually a strong chess player). Even Michael J. Fox's character in Family Ties was supposed to be a secret master. There was a famous episode where he suddenly was good enough to play against a Soviet master in a college championship.

And the episode of House - "The Jerk"

But you're right, quite often, the chess playing genius is the bad guy. Everyone remembers the intro to From Russia with Love. Colombo and other TV dramas often had evil chess geniuses. 

Another series that showed chess as more or less morally neutral though, was MASH. 

I think the nonchessplaying public views chess players as ultrarational like Kronsteen, and thus as cold, calculating indivuals, who are easier to make into villians.

My point exactly, it is a negative stereotype.

As for chess villians, it's easy: Chess players are seen, whether true or not, as living on the fringe of society. Hidden away in florescent lit rooms with no windows, sipping on juice and playing some board game nobody else really understands.

Along the same lines; my first name is Karl. I realized many-many years ago, this name is given to social fringe types  like janitors, homeless and criminals in TV and movies. It happens all the time. Nearly everytime you hear a character named Karl, they will be something like this.

The stereotype is that chess players are calculating and smart. If you are a chess player, you're expected to be able to see the consequences of your actions more than perhaps a non-chess player. 

The stereotype is that a chess player is a formidable intellect, but it's morally neutral. 

Quite a few TV and movie heroes play chess too. Harry Potter and his friends, for example.

Law & Order: Criminal Intent - Season 4, Episode 11 - "Gone"

The episode is based on 'Bobby Fischer. The villain is a chess grand master (a prodigy). Played a match with a russian in 1972. Then he played a rematch with the same rival after 20 years, violating US Sanctions and is a refugee ( These are stated somewhere between 25-30 minutes of the episode). The link is

http://www.cucirca.eu/law-order-criminal-intent-season-4-episode-11-gone/

True, but there is the other stereotype of the villain's machiavellic plan that was long thought out but is ruined at the last minute by the hero relying on his muscles and improvisation skills.

So on the average, a "chess player" character (whose character development insists heavily on chess) is more likely to lean on the dark side.

A Game of Shadows features a game between Holmes and Moriarty. (which they end up blindfolded, while chatting, to pile cliché over cliché). Apparently the fans found out it was taken from a variation of a Larsen-Petrosian game.

The stereotypical traits of a chessplayer lend themselves more easily to those of the villian, most have been listed here such as manipulative (often pieces are metaphors for the bad guys 'minions' in films), calculating and logical.
In comparison the hero, as Irontiger pointed out, is very often less logical or predictable but rather extravagent and as the cliche finish goes, they take some huge risk at the end to foil the bad guys plans.

Further, often the aim of character development is to make people dislike the badguy while relating to the hero. The majority of people watching a movie would not be able to relate to a hero who had chess playing as a past time, I think this would be very difficult to do well.