Fictional Chess Players

Who would we say is the best?

Sheldon Cooper plays numerous times on BBT. Whips Leonard a lot. Of course Leonard got beat by a "Bobby Fischer" like Penny. Sheldon has eidetic memory and would likely have a prodigeous ability.

Mike Ross from Suits also has eidetic memory, they haven't shown him playing Chess but he's good at poker. Knows the odds to the decimal. 

Gregory House was great at Chess. Played a game well with a prodigy in the episode "The Jerk" just to cause a symptom and find the clue to the sickness.

Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty played a notable game in a Game of Shadows.

Patrick Jane on The Mentalist played without a board and beat a good player while solving a crime involving the guy he was playing. 

Kirk and Spock played 3D chess, I imagine Data from NG would be awesome as a many centuries from now android. 

So many more choices I can't yet think of.

I wonder if they played a tournament what the result would be.

By far the best fictional chess player on TV was the main character on "Endgame," a mystery series from Canada that aired one season on Hulu. I can't remember the (fictional) Grandmaster's name from the show, but he had been staying in a luxury hotel for a tournament when he saw his girlfriend killed by a car bomb meant for him.

He developed a severe case of agoraphobia and refused to leave the hotel OR to pay for his suite. But the hotel kept him on because he kept using his genius, week after week, to solve some mystery the hotel needed solved. He "employed" a chess master to go outside and do his legwork in exchange for playing instructive games with the GM.

It was great fun, but it was only one season, and I wish they'd bring it back.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endgame_(TV_series)

Seeing as how Data was an android and therefore had a computer for a brain, I'd suggest that he would win hands down, even against the logical Spock.

1. Hal

2. Death. But perhaps Death is not fictional.

Catherine Oxenberg had a character in Acapulco HEAT that was a GM (more or less). As part of a team of secret agents that all look like supermodels, she is assigned tp protect a Russian GM defector who is playing in a tournament, so she has to play too, but she's rusty. Asked by one of her team if she "can make it through to the semi-finals on a grandmaster level" she says if she can't, their computer can.

Probably God would win

Data lost to Deanna Troi.  How good could he be?

I think I'd bet on the Doctor in a tournament(although he did blunder into a mate in 6 while playing against K9.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nzkZH5F_4I

The necromaster Sargon, from Majestic Chess, was probably the best. He was the greatest practitioner of the game in a world where everyone knew the power of the game. Sargon was so powerful with the game that it corrupted him, and in turn he twisted the game to serve his own sinister purposes. He used chess to conquer the world and assigned monsterous provincial warlords to exert his demonic influence across the regions of the land. :(

Alexandr Luzhin.

my bet is on "Data" (of TNG Star trek).  if an android with a positronic brain can't win, who can?

on the other hand- there's also been no reference to "the Doctor" (doctor who?... yep thats the guy).

he bragged about really being good at chess.

Wow, I can't believe that Luzhin film is a real movie, the trailer comes across as a parody of such films! Way over the top!

Just saw the trailer, I LOVE it!

PS. totally a real film, made in 2001

 http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_luzhin_defence/

"the film is based on the Real life story of German Master, Curt Von Bardleleban, who commited suicide by jumping out of a window in 1924"

what DID not happen was that this gifted chess player in the midst of a WCC match, after his suicide give his finace notes enabling her to beat the challenger.

that would be pretty unlikely.  Magnus Carlsen couldn't handwrite a few notes enabling some patzer lady to defeat Anand.  but it obviously makes a good story.  I'd LOVE to see it.  perhaps I can find in netflix or something....

and by the way if the name seems vaguely familiar. this is the guy that walked out on steinitz match in the very famous Hastings 1895 tournament.

so see, abandoning the game DOES happen outside of chess.com!

Pierre Renaud, in a very peculiar way. Full movie with English subtitles below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZXtCHoRb50

Who would win against Sherlock and Moriarty in chess