One of the things that bothers me about the show is having America's greatest player completely written out of history. Bobby dominated world chess in the 1960s but now he's been disappeared in favor of a young girl who's completely unbelievable as a player.
True
Read the book.
Tevis (the author) clearly drew inspiration from Fischer. But he also wanted to tell a different tale (one that involved drug addiction / alcohol dependency, along with some sexual "coming of age" events), and those had to be fictionalized. So the fictional Beth Harmon was born.
It's worth noting that one of the key aspects of Beth Harmon's character is her eidetic memory. She visualizes the chess board in her mind and finds her moves in that way. This isn't something Fischer was known for. It's something that more closely resembles another American chess legend: Paul Morphy (who did have an eidetic memory).
So Beth Harmon is kind of a mixture of Bobby Fischer and Paul Morphy, along with some other things thrown in.
It is trash, just a publicity stunt. It is a real shame Netflix decided to choose chess, chess.com servers are full of people who think they are gms
The chess.com servers were ALWAYS full of patzers who think they're GMs.
MAN U SPOILING pls I haven't watched the queen's gambit on netflix
You chose to open the thread and you chose to read what he typed...
Igor makes nothing but mocking and disparaging comments directed at chess and women. About time to ban the troll account.
Personally I find his comments offensive. Seen in everybody’s topics- this mocking is not one bit funny.
2ndly the off color comments are a magnet attracting other negative attention seekers- who gladly jump in and perpetuate an unfriendly atmosphere.
Please be relevant and kind…
Beth represented an alternative Fischer. Not based on the character of Fischer - but rather presents a story of different telling. Of his six novels that Tevis wrote 3 were made into major movie productions- some of the very best. His writing genre- Fiction, Sci-Fi
The Man Who Fell To Earth
The Hustler
The Color of Money
All novels with a similar theme.
The Queens Gambit follows in the same vain.
The major difference between the movie and the book is Hollywood’s license portraying Beth as a glamorous woman. In the book she is an ugly duckling and somewhat socially dysfunctional.
After 3 years of sitting in my Netflix playlist, I finally finished watching The Queen's Gambit mini series last night. Good show, good acting and good cinematography. As for the storyline, I'm now convinced it's based on Bobby Fischer's life but represented under different light and a nicer theme.
This conclusion is rooted in the obvious use of many elements from Bobby's life, that could be easily detected by anyone who's familiar with his life story.
Here are some of these elements, but not necessarily in that order:
1- Same Time Frame (late 50s and early 60s)
2- Absence of a Father Figure
3- Playing chess from a very young age
4- Playing chess against many players simultaneously
5- Accumulating wealth from winning domestic and international chess tournaments
6- The church element, whether it be a far right element such as in Bobby's case, or anti-communist stance in Harmon's case
7- Invitation to be on the Late Night Show or 60 minutes.
8- Paranoia, manifested in Harmon's controlled behavior by pills and booze vs Bobby's clear temper outbursts
9- The relationship with the mother figure was not ideal nor present
10- Joleen and Joan (Bobby's step sister) both acted as an important element of support
11- Borgov and Spassky's acknowledgements of Harmon and Fischer's superiority at the end of the final games
12- Both Harmon and Bobby's tardiness to some of their chess matches
13- The defeat of Harmon and Bobby by a top Soviet chess player in their first match ...
There are many other elements that I can not conjure at this moment, but I would like to think I presented my case pretty well.
As one of the commentators mentioned in the discussion above, Harmon is Fischer but in an alternative or parallel universe; a statement I agree with. It was evident however, that the makers of The Queen's Gambit attempted repeating history, and wanted to embellish it with some of Hollywood's dazzling sparkles along the way.
In the alternative universe that is presented in the Netflix series Queen's Gambit, Bobby Fischer doesn't exist. This is necessary, because the story takes place in the mid-1960s American chess scene, where Bobby was reigning supreme, and there was no way Beth Harmon, our heroine, was going to blow past him in her quest for glory.
So, while other players of the era like Reshevsky and Spassky are mentioned (but not shown)...no Fischer. It's been argued that Beth Harmon is an alternative-universe, "nicer" Fischer - self-taught, a prodigy, still kind of screwed-up and chess-obsessed, but without the serious personality and anger issues that plagued Bobby and finally led to his sorrowful end.
What do you think? Does that work for you?
TMB