Harry Decker

I found the opening story tedious and boring and beyond belief. And it sort of pissed me off. I’m probably in the minority, but I played tournament chess for years, and I've also been writing stories and screenplays for years. So I’m not so easily fooled. Here are some cardinal rules of writing which apparently don’t apply to The Queen’s Gambit. 1) Thou shalt not be boring. 2) Thou shalt write about something one knows something about. 3) Thou shalt make sense. In the main character’s (Beth Harmon) orphanage setting, she could not have possibly learned to play chess so well from a janitor and a local duffer. Nor could she possibly defeat a dozen high-school players. These players were made to look like bullies and fools (because Hollywood knows how to do such things to manipulate an audience). I used to be on a high-school chess team, and we studied and visualized a hell of a lot. We bought books and studied every night, particularly master games. We played many games, many more than Beth Harmon. We solved chess puzzles. Lastly, Beth Harmon could not possibly play master-level chess under the influence of tranquilizers and alcohol, because these substances numb the brain and slow down thought processes. An average tournament chess game lasts three hours, and each player move after move has to constantly calculate the ramifications of each move up to at least three moves ahead. This is mentally exhausting. And by the end of the day a player is physically drained as well, because there is a great deal of sweating in chess. I could fix these problems with the story, but who the hell am I? Stupid I guess.