The Queen’s Gambit

Recently with my wife, we binge-watched this miniseries, and then I also bought and read the book. I’ll provide a quick summary here.

Even if you are not that much into chess, the story is not only about chess, but about personality traits such as:

• Obsessiveness
• Finding a way to escape reality
• Fulfiling ego by winning
• Feeling like you are in control
• Competition as gateway to confidence

The story portraits the character how she always finds a way to do what is most interesting to her, regardless of the obstacles, and never give up. For example, chess is a visualisation game, so it can be played in one’s mind even if one cannot afford a chess set.

It is madness to run the risk of becoming an imbecile through vanity.

Denis Diderot

She is heavily obsessed with chess. She usually takes things to extreme (e.g. drinking heavily). But as she grows, she finds that there is more to life than just chess (or any other single thing). One should find a way to be happy in life, and should do other things as well.

The book is very similar to the series but it contains small bits that the series doesn’t, though I find the book to be much more detailed and expressive than the series (I guess this is true about books in general). For example, there are a few moments of self-reflection in the book that I didn’t notice in the series.

All in all, an interesting story that attempts to capture the “price” “geniuses” have to pay (related paper here).