The Queen's Gambit: An article

 

How ‘The Queen’s Gambit’ Started a New Debate About Sexism in Chess

The Netflix hit captures the struggles of women in the game, where female grandmasters are rare. But the reality, one top player says, is worse.

By Dylan Loeb McClain

 

Published Nov. 10, 2020, the New York Times

Judit Polgar might be the one woman in the world who knows how Beth, the heroine of the hit Netflix series “The Queen’s Gambit,” really feels. Like Beth, Polgar, who is from Hungary, stood out during her career because she regularly beat the world’s top players, including Garry Kasparov in 2002, when he was ranked No. 1.

Polgar, the only woman to ever be ranked in the Top 10 or to play for the overall world championship, retired from competitive chess in 2014. Watching the series, which she described as an “incredible performance,” gave her a sense of déjà vu, particularly in the later episodes.

But there was one respect in which she could not identify with Beth’s experience: how the male competitors treated her.

“They were too nice to her,” Polgar said. When she was proving herself and rising in the world rankings, Polgar said the men often made disparaging comments about her ability and sometimes jokes, which they thought were funny but were actually hurtful.

And no one ever resigned to her as Shapkin did to Beth in Episode 7 by gallantly holding her hand near his lips.

“There were opponents who refused to shake hands,” she recalled. “There was one who hit his head on the board after he lost.”

Not every woman has had negative experiences. Irina Krush, who won her eighth United States Women’s Championship last month, said that she felt as if the chess community and men in particular were very supportive of her when she was an up-and-coming player. She said of the series, “The spirit of what they are showing conforms to my experience.”

Whether what happens to Beth is typical or not, the popularity of “The Queen’s Gambit” has inspired anew a debate about inequality and sexism in chess and what, if anything, can be done about them.

Though chess would seem like one area where men and women should be able to compete on equal footing, historically, very few women have been able to do so. Among the more than 1,700 regular grandmasters worldwide, only 37, including Polgar and Krush, are women. Currently, only one woman, Hou Yifan of China, ranks in the Top 100, at No. 88, and she has been playing infrequently, even before the pandemic…

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