Queen Of Chess: Getting The Details Right As The Chess Consultant

Queen of Chess, the documentary directed by Rory Kennedy about the life and career of GM Judit Polgar, has been informing and entertaining Netflix viewers since February 6. The film hit the global top 10 in its first week as viewers have gotten to learn about Polgar's upbringing, her rise in chess circles and encounters with prideful grandmasters, her famed battles with GM Garry Kasparov, and more—complete with thoughts and reflections from Polgar, Kasparov, and others.

It takes a whole team to make a film, and when chess is involved, mistakes can abound if the producers and others aren't familiar with the game—kings and queens flipped, the board turned 90 degrees. Fortunately, Queen of Chess suffered absolutely nothing of the sort. A big part of the reason for that was the chess consultant Kennedy brought in, and whose advice she was careful to heed.

That consultant was none other than Chess.com Fair Play Director FM Dan Rozovsky, who in this interview discusses everything from what the job entailed, what it was like working with an award-winning filmmaker, his thoughts on the final product and the effect it will have on audiences, and much more.

How did you come to be the chess consultant for Queen of Chess?

Yeah, I'd never really done something like that before. The team that was working on the documentary reached out to Chess.com because they wanted to do some re-creations of Judit's games. They had gathered a lot of archival footage to tell her story, but they wanted people to come in and shoot them playing the actual games. They were looking for three roles: someone to play Judit's moves, someone to play her opponents', and then someone to watch it as the consultant and make sure that the chess was authentic.

Initially it was pitched that maybe I would do the moving of the pieces, but I told them that I preferred to do the behind-the-camera work. I thought it'd be cool to partner with the director, the producers, and everyone putting it together and make sure that the chess was consistent all the way through. They took a chance on me, and it was a fun time!

They took a chance on me, and it was a fun time!

For some reason what I think of is this SNL sketch where they have two extras trying to play basketball who clearly never have before. But you're not just watching these two to make sure they know how the game went and are making legal moves?

The people that filled the chess-playing roles were both super-strong chess players.

There are a lot of Judit's games in the doc, especially her games against Kasparov. We re-created a bunch of those games and were really focused on getting the details right. We played through the various stages of each game, sometimes a few moves at a time, and sometimes all the way through. The players would memorize some number of moves from each game, or for the longer segments, I would call out moves from the scoresheet as we weren’t rolling audio. Making the chess look good on the board was the main goal, but making sure the scoresheets from the players made sense, the clocks were both aligned to what it would be like in a game, the choices of the board, pieces, and clock itself were all critical details to get right. We really wanted it to look like a proper re-creation of what happened in the actual games.

Making the chess look good on the board was the main goal, but... we really wanted it to look like a proper re-creation of what happened in the actual games.

Did you have a role in picking the specific games that got played out?

I didn't when I was introduced to the project, since they had already chosen a lot of the storyline. I did offer my perspective on a few games when they were deciding which moments we should focus on. Many of Judit's positions, especially against Kasparov, were super exciting and tactical, so we were spoiled for choice of how to make it look good on the board.

They also had other people providing commentary on the games throughout the documentary. If the commentary was clearly referencing certain moves in the games, I was trying to pick up on that and match the board to their commentary.

So how was working with Rory Kennedy?

Rory was amazing. The whole team was really great to work with. I don't necessarily have a point of comparison, but the one thing that stood out was that I felt I could speak freely and really give my opinion when we were on set. I asked if we could do a couple of retakes and Rory was open to that; I suggested different angles that may encapsulate how the play would be shot in an actual tournament. We replayed a bunch of lines to capture the most dynamic sequences. We set the clocks to different times that would make sense throughout the games. All of these things I was comfortable bringing up because they made that environment really collaborative, and I could tell that they actually cared about getting everything as close to right as possible.

Rory was amazing. The whole team was really great to work with.

My biggest worry when we were discussing me coming on board was whether they would allow me to nitpick and give a lot of those notes, but Rory really encouraged me to do that. It was a great collaboration and partnership. My guess is that that's pretty unique for someone as accomplished as her and her team.

Judit's own involvement in the project is different, of course, and it doesn't sound like you would have met her on set, but was there any interaction?

While I reviewed the film and worked through the re-creations, there wasn't much interaction with Judit. I did feel like we were interacting a little bit, because in the film, she's discussing the games and her life. I watched it front-to-back so many times that I felt like I understood from her commentary what was important to her in the games, and we tried to highlight those things.

But I was curious what she was going to say. Obviously her opinion matters a lot to me on any chess topic, but especially the doc about her life! I met her a couple nights before the premiere and she had good feedback, which warmed my heart—I was ready if there was something she didn't like.

I met [Judit] a couple nights before the premiere and she had good feedback, which warmed my heart.

We discussed some of the chess and some of the games, and she was really kind and sweet. It was clear that the project meant a great deal to her; she was really thankful for people taking her story and delivering it as authentically as we possibly could. So not much interaction during the project, but definitely during Sundance week.

In terms of the sequence of events—basically, the games are picked, and then you're picking the moments inside the games? I assume Judit had a lot of input too, naturally, on what she thought were the big moments for her.

I can share a little on the sequencing. When I got involved, the games had mostly been chosen, and other people in the film had already made their reactions and comments on the games. So we were already in a narrow area based on the games that were selected, and what everyone was saying about them. If Judit is attacking Kasparov's king on the kingside, but we choose a part of the game where the action is on the queenside, that doesn’t work in the re-creations.

All of the commentary made a lot of sense to me and the people playing in the re-creations. We honed in on when those moments were, then we shot them from different angles, with different speeds, and with different intentionality in the moves. All strong chess players have seen these styles throughout various tournaments and they know how to move the pieces in that way. So that was cool and we did that a few times. 

We honed in on when those moments were, then we shot them from different angles, with different speeds, and with different intentionality in the moves.

There were a couple situations where we don't have any record of the moves. There's a blindfold game, for example, from Judit's youth that is covered in the doc. We have some archival footage of it, and we know she was playing White. The game didn't seem like it lasted very long, because the final position still had a decent amount of pieces. We know her openings, and about how she liked to play.

So, we just created a game. The actors and I knew roughly what we needed, so we took 15 minutes and created a game, wrote it down, and they played it out.

That kind of stuff was really fun, and again Rory and the team were happy for us to bring our chess knowledge, especially in those moments. They basically said that as long as it fits in the correct parameters, we could use our creative chess knowledge to make it look good. We had a few of those opportunities.

What scenes or contributions of yours were you happiest or proudest of? Re-creating the blindfold game, or is there something else too?

The blindfold game is one. There was also this sequence where Judit is playing a tournament in Madrid. This is during her ascent in the 1990s, she's beating a ton of strong players… and the players aren't shaking her hand after the game. So we did a little montage of that, where she has a winning position or she's checkmating on the board, she's putting out her hand for a handshake—and no one's shaking her hand. We put together four or five winning or checkmating positions and we wanted them to look stylish, flashy, and tactical. That was another space where we were creative and we just put together four or five cool sequences there. That was fun.

We put together four or five winning or checkmating positions and we wanted them to look stylish, flashy, and tactical... That was fun.

In terms of the actual games, I don't know if something that I contributed to on the board was the most interesting. The thing that was hardest, and that I was happy that we got right, was the time remaining on the clocks throughout the games we recreated. You know, you're reenacting a game that's 80 moves long, but you're not going to sit there and actually play the game for six hours. So the actors would make some moves, we'd break, then we'd reset the clock to the next natural point, play some more moves and break, reset the clock again to another natural point, and so on. If it's move 16, the clock can't say three minutes have elapsed per player, and also can't say that two hours elapsed per player. You have to keep it in line with the time control that the games were actually played under. So that was tricky, and I think that we did a really good job, but it took a lot of takes.

Rory and the team also wanted some close-ups on the clocks and for those to match at the right time at the dramatic moments in certain games. So we had to remember at which move that was happening and where the clock should be at that moment. It was a fun process, if a bit tedious, but worth it.

I imagine one of the trickier games is that first game between Judit and Garry with the touch-move controversy. How did filming that go?

Yeah. Ultimately we re-created the whole game, which we did for all of the key games in the film. For that one, we definitely honed in on the touch move in the reenactment. We shot it from a bunch of different perspectives and at different speeds but ultimately didn’t use that footage just because the actual footage in the archive is so powerful.

Ah, sure.

In terms of how the chess is visualized in the re-creations, I think that game is maybe one of my favorites. Maybe it's because it's the first Judit and Garry game that we really reenacted. There's a lot of great tension, I really liked shooting that.

And I didn't expect there to be any sort of fair play conversation at all in this film. I was vaguely familiar with something that happened in a Judit and Garry match, but it was a little bit of a callback to the fact that there have always been some of these challenges. Obviously, touch move is not the same as using an engine.

Right.

I do have to say that I was very curious how Garry was going to respond. It’s a hard thing to respond to, but I’m glad that he shared his perspective in the film on it and that he didn't shy away from it.

One other thing was that, initially, when I saw the touch-move mistake—the move Garry played first was a big mistake in the game. I thought that Judit was losing before, and the mistake could turn it into a win. We did some further analysis, the two player-actors and myself, playing out a sequence that we came up with on how the game could have continued. We thought it was very likely the game would have ended five or six moves later with a perpetual check, although it's perhaps not so obvious, because Judit is just winning material in that position. But that was another cool little chess nugget that we found.

I remember learning about that game in one of the old Chessmaster programs and yeah, I seem to recall their analysis then was that it wasn't dead lost for Kasparov after the initial wrong move, but I don't remember the exact annotation they had.

Later on, Judit does end up in that Russia versus the World event and wins a game against Kasparov. I'm looking at the game now, and it's two years after Garry's match against Kramnik, where Kramnik held all these draws with the Berlin Defense. And now Kasparov is playing the Berlin as Black, and he loses. How about that game?

It's definitely in there. It was a surprising change. That was one of the last games we re-created. All the previous ones were Sicilians with Judit launching an early attack with early f4 ideas, but here it's the Berlin. The thought is that Garry wanted to take her by surprise. Not that he was shying away from a tactical battle, but that he was interested in seeing if she could handle him in a slower, quieter type of game. 

And Judit played flawlessly. The game and conversion were seamless. It says a little bit about Judit's arc as well. As she got stronger and stronger and broke into the top 10 in the world, her game just became super-strong on all fronts. It was fun to re-create that, and there was a lot of good commentary that was already available for us to figure out exactly which positions to show.

I think the thing that took me by surprise was just how clean the game was. All of their other games were very messy and scrappy and tactical and long, and this game was short, sweet, and super-accurate. It’s not even totally clear where Garry lost the thread. He just slowly got himself into a tough position, Judit's rooks ended up on the seventh rank, and Garry's king didn't have much of an escape. 

It was cool that Judit got that win there. It was a triumphant moment. Especially the Berlin being notoriously hard to crack, and she did it with ease.

It was cool that Judit got that win there. It was a triumphant moment. Especially the Berlin being notoriously hard to crack, and she did it with ease.

Interesting about the arc. They do all have to adjust at that level. Carlsen's the other way around where he starts off with these positional grinds and then he works to become more aggressive. Garry had to do it too, and more like Judit even. He was also known as an attacking, tactical guy, and then I'm sure the Karpov matches told him all sorts of stuff about positional play.

So, what do you want people to take from the film?

I'd say for the chess enthusiasts, I hope they take away the authenticity, the accuracy, that the people that made this film and contributed to it cared to get the chess right full stop. I've watched a lot of chess movies, and there are some that really stand out in those terms. And then there are some others where the story is great, but maybe it's more of a fictional story or a retelling loosely based on true events and the chess is not portrayed as well. Maybe it's not fair as a chess player to nitpick at that, but it’s something that we do subconsciously when we see a king and queen not on the right squares and basic things like that. So, I hope the chess community appreciates the effort and the interest in getting the chess right.

For the broader community and the chess community, I mean, Judit's story pulls on your heartstrings. It's an emotional story. I teared up watching the very first cut of it. I teared up at Sundance, seeing it on the big screen and seeing her getting a standing ovation. I hope that young girls especially, but anyone that is new to something, if they're new to chess, that they're not afraid to take the plunge, they're not afraid to break through barriers.

Especially for young girls to see someone like Judit, who was relentlessly driven, never took no for an answer, and broke through all those barriers. I mean, she was a top-10 player. There are not very many people in the history of all of chess that have ever reached the 2700 club or have broken into the top 10, let alone held the women's number-one for 26 years.

I just hope people are really inspired by all that. That they give things a chance if they're interested in them, and that they don't shy away or say, "Oh, this isn't for me," or "This isn't for girls," or isn't for a particular group that person is part of. It's for you if you like it and you want to give it a try. 

I'm curious what the response will be. I'm hopeful that there's a big influx into chess and that especially young people are motivated by this film.

I'm hopeful that there's a big influx into chess and that especially young people are motivated by this film.