Chess on TV, are the producers idiots?

Here's a chance for you to vent on how Chess is portrayed on TV & in movies. I'll kick it off with a couple of examples that make me see red.

Tipping the board over to prevent a loss. We see this one all the time. What player of any reasonable calibre can't reconstruct the position if the board is tipped over. Dang I could not only reconstruct the position but play back up to 40 moves when my rating was about 800.

The Mentalist (Should be renamed the Mentally Impaired after this one). The hero walks up to 2 players after a game & says "Your Grunfeld defense was too weak for his Ruy Lopez opening" Are you kidding me, what idiot came up with that one!

Criminal Minds. Boy genious Spencer Reid with an IQ of 187 & an eidetic memory can't see a Mate in 1 coming??

So has anyone got any other choice offerings of TV Chess stupidity?

Dunno about TV, but what I hate is journalists reporting political problems as stalemates. At worst, zugswang is the real situation

Good point, Journalists are just as bad. I remember Fischer / Spassky in 1972 was big news & the Press was reporting it like it was a boxing match

Don't blame it on the producers, blame it on the writers.

The producers should hire decent writers and get simple facts checked

I think its more than the writers, in the 1st Harry Potter movie they employed a GM to construct the game. Jeremy Silman was employed for the Job & you can read about it here : http://www.jeremysilman.com/shop/pc/Creating-the-Harry-Potter-Chess-Position-p3692.htm

So they did all the right things to get a top quality game & destroyed it in the cutting room.

It seems to be writers, producers, directors, well everyone really that contribute to the problem

But unlike in chess, in politics you can pass the move. As whoever moves loses, the position is drawn because no one will move.

They just confuse draw for stalemate .

Politicians mimic Chess quite well, they try to assasinate the king, like Knights they often jump backwards & land on an opposite color square, the ones like Bishops with a religious agenda can only move in straight lines, it goes on & on.

Chess is just something people do not understand. You see the same stupidities with math, physics and computers.

Like, "impossible math problems" that are really basic algebra and "revolutionary computer program" that is really one line of C.

Maybe in like 700 years even the layman will be able to understand what great minds of our time struggle with. But I'm sure that even then we would find the exact same stupidities you are pointing out, just with a different subject.

Human nature just doesn't change.

Nor does he know what "zugzwang" means.

There was an episode on "Law and Order: Criminal Intent" that has Det. Goren referring to the "Sicilian Gambit."  Later in the same episode it has a character giving verbal advice to a player in a tournament game while the game is in progress.

A common theme in Western media is the idea that only super-intelligent people (especially schemers) play chess.  Sherlock Holmes said something to the effect that the mark of a chess player is the sign of a scheming mind.  It's a useful plot device to show the futility of mis-guided intelligence (he doesn't chase money); he is therefore a warped soul, the proto-type of a criminal.  If a chess player is portrayed positively, he (always HE) is a bumbling, inept geek, with a head full of obscure knowledge.  Non-chessplayers never have and never will get it.

It doesn't necessarily have to be the writer who's at fault - the director can twist a factually accurate script around. And even if the director gets it right, the producer has the last word, and will get their way if insisting on shifting things around for whatever reasons.

Another thing is that when more or less popular shows for the masses are made, care is taken to appease those masses, and instead of mentioned factual accuracy (which might end up alienating those who aren't really familiar with the topic at hand) the makers more often than not prefer to push stereotypes and technobabble (or "chessbabble" in this case), because that's what the masses expect. This effect does involve lots of stuff in the popular media, not only chess.

I have seen countless chessic trangressions in film. I recall an episode of one show that showed a full game of chess in an overhead shot, in fast motion, in which most of the players' moves were obviously illegal.

jaaas

You make some very good points, but you did leave out one that is a problem, too--editing.  Editing provides the piece with pace, and if the editor feels that a section bogs the piece down or prolongs a scene, they will make a couple of versions of the scene and send it to the producer who decides which one to go with.  And if all the accuracy of the writers or director winds up on the cutting room floor, oh well--that's Hollywood.

All very bad, but I think the worst is the many horrible movie examples of people pretending to play the cello.

let's face it - chess is boring and the random average person doesn't care at all about any chess knowledge whatsoever. the media guys just want to exploit some stereotypes.

Or any other instrument for that matter.  The one that makes me cringe is the Cosby Show episode where Earle Hyman's character "Slide" Huxtable (Cliff's father) sits in with a band of actual professional musicians.  It's obvious he's the only one who has no idea what he's doing - he's just whipping the trombone slide all over.  You would think someone would have at least showed him how to HOLD a trombone properly.

This recreation of Kasparov-Short match, for instance, is disgusting:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgeYScYe8wI

I'm pretty sure some of those moves are illegal.

In Stargate Atlantis, season 2 episdoe 9, the episode starts off with two people playing chess, staring at a position. In the episode commentary, the directors mention that these two people list chess on their resume, and didn't like the position the director came up with, so they made their own, and it's a tough move. They actually did it right in this episode.

In an episode of Stargate SG-1, O'Neill is playing chess with himself, and seems to prefer 1.c4 c6 2. f3 Qb6 3. Kf2 (illegal, played as the doorbell rings) while passing time. I may have the moves wrong, but I know he moves into check. Oh well.

My favorite example is from the Star Trek episode titled, "Court Martial."

Kirk was accused of negligence which caused the death of a crewman.  The evidence against him are the ship's computer tapes.

However, Spock determined the ship's computer had been tampered with.  He determined this because he was able to beat the computer, at chess, several times.  He's on the witness stand in an attempt to prove that Kirk's actions were within regulations and that the computer is wrong.

Defense Attorney:  How many games of chess did you win from the computer Mr. Spock?

Spock:  Five in all.

Defense Attorney:  May that be considered unusual?

Spock:  Affirmative.

Defense Attorney:  Why?

Spock:  I personally programmed the computer for chess, months ago.  I gave the machine an undertanding of the game equal to my own.  The computer cannot make an error.  And assuming that I do not either, the best that could normally be hoped for would have been a stalemate after stalemate.  And yet I beat the machine five times.

Spock should have said "draw after draw" not "stalemate after stalemate."  (Very few of those draws are going to end by stalemate.)


What's interesting is that earlier, when initially talking to McCoy about his findings, Spock did say "draw."