I have to agree, thought it was as over-rated as Breaking Bad, which everyone lauds as an amazing TV Show.
Simply another (TV Show) which the mainstream media claims is seminal, all of course to push subscriptions.
Welcome to 2020, the decade of "subscriptions" to all these services, the Internet is finally becoming what it was always destined to be, a shopping and cable subscription service 
-It's not accurate for a beginner to beat an experienced but bad chess player using silly opening tricks. Yet this is how she wins all her games against the janitor, and the chess club guy who visits her (there is only one game I like in which she pushes her pawn on the f file decisively).
-she wins pretty much all her games in very few moves. It's unrealistic that bad players don't stumble into positions in which they are down material but it takes many moves to reach mate.
-a consistent emphasis on the speed with which Harmon (and good players) wins games is unrealistic. It's mentioned in the simul, but without clocks a player could waste a lot of time in a losing position.
-The guys are amazed that her game ended quickly but she was playing a bad player and bad players beat other bad players quickly all the time. It is no indication of competency. (Recently, I lost to a Grandmaster in 42 moves and a 1900 player in 16 on the same day, for example.)
-"they arrange it by ratings on the first round" for the state tournament. No they don't. That would lead to some of the best players finishing undeservingly lower. First round is random. Then you play people with a similar score as it says.
-High level players would never offer a disingenuous draw right before resigning (unless online). It would be insanely insulting.
-Harmon CERTAINLY wouldn't need to look up at her new friend when offered a draw one move away from checkmate to get his endorsement of declining the draw. If she's good enough to sac her queen and set up the mate she's good enough to recognize that it's mate all on her own. Even the slightest hesitation is unrealistic.
-It makes no sense that she would play the Scandinavian (to me). Especially the gimmicky centre counter which has no masters games in the 365chess database. She's been taught every variant of the superior Sicilian... I guess they just wanted variety in position but it's not credible.
-The show is shot as if there is tension, suspense and thought in the opening. Against Baltic, each move - that both players know - of the two knights carro-cann is acted like the moves are shocks and need refutation. No, we're just starting. Nothing exciting is happening. (There's also a continuity error in which she moves the same knight to the same square twice but that doesn't actually bother me.)
-Even if you're a genius you have to think. I only saw one shot in which we simply see her analyze a position. Her eyes scan the board, then lock on a piece, and then move that piece. They should have locked on the square she would move it to and the line that would follow. All the actor portrays is that she decided to move a piece.
-Even though the games are 90 minutes, all players seem to play extremely quickly all the time, but also the games last a long time.
-I hate the gazing down of the opponent after every move. It's shot and acted more like an arm wrestling competition than a chess tournament.
-She could probably be forced to forfeit for talking the way she does in her game with Baltic. At least it's extremely rude. "Do you see it now?" What a condescending jerk.
-Players should see their defeats coming WAY more often. It rarely sneaks up on you. You resist and resist and hope they won't find the continuation.
-Not convinced the players would allow their knights to be so haphazardly placed.
-Her entire description of her loss to Watts is preposterous. It's a strain to believe that she would want to talk about it at all, let alone with such detail, let alone to a person who wouldn't understand the details anyway. "What happened?" "I don't want to talk about it." That's how that conversation would have gone in real life.
-The positional game hinging on undermining center pawn structure and a queen exchange wasn't the kind of the thing Morphy was known for - like Harmon says it was.
-Drama is made about her move being sealed before resuming the next day but she writes it down pretty automatically and then he studies the board like it was a move he and his Russian team didn't consider when they had all day to analyze.
-The show acts as if her getting up from her board to walk around is a statement but it is actually commonplace.
- The Russians in the elevator say that "when she blunders she gets angry," as if she's a real player who hasn't won every game she's ever played but one - but in our world she's practically invincible, never even drawing a game. There should be FAR more drawn games (Fischer drew 245 games in a dominant career that had 422 wins). And earlier she talks about the idea of her being at risk of losing (an oppertunity which her opponent also missed) as an earth shattering revelation, when in fact players simply do not play perfectly every move.
-Capablanca would've won "every game that counted" against the russian antagonist according to Harmon. Well he lost six games to Alekhine and the match in the 1927 world championship. Sick of the show treating chess like something in which the better player simply wins every game. There is far more variance.
-Sometimes she's well studied and sometimes she's not. She read the book on Capablanca but when asked if she knows the career of the one person she has been set out to beat for years she responds indignantly, "No."
-the show thinks that thinking fast is equivalent or parallel to thinking deeply. But shockingly, in reality, some players are better at blitz and bullet and some better at longer time controls. They aren't perfectly correlated.
-The show keeps insisting that the better a player is the sooner she will win her game. I have never thought in these terms.
-The fact that she says, "Typical mid-game ruy lopez" is not made up for by the fact that Watts says, "Well yeah we know that." It'd be like being asked what you think of a meal and saying "this is a type of dinner." Completely obtuse.
-If this was really made for chess fans she would've played bughouse!
-They clearly sped up the footage for the speed chess - oy vey.
-She doesn't notice she's going to lose her queen until after *I* notice she's going to lose her queen...
-They change sides of the table instead of turning the board?
-She asks so many stupid chess questions.
-on the blitz simul, Kasparov says, “Could I do that when I was world champion? I wouldn’t bet on that.” I think it’s borderline super human. If you simply think of her playing Watts with such a severe time handicap alone, it’s hard to believe. It’s also not indicative of her ability in the classical time control, as is implied.
All that time spent watching a television show about chess could be spent ... working on one's chess game, instead.
Just saying ...
More importantly, I question anyone who thinks Breaking Bad is overrated. Because it absolutely is not overrated.
Everything is subjective and objective, I subjectively feel Breaking Bad is over-rated, you disagree.
Season 1 was so boring I barely made it to season 2, but in fairness, it did improve after season 1.
Let's not bring Breaking Bad into this. Off topic! Focus people! We must all come together in unity bound by our dislike of Queen's Gambit!
"Queens gambit " - 90% of the show we see, hear about a sicilian defence, should I say more?
Interesting post. But I think you are a bit harsh. Obviously, the show is not a documentary and the chess scenes are dramatized for the large audience. I mean who - except for a few chess nerds - would like to watch a series that contains a 5 hour game that ends in a draw?
In contrast to other movies most of the chess scenes felt quite accurate... Also many of the points you mentioned don't sound that unrealistic to me...
Rubbish
Nothing but negative attention seeking.
The series was excellent - a close adaption of Walter Tevis’ story of overcoming life’s trials.
Support Group ? In dire need of therapy all right.
This mocking of chess, a sport/hobby that brings us all together is pathetic trolling by kids who think it!s all a funny game in their sandbox’s.
As the author of three mystery novels, all of which involve chess, I can easily say the harshest critics are chess players. Writing any material for a mass audience that includes chess must be written in a way that anyone can consume it. My books have been enjoyed by non-chess-players who told me they appreciated not having to know the rules, but after reading my book wanted to learn the game. Chess players on the other hand focus on the minutia they believe should or should not be included. It's a fictional story, not a documentary. Think of it this way, if you're into science at all, you probably know that all of the explosions, lasers/phasers, etc. that you see in sci-fi movies would actually be silent in space. Sound needs air to travel, right? But how boring would it be to watch Star Wars, Star Trek, etc. if all of the scenes in outer space were realistically silent? I, for one, am happy The Queen's Gambit is bringing so much interest to the game.
I agree with ChessAuthor.
I found the show glossy and engaging, but mostly just eye candy.
The Queen's Gambit novel, on the other hand, was fascinating and gripping, and went much deeper into the chess-playing (and chess-training) aspects of story, with a greater emphasis on Beth Harmon's internal psychological state. We see very little of this in the show, except on a surface level.
Mostly, the novel was written for chess players to enjoy. The show was adapted for non-chess-players to enjoy.
Walter Tevis also wrote-
The Man Who Fell to Earth
The Hustler
The Color of Money
The same theme as seen in Gambit
The film adaptations are acclaimed as some of the best in film lore. Perhaps the Gambit will be remembered as such.
The novel was not written for chess lovers.
Hollywood took its usual liberties by representing Beth as being glamorous. Tevis portrayed her as quite the ugly duckling and and not particularly socially adept.
I agree with many of your points, DanielVandelay -- though while watching the series I think I went easy on them for problems that came from the book, like Beth never drawing a game at all and never losing a game except to her biggest rival of the moment. On the whole I enjoyed it a lot, and the chess is handled much better than in most depictions of it.
""they arrange it by ratings on the first round" for the state tournament. No they don't. That would lead to some of the best players finishing undeservingly lower. First round is random. Then you play people with a similar score as it says." -- not sure what you mean here, as basing the first round pairings on rating is completely standard in Swiss system tournaments. For example, with 16 players, #1 plays #9, #2 plays #10, etc. I don't think I've ever seen random first-round pairings.
"It makes no sense that she would play the Scandinavian (to me). Especially the gimmicky centre counter which has no masters games in the 365chess database."
Huh? The Scandinavian and the Center Counter are the same opening, 1. e4 d5, and GMs have definitely played it. Do you mean something different?
I don't mind the unrealistic amount of talking during the games -- how else are you going to get across what the players are thinking? The only other way I can think of is to have them narrating their thoughts, and I'm not sure if that would be better.
I agree that consistently making a point of how quickly she wins is silly, though it actually does make sense for a simul -- generally players are expected to move, if not immediately, then pretty quickly after the simul giver reaches their board.
I disagree with some other things, but I'll leave it at that, since I'm not aiming to debate you point-by-point here. For one thing you didn't mention, I wish they'd included the part from the book where Beth gets into good shape before Moscow (beyond a single game of squash that was presented more as a chance to socialize with Jolene), which explicitly pays off in her longer games. I've explained to enough people how physically draining tournament chess is (although I think I've gotten better at explaining it, because I don't get responses like "what, do you have to do exercises for moving the pieces, haha?" much anymore) to want to see this in what is going to be a lot of people's main impression of chess for a while.
"Queens gambit " - 90% of the show we see, hear about a sicilian defence, should I say more?
Gotta do something against 1. e4.
Walter Tevis also wrote-
The Man Who Fell to Earth
The Hustler
The Color of Money
The same theme as seen in Gambit
The film adaptations are acclaimed as some of the best in film lore.
The novel was not written for chess lovers.
I'm familiar with his works, and yes, he had recurring motifs, and a familiar (if not predictable) story structure.
But chess was also a love of his. Read his interviews with his son. Tevis studied chess quite enthusiastically, along with billiards (which was likely why he wrote those stories, as they involved two games that he loved).
I would have loved to like this show, but I found it painful to watch. I thought it was terribly written, riddled with and reliant on cliches, and none of the characters are likable or interesting.
I still skimmed it to see the chess scenes, which also disappointed. That baffled me because I knew Gary Kasparov had consulted. How could I differ from him so much and so frequently?
Then I read this interview with Kasparov in which he says, "I left the American tournaments to Bruce," "Walter Tevis’ descriptions of the games were, let’s say, amateurish," and, "God knows how, but somehow Queen’s Gambit just hit all the right buttons" (answer: the colorist from the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel colored it to make it look respectable and immersive).
I'm relieved to learn that Gary wasn't culpable, and therefore we are not at odds. I'm going to include my list of grievances in the next post, for anyone to add or subtract from.
If you haven't watched the show yet and have high standards for drama and chess, I recommend you decline.