Thalia Clinches Trophy In BBC's 'Chess Masters' Final Episode
Twenty-year-old Thalia from Chester, United Kingdom, won BBC's Chess Masters: The Endgame after beating Richie (63, Liverpool) in the eighth and final episode aired on Monday. The first episode of Chess Masters attracted just under 1.2 million viewers.
The all-decisive game between Richie, nicknamed “The Strategist,” and Thalia, “The Tactician,” was a rematch of their 10-minute game in episode four, which Thalia also won, in a pawn endgame. This time, it was an even more tense affair as Richie got a golden opportunity to play for checkmate halfway through the game.
Richie missed the key move 1.Qg6! here (threatening 2.Rf8+ and checkmate to follow) and went for the natural-looking 1.Qf2 instead. Thalia saved herself with 1...Bf6 and went on to win the game as Richie got into time-trouble and missed a perpetual check.
Both Richie and Thalia only appeared from the fourth episode onward as part of the second group of players, after the first six contestants had battled it out in the first three.
Richie, recently retired as a former RAF jet technician, narrowly made it through episode four. In a contest among the players starting with a loss, he managed to get back into the competition with a “raging rook” puzzle where a rook had to “eat” 10 pawns in 10 moves. He could do only eight, but faster than the other contestants. Can you do better?
While the production team focused on bringing the contestants and drama to the forefront, there was plenty of chess content as well. Three-time British champion and Olympiad gold medallist GM David Howell's selection of chess puzzles likely inspired many chess instructors.
In the fifth episode, there was the "five queens" challenge, where the contestants, with just two minutes on the clock, had to position them in such a way that they control all 64 squares. Thalia won the challenge, controlling 62 squares and doing so faster than 33-year-old Craig from Lincolnshire.
A nice touch was GM Magnus Carlsen's second appearance in the show in episode six (after his first cameo in the third episode), where he shared a position from the ninth game of his title match against GM Viswanathan Anand. Diehard chess fans will remember that this was one of the most important moments for Anand, who was two points behind but had winning chances here. Instead, he lost this game as well, and the match was decided.
For the contestants, the task was to look at the position for a minute and then try to reproduce the position on their board to the best of their memory. It is a well-known training technique that, for instance, the famous Dutch trainer IM Cor van Wijgerden used regularly. (He tended to add another level of complexity to it by talking about football for two minutes before his students were allowed to set up the board.)
Recently, Take Take Take shared a video where Carlsen himself was given several such challenges.
Thalia showed herself to be a serious contender for victory when she also won this memory challenge as the only participant to place all 26 pieces perfectly.
In the penultimate episode, she defeated chess content creator Lula Robs in a game called "War and Pieces," where both players get to choose their own army of pieces (behind the eight pawns) for a value up to 24 points. Remarkably, Thalia went for two dark-squared bishops that ended up deciding the game with a battery on the long diagonal.
Lula redeemed herself in the elimination round as the one holding on the longest against nine-year-old WFM Bodhana Sivanandan – who made a guest appearance to play a simul against the contestants – before beating Navi (46, from Kent) in a direct encounter.
At the start of the final episode, however, Lula got eliminated in a series of checkmate puzzles where Thalia again impressed as the only one to solve four positions. Lula lost to Richie in a playoff as the latter needed less time to find the mate in two here:
In another elimination round, Howell played a simul and first checkmated 39-year-old Kel from Bolton, setting the stage for that decisive game between Richie and Thalia.
Afterward, Richie admitted that he could smell the checkmate: “I knew it was there somewhere, I just couldn’t find the moves.”
Thalia commented: “I just thought if I could give Richie some really difficult decisions to try and make in such a short time period then he might make some sort of slip up. That was such a difficult game. I honestly think I couldn’t have had a better opponent than Richie.”
From the BBC's presentation of the participants we know that Thalia started playing chess at about the age of four and joined the Bloxwich Junior Chess Club, but quit around the age of 12. Like so many, she took it up again online during the Covid-19 pandemic.
"I love that chess brings so many different people together," said Thalia, who is a trans person herself. "As you'll see on the show, all ages, different nationalities, different genders, different physical abilities. It’s all about just using your brain."
I love that chess brings so many different people together. As you'll see on the show, all ages, different nationalities, different genders, different physical abilities. It’s all about just using your brain.
—Thalia
She decided to take part in the competition "largely because of representation," she added: "I’ve barely ever seen any trans people participate in chess. It's not something that you see very often. During the pandemic, there was a substantial rise in women taking up chess following the Netflix show, The Queen’s Gambit. I really hope that trans people see me playing in this competition and also think that's something that I can participate in."
The eight-episode series Chess Masters: The Endgame was broadcast on eight consecutive Mondays at 20:00 GMT on BBC2, making it the first chess broadcast on prime time since coverage of the 1993 match between GMs Garry Kasparov and Nigel Short. The show generated a wide range of reactions.
Charlie Bunce, Director of Programmes for production company Curve Media, revealed in an email to Chess.com that the viewing figures were just under 1.2 million people for episode one, describing that as "a great success." Detailed figures on the rest of the series have not been released yet, but "we know that it’s held its share," Bunce added.
Ahead of the first episode, the website Broadcast International revealed that rights for the format had been optioned ahead of launch by Mediawan in France, ITV Studios in Spain, Endemol Shine in Australia, Filmpool in Germany, IDTV in the Netherlands, and All3Media Belgium. "It's early days for international format sales, but Australia and three other territories are looking likely to commission," Bunce told Chess.com.
David Howell: "I’m extremely proud to have been part of this project. We gave everything to it. No matter what happens next, I’m glad that we tried. And we managed to put chess on national television screens! For the first time in too long. At primetime, no less.
It was an intense, intimate, and emotional experience, and I think we all learned a lot along the way. Obviously there were a lot of things we could have done differently, and stuff we could have improved, so hopefully we get a chance to go again…
My main passion these days is spreading the word of chess, so I’m hoping that this is just the beginning. If we inspired just a handful of kids to go out and play chess, then we’ve done our jobs.
A special shout out to Curve Media for taking on such an ambitious concept.
Above all, it was an honour to work alongside the contestants and see their journey throughout the series. Their excitement and energy was infectious, and it really reminded me of why I love chess in the first place. Congratulations to Thalia for winning the competition!"
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Peter Doggers joined a chess club a month before turning 15 and still plays for it. He used to be an active tournament player and holds two IM norms. Peter has a Master of Arts degree in Dutch Language & Literature. He briefly worked at New in Chess, then as a Dutch teacher and then in a project for improving safety and security in Amsterdam schools. Between 2007 and 2013 Peter was running ChessVibes, a major source for chess news and videos acquired by Chess.com in October 2013. As our Director News & Events, Peter writes many of our news reports. In the summer of 2022, The Guardian’s Leonard Barden described him as “widely regarded as the world’s best chess journalist.”
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