Joe’s Reviews > The Queen's Gambit > Status Update
Joe
is 9% done
She beat them both effortlessly. Mr. Ganz set up the pieces, and they started again. This time she moved pawn to queen four on both and followed it with pawn to queen's bishop four--the Queen's Gambit. She felt deeply relaxed, almost in a dream. She had taken seven tranquilizers at about midnight, and some of the languor was still in her.
— Nov 02, 2020 07:35PM
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Joe
is finished
Halfway down the first row of concrete tables an old man was sitting alone with the pieces set up in front of him. He was in his sixties and wore the usual gray cap and gray cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled up. When she stopped at his table he looked at her inquisitively, but there was no recognition on his face. She sat behind the black pieces and said carefully in Russian, "Would you like to play chess?"
— Nov 05, 2020 10:39PM
Joe
is 89% done
As far as they knew, her level of play was roughly that of Benny Watts, and men like Laev would not devote much time to preparation for playing Benny. She was not an important player by their standards; the only unusual thing about her as her sex, and even that wasn't unique in Russia. There was Nona Gaprindashvili, not up to the level of this tournament, but a player who had met all those Russian grandmasters.
— Nov 05, 2020 10:17PM
Joe
is 67% done
Most of the time, chess was the only language between them. One afternoon when they had spent three or four hours on endgame analysis she said wearily, “Don’t you get bored sometimes?� and he stared at her blankly. “What else is there?� he said.
— Nov 05, 2020 06:53PM
Joe
is 40% done
Sometimes she would visualize herself as what she wanted to become: a truly professional woman and the finest chessplayer in the world, traveling confidently by herself in the first-class cabins of airplanes, tall, perfectly dressed, good-looking and poised--a kind of white Jolene. She often told herself that she would send Jolene a card or a letter, but she never did.
— Nov 04, 2020 07:51PM
Joe
is 38% done
In it was a new membership card with her rating: 1881. She had been told it would take time for the rating to reflect her real strength; she was satisfied for now to be, finally, a rated player. She would push the figure up soon enough. The next big step was Master, at 2200. After 2000 they called you an Expert, but that didn't mean much. The one she liked was International Grandmaster; that had weight to it.
— Nov 02, 2020 11:00PM
Joe
is 25% done
Beth’s clock started ticking. She reached out firmly and moved her queen bishop’s pawn to its fourth square.The Sicilian Defense. She pressed the button and then put her elbows in the table, on each side of the board, like the Russians in the photographs.
— Nov 02, 2020 09:47PM
Joe
is 21% done
In the twenty minutes until the end of the period she played "P. Keres--A. Tarnowski: Helsinki 1952." It was the Ruy Lopez Opening where White brought the bishop out in a way that Beth could see meant an indirect attack on Black's king pawn. On the thirty-fifth move White brought his rook down to the knight seven square in a shocking way that made Beth almost cry out in her seat.
— Nov 02, 2020 09:00PM
Joe
is 5% done
She had learned something more from him. She decided not to take the offered pawn, to leave the tension on the board. She liked it like that. She liked the power of the pieces, exerted along files and diagonals. In the middle of the game, when pieces were everywhere, the forces crisscrossing the board thrilled her. She brought out her king’s knight, feeling its power spread.
— Nov 01, 2020 09:57PM
Joe
is starting
Beth learned of her mother’s death from a woman with a clipboard. The next day her picture appeared in the Herald-Leader. The photograph, taken on the porch of the gray house on Maplewood Drive, showed Beth in a simple cotton frock. Even then, she was clearly plain.
— Nov 01, 2020 09:29PM
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Bianca
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Nov 02, 2020 08:29PM
We started watching the Netflix series yesterday. Promising! Hubby is a chess nerd. How are you going? I'm so damn anxious about the elections, and I don't live in the USA. Thinking of you all, well, of those who don't vote Trump...
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Bianca wrote: "We started watching the Netflix series yesterday. Promising! Hubby is a chess nerd. How are you going? I'm so damn anxious about the elections, and I don't live in the USA. Thinking of you all, well, of those who don't vote Trump..."I'm reading this because I want to watch the Netflix mini-series this weekend. We're on the eve of electing an administration capable of playing chess instead of one that plays checkers, and cheats at it, and loses anyway, and blames the media and Mexicans.
Joe wrote: "Bianca wrote: "We started watching the Netflix series yesterday. Promising! Hubby is a chess nerd. How are you going? I'm so damn anxious about the elections, and I don't live in the USA. Thinking ..."Here's hoping. I still haven't recovered from the shock from 4 years ago, so I'm even more sceptical.
