Counting every move

Technology has brought change to tennis, cricket, golf, pole vaulting, football, running, you name it. But the change has rarely been so complete, and so near-instantaneous as in chess

After decades, I reread Walter Tevis’ The Queen’s Gambit. My memories were accurate. Written in staccato sentences, the book depicts life from the point of view of a disturbed young girl with genius-level talent at one specific activity.

As an eight-year-old in small town Kentucky, Beth Harmon discovers she is a gifted chessplayer and like so many others, she gets obsessive long before she learns much about the game. Beth’s orphaned; addicted to prescription drugs; asocial; her foster-mother also has addiction issues and her foster-father abandoned them. Mom sees daughter as a ticket to financial security.

Tevis wasn’t an adolescent