Our real-life Queen’s Gambit
CityMag checks into the chess world and talks to female players about overcoming stigma and why building communities in Adelaide is crucial to the game’s growth.
We challenge chess player and writer Katerina Bryant to a game, and she accepts by holding a black and white chess piece in each fist. She asks me to pick left or right. “Right,” I say.
She reveals a black piece and I’m already on the back foot – white always has the first move in chess.
Katerina is meticulous and quick with her choices, unlike her confused opponent. In a quiet nook of the Mortlock Chamber in the State Library, the felt base of the pieces sound louder than usual when sliding along the chess board.
This CityMag reporter’s interest in chess emerged after binge watching The Queen’s Gambit in the state’s first hard lockdown and although I had a chess summer in 2020, I hadn’t brushed up on my game since.
It shows. Katerina makes three moves.
“I’m very irrational with my play – that’s what my boyfriend says – so I just need to think things through,” I say as I move my knight.
She takes my queen.
“Sorry,” Katerina apologetically whispers and I dramatically drop my head in my hands.
“It’s called a pin when you basically skewer a piece to another piece.
“I assumed you wouldn’t [move your knight] and then my plan was to then threaten your knight. Then you can’t move your knight because you will lose your queen, but my low value piece is threatening it.”
Katerina then educates me and creates an alternate universe where I don’t make that mistake – which was leaving my most powerful piece open for taking. It would have been a simpler time, I’m sure.
“But you can still survive,” she says and moves my pieces for me. “Because you can take and then it’s no longer pinned, so you can move your piece.”
We get back to reality, and my queen lays beside her – off the chess board – with a collection of pawns and a knight.
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15 minutes pass. Checkmate.
Katerina says her game was reliant on tactics – like forks and pins – instead of strategy. This is her regular approach.
“Strategy is like long term ideas, like developing pieces, setting yourself up for winning in the future,” she says.
“And then tactics are more quick moves and threats you can do to win material.”
Katerina says she’s an “aggressive player” which involves “sacrificing pieces”. Her favourite chess players are Mikhail Tal and Judit Polgár – both known for their attacking style.
“And I think it’s funny because a lot of women players famously have had quite an aggressive forward playing style,” she says.
“One of the arguments historically that has been used against women playing chess is that they are not aggressive enough to be able to play chess effectively.”
Katerina says these misconceptions exist from chess’ “long history of being exclusionary towards women”.
“I think it probably just stems to the idea that chess is an intellectual game, and the stereotypes of women being less intellectual,” Katerina says.
“But also, I’d really like to question that idea of chess being for smart people, or chess being a sign of intelligence, because I don’t think that’s true.
“I think it’s a sign of hard work and diligence. It’s incredibly concentrated on memory, but I think it is a skill like anything else, and it does not denote intelligence.”
Katerina says interest in chess surged after The Queen’s Gambit – a riveting story about the rise of an elite female chess player – debuted on Netflix in October 2020.
“When The Queen’s Gambit came out, that was a really, really busy time for chess,” Katerina says. “All the clubs called it The Queen’s Gambit effect because suddenly all the clubs were packed for a few weeks.”
“And it was interesting too, because that was around Covid time. All of the tournaments got cancelled, so all of the professional chess players went to streaming and Twitch.
“It was the best time, I think, in the world, for people to have free, incredibly high level commentary and play.”
Katerina says that while there has been a spike in interest following the series, it highlighted the “importance of stories about women and girls in chess”.
“Because whilst I love The Queen’s Gambit, it does not resemble history, and it was written by a man, and the show was brought about by a man,” she says.
“The chess consultant on the game – who made sure the positions were accurate and interesting which was amazing – was Garry Kasparov, who has since recanted, but has made statements about women never being able to achieve the same chess highs as men.
“That caught me as a really key example of this huge cultural output that shows the strength of women in chess does not have a lot of women surrounding it.
“That also made me want to think about my place within telling stories.”
As a Writer’s SA and State Library SA Literary mid-career fellow, Katerina is currently writing a manuscript, highlighting her research on the first South Australian woman chess champion, Evelyn Koshnitsky.
Though Katerina’s love of chess stemmed from her personal interests, she says the tournaments she was able to play in exist because of Evelyn.
The female chess community in Adelaide is, according to Katerina, “quite small” which is similar to other communities around the world.
“Usually in chess, it’s interesting that you see a lot more parity in children. So there are a lot more girls playing, and then, for a certain reason, they drop off,” she says.
Jocelyn Ho, chess parent and SA Chess Association and SA Junior Chess League (JCL) boards committee member, says gaining popularity in chess starts with building communities.
“Companionship is actually quite important – the sense of community,” she says.
“JCL in the last five years, they’re trying to foster more opportunities for girls, but sometimes for girls to pick up chess in the first way, or even enough to form a team is quite hard.
“It just takes years to build.”
Jocelyn says it will take “investment at different levels” to help build those communities in Adelaide, but she believes it begins with junior tournaments.
“If you go into any chess tournament, you see most of them are boys,” she says.
“If you’re just wanting to have a few games, the [chess tournaments in South Australia are] too strong for you. Very soon you will lose interest.
“We need to actually give them the opportunities. So to run proper tournaments, it’s very important to actually attract the attendance, and then from attendance we have retention, and then we can grow.”
Owner of Loaded Corner Cafe in the East End, Emma Ponting, has introduced chess nights on the first Monday of every month to her businesses calendar in hopes to create a small community.
“Ideally, people will come in and whether they have no experience, or are frequent tournament people, just to be able to come in and either learn or just meet new people and play chess together,” she says.
We ask whether sexism exists within female chess communities – even in a post Queen’s Gambit world and Katerina says: “I think it’s everywhere”.
“Being able to play online has been huge for people, but then also online spaces are quite hostile to women. A lot of chess streamers who are women receive backlash in ways that their male counterparts don’t.”
She says women specific tournaments were “born out of women looking for safe places to play with one another”.
Though a small portion, Katerina says women contribute so much to making the chess community what it is.
“While it’s not as glamorous, there are so many women doing the work of creating opportunities and tournaments and paving the way for girls to engage with chess and giving back to the chess community that is not spoken about too,” she says.
“With The Queen’s Gambit that is quite sexualised all throughout, which is part of the storytelling narrative, which I understand, but to have stories removed from the male gaze is equally important.”
This article first appeared in The Game Edition of CityMag.
