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Fairly accurate about chess tournaments, but several bloopers


For a movie that was mainly about a killer stalking a major chess tournament, Knight Moves was actually fairly accurate in its depiction of a chess tournament at a high level - for example, the old chess clocks and the players recording moves, etc. There were, however, a few bloopers.

No organizer would stop a game in progree just because the electronic demonstration board suddenly ceases to function. This is not Wimbledon or some outdoor sport in which heavy rain or bad weather would prevent play. To stop play would mean that the ability of the spectators to watch is more important than the game itself, and the tournament in the film was meant to decide the challenger to the current World Chess Champion! The breakdown of the screen does not affect the play in any way, and since it was 1992, manual demonstration boards would have been readily available. Also, even in a normal adjournment of a game (usually after 40 moves), you had to seal the next move in an envelope.

The scriptwriters did know something about chess openings, etc., but had greatly underestimated the powers of strong chess players. In the film, Sanderson had to ask the computer guy to search through the chess database to find out what player had used a certain opening against him, and the answer turned out to be Viktor Yurilivich, his greatest opponent?! That was plain silly. In real life, Sanderson would have remembered EVERY game played against Yurilivich and other major opponents and for some games he would even have been able to reconstruct all the moves. Studying the games of opponents (not only against you but everyone else) is an important part of preparation for any tournament.

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