chess scenes


I hate to be a nerd about this, but the chess scenes in this movie are fairly bad. Someone with some chess knowledge must have been involved with making the movie, but there are glaring errors. The main character Eric is supposedly very good at chess. In one scene he takes a chess book from his co-worker Dodd and then analyzes the position, and then somehow uses this knowledge to find the winning moves on the chess board. The names of the players in the book are legitimate (Tarrasch and Alekhine), but the position in the book does not match the position on the board, and the animated moves shown are (mostly) legal, but quite bad and silly, and the position shown does not match the comments in the book. The position in the book would not help to find a move on the actual board. Plus, on the actual board there are 2 white bishops on dark squares (which is virtually impossible), and in the game played black simply allows the checkmate (which is a real checkmate, but would be easily defended in real life). (Also, in a later scene the pieces are in the same starting position, which would not be right as the characters moved those pieces. Also, the main character seems to mis-pronounce "gambit" as "gamebit.") There were just too many errors here to ignore. Many movies with chess scenes botch the game, but this one was especially bad. It's not too difficult to bring in a chess consultant to get it right. (E.g. chess scenes in 2001 Space Odyssey are very good.)

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i just hate that 56 years into the future buddy is still using the old notational language of 1. P-K4 (Pawn King Four) versus the now accepted and widely used 1. e4 notation.

it's annoying.

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Lol. I noticed that too. Even the game where Dodd gets checkmated sounds improbable and the type of game played by patzers.

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I agree with you which is a shame since I liked the use of chess in the plot and characterization of both characters. Too bad the actual chess was bs.

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