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The lockdown has seen many of us turn to more gentle pastimes, including of course our own engrossing hobby of collecting stamps. Chess has enjoyed a similar revival, but it’s only partly due to the pandemic. The television drama The Queen’s Gambit released on the streaming service Netflix in October of last year was watched by 62 million households in just a few weeks, and has prompted thousands of couch potatoes to swap the remote control for the pawns, rooks, and bishops of the chess board.
Websites such as chess.com have enjoyed a massive spike in visitor numbers, with a reported 6,000 budding grandmasters joining every day. Sales of chess boards have rocketed, and chess societies and federations have enjoyed an influx of new recruits.
The series is based on Walter Tevis’s 1983 novel of
