How Netflix reignited the world of chess with Queen’s Gambit
Leo Prigent
The popular Netflix Series has provoked an explosion in the world of chess, with thousands of people learning the game for the first time.
“The “Queen’s Gambit” is an American series available on Netflix that tells the story of Beth Harmon, an orphan and chess prodigy in the 50s. The series has proved incredibly popular all around the world.
Streaming platforms such as Twitch have also been impacted by the series as the average amount of viewers watching chess has doubled from October to November, though it has not yet reached the record established in June 2020 during the Paris Grand Chess Tour.
“Netflix revealed a total of 62 million households have watched the series in the first 28 days.”
This is so far Netflix’s biggest limited series.
“The Queen’s gambit” made the top ten in 92 countries and has reached rank one in 63 countries. The novel which the series is based on has also seen benefits, having recently entered The New York Times best sellers despite being published 37 years ago. At the same time, research for “chess” has doubled on Google and research for “how to play chess” has reached its highest pick in nine years. In Scotland, Google search queries for chess have multiplied by four between October and November.
Mathew Keo, 24, has started playing chess recently after watching Queen’s Gambit.
“I already knew a bit about chess, like how to move the pieces, but no more,“ he said. “I’ve watched the series during lockdown, so I thought ‘why not?,’ and so I registered on chess.com and I started playing.”
Mathew is not the only one who started playing chess online. According to staff member from chess.com, the amount of new daily users has increased from 30 to 110 thousand.
Image Credit: Charlie Gray, Netflix