yalrus darylla auspicioius
Elly Garnand
In the final episode Beth plays against her arch nemesis, the Soviet chess player Borgov. From the show's Wikipedia, we learn that Garry Kasparov and chess coach Bruce Pandolfini acted as consultants, so that the actual games seem realistic.
Together with Lichess's computer analysis I go over the final game and try to analyze it. I'm a chess enthusiast, and not very good, so I thought this would be a great way to sharpen my skills and learn a thing or two. I hope you enjoy this analysis from a beginner's perspective.
It starts out with Beth playing 1. d4, which makes sense, as it's the start of the Queen's Gambit opener. The complete Queen's Gambit starts with 1. d4 d5 2. c4, which are indeed the next moves. It's remarkable that in all the other games, Beth always played 1. e4.
After 3. e4 Nc6, Beth's center pawn is under a double attack by both the Queen and the Knight. This is why she decided to bring the Bishop into it to defend the center pawn with 4. Be3. Borgov plays 4... Nf6.
By playing 6. d5, Harmon gains more space in the center, and attacks Borgov's knight which has to move. Borgov plays 6....Ne7. The stockfish engine on Lichess says this is an inaccuracy, as 6...Na5 might've been a better choice it says. Who am I to go against a chess algorithm, but 6...Ne7 seems okay as you still have your knight in the center of the board where it's more dangerous.
Beth brings her Rook into position by playing 14. Rac1. Borgov brings his Knight to the sides with 14...Nh5. From this point you can see that the tension is building, particularly on the f4 file, with Borgov's 2 knights, the e5 pawn and the bishop.
This is followed up by 16. Bc2 Rab8 and a simple exchange with 17. axb5 axb5 18 Ra1 Ra8. This quick exchange is fairly normal, followed by Beth's Ra1 move to get control over the A-line, possibly later bringing the rook to a7 where it is defended by the bishop on e3.
According to Stockfish, Vasily's Ra8 move was another small inaccuracy, where Borgov's move was purely intended to block Beth from going Ra7 straight away. Playing 18...Bh3 would most likely result in 19. Rf2 according to Stockfish, but it's not entirely clear to me why. Any suggestions here?
Beth moves her queen to 21. Qc2, thus removing the pin on the knight and now the pawn on b5 is again under attack. Because the queen isn't guarding the bishop on e3 anymore, Borgov plays 21...Bc5. This means that Beth can't go after the b5 pawn anymore because imagine she does: 22. Bb5 Bb5 23. Nb5 Be3, Borgov captures 2 bishops and Beth only gets a bishop and a pawn. So what she needs to do is find a way to defend the bishop on e3. She can't capture the bishop on c5 (22. Bc5, because Borgov will capture it with 22...Qc5, checking Beth and gaining control of the center with the Queen.
Instead, Elizabeth plays 22. Nd1, so she defends the Bishop on e3. The pawn on b5 is not being attacked anymore with the knight gone. Now Borgov either has to move the bishop on c5 to a safe place or go for the trade with 22....Be3. However this is not a good idea, because then Beth brings the Knight on d1 into play with 23. Ne3, and now this knight has a lot of space to move to.
The thing is, by doing this you get a whole different game, where white will position itself into a position where it will have to defend, because we have Black's queen and bishops on the right lines to go for the attack then.
Borgov continues the attack with 24. ...Qg5. Now you can see that Borgov is preparing the attack and also that the bishop on e3 is still a minor problem for Elizabeth. When the black kngith on f4 moves later on, the bishop on e3 is undefended and could be captured by the queen.
The next moves are 25. Kh1 Qh5. Elizabeth doesn't allow Borgov to check her with a Nh3 move. With the Qh5 move Borgov again leaves the knight undefended, but capturing it would be a terrible mistake and an awful play by Elizabeth resulting in a checkmate:
The next move, 30. Qd3, moves the pressure back on the pawn. There's not so much Borgov can do, and he goes for the capture with 30...fxe4 31. Nfxe4 Qg6. We get a recapture with the pawn by Beth, and the queen to g6 disallows her to go capture the pawn on b5, as it would ultimately let the pawn on e3 be open for capture by black and letting him gain advantage.
33. Nf3 Ng8, is a move by both parties to prepare the attack. On the previous spots the knights were somewhat out of play and you can see that they both want to reposition their knights.
Beth moves her knight to f5, with 35. Nf5, really positioning it very well in the center with a lot of defenders (pawn, queen, rook). Also by this, the black bishop on c8 is looking rather odd, with no place to go.
Anyway, so now Beth finally plays the pawn to h3 (36. h3) (which was suggested by Stockfish a little bit earlier). But this time it really adds to the game because it adds more pressure to the queen, thus letting Beth keeping the pressure on Borgov and leaving him in a "responding" state where he constantly has to respond to Beth's moves by moving his queen instead of really playing the moves he wants to play.
This is also the point where Borgov decides to adjourn the game. Fun fact: adjourning is not something that is done anymore in chess, because it can of course be used to analyse the game over the night (with a chess engine like Stockfish). We see in the show that both Borgov and Beth do analyse the game with fellow chess players, which would be a little bit cheating nowadays.
Remember when I told you previously that this game was based on another game that was played in real life? It's actually up to this point the games are the same. But because the real life game ended up in a draw, and that would be a lousy ending for the show, the Beth plays another move.
Elizabeth plays 38. b3, which is actually such a wonderful move, basically telling Borgov "what you want to do?". The pressure is on Borgov, he can go for the check, capture the e4 pawn with rook or knight, etc.
Beth plays 39.Nxd6, essentially going for the future fork, by playing the knight to f8. However Borgov ancticipates this and captures the troublemaker by playing 39...Bxe6.
She doesn't wait and advances the pawn further, 41. e7, being only one file away from promotion. However as you can see promotion would be useless, because the e8 square is protected by the black knight and queen, so Borgov doesn't have to worry about that - for now. He instead plays 41...d5, so that his rook gets extra protection, as Elizabeth could easily get distract his knight and queen.
Elizabeth responds by playing the equally beautiful 42. Bc5, preparing the advancement of the white b-pawn and defending the e-pawn on its current spot. Black really doesn't have a lot of possible plays here. Moving the rook is out of the question because white can easily trade queens and capture the knight with the rook in order to promote the pawn.
If you haven't seen the show yet, it's a Netflix original so it will probably be indefinitely on Netflix. However, if you like chess, I must say it's one of the most fun series with chess as the subject I've seen.
Few creative selections kick conversational hornet's nests like a producer's decision to cast a person of color in a role long associated with whiteness. Choosing biracial actor Adele James to play Cleopatra VII, the star of the second season of "African Queens," should not have been one of them.
Cleopatra has inspired dozens of films either about her life or related to her legend, along with tens of operas and ballets. Her reputation was not diminished by her likeness starring in a commercial for vaginal douche. Surely the glamorous image of Egypt's last Pharoah can survive a worthy portrayal by a cast that happens to have more melanin in its collective complexion than Elizabeth Taylor did.
This underestimates how devotedly anti-Black Cleopatra's supposed image preservationists are. The "Queen Cleopatra" trailer's release in mid-April prompted an eruption among the usual right-wing trolls suddenly assuming ownership over anything related to the African continent. But it also moved an Egyptian lawyer to file a complaint alleging the hybrid docuseries violates the country's media laws and "promotes Afrocentric thinking," and a historian to invoke the ridiculous term "[B]lackwashing."
As the series' executive producer and narrator, Pinkett Smith has the opportunity to showcase the Sub-Saharan queens who Western history has minimized or erased with the same production values, solid scripts, and skilled casts assigned to "African Queens: Njinga" and "Cleopatra."
I've namedropped Amina of Zaria before, but other rulers merit dramatization. Ethiopia's Makeda, for instance, popularly known as the Queen of Sheba. Surely people would appreciate a look at her reign. Kandake Amanirenas of Kush, located in what is now Sudan, successfully thwarted Rome's southward expansion into the continent after Egypt fell.
Their connection to familiar histories lends them marketability . . . theoretically. One can say the same of other Egyptian queens who came before Cleopatra, including Hatshepsut and Nefertiti. Nefertiti's story, like Cleopatra, is the subject of some debate too. But she wasn't a Hellenistic ruler immortalized by Shakespeare, removing her from the Greco-Roman foundation of classicism and, by extension, claims of whiteness.
The critic in me generally favors examining the merits of a work of art as it is instead of wishing it were something entirely different. But "Queen Cleopatra" merits both approaches, along with pinpointing the business reasons we're seeing another take on her tale instead a different great Black woman's profile.
90f70e40cf