Once ignored and marginalised as a niche pursuit for nerds, chess is now primetime TV – on BBC Two, naturally. This week saw the launch of Chess Masters: The End Game in which 12 amateur “rising stars” – six men and six women – will compete.
Not since American Bobby Fischer beat the Soviet grandmaster Boris Spassky (who died last month) at the height of the cold war has there been so much interest in the game. Chess is booming around the world, becoming one of the fastest growing internet games. Rachel Reeves is well known for having been British girls’ chess champion, aged 14. The chancellor’s favoured opening is the Sicilian Defence, apparently: “It’s quite aggressive,” she has said. A new film Checkmate, produced by Emma Stone, about 2022’s alleged cheating scandal involving grandmaster Hans Niemann – he denied all wrongdoing – is in the pipeline.
