These Historical Photos Of Chess Will Make You Want To Play
If you've been considering getting into chess à la The Queen's Gambit, let us give you an extra push.
Chess has always held a sort of magic for me. The people who play it are smart, and the game draws true obsessives to it in a way that just makes me want to understand what higher plane they're reaching. Netflix's The Queen's Gambit, based on a novel of the same name by Walter Tevis, took us by storm this fall. I am not the only person who felt drawn to the game, as I learned scrolling through Twitter. Over the course of seven episodes, we went from not knowing much about it to searching through eBay for the fastest shipping estimates for a Federation chess set from Belarus. Here are 22 photos of people from all walks of life enjoying the game. Reminder: If you haven't asked for that chess set for Christmas, it's not too late.
Three women play chess backstage at the Latin Quarter nightclub in New York, 1958.
Two players practice outdoors in the snow in Hastings, England, 1970.
Joseph Soares (left) and Mike Bentley (right) brave the cold to play a game of chess in the Boston's Roxbury neighborhood.
Elaine Saunders, a 10-year-old chess champion, practices in west London's St Margarets suburb for an upcoming chess championship for girls, 1936.
People play a game of chess in the Soviet Union, circa 1967.
Joe Smolij (right), in a hospital bed, plays chess with Joy Scott (left) in Toronto.
Judith Polgar, the world's youngest chess grand master, during a "chessathon" against the chess team of Harlem, 1992.
Dave Gannicott and Ian Gordon play chess underwater for a charity fundraiser in Sydney, 1983.
Susan Ring, an eighth-grader, thinks about her next move in this game at the Boettcher School in Denver, 1957.
A living chess game in Moscow, 1965.
People play speed chess for money in New York City's One Liberty Plaza, 2003.
Two Indian chess players, 1929.
Two older people play chess outdoors, 1952.
Children participate in a chess tournament in Matanzas, Cuba, Nov. 18, 1999.
People in a French village play chess.
Child soldiers of the Khmer People's National Liberation Front play chess near the village of Nong Chan, Thailand, 1985.
Two men concentrating on a game of chess are surrounded by office workers sitting on steps in Washington Square Park in New York City, circa 1942.
Masta Killa of the Wu-Tang Clan (right) plays chess backstage at MTV studios, 2000.
A man plays chess against two women in this albumen-print photograph, May 14, 1894.
Two young women in hijabs play chess in north Tehran, June 1995. Chess was banned as "un-Islamic" by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini from the end of the Iranian Revolution in 1979 until the late 1980s.
Two people play chess in the Hotel Oasis in Varadero, Cuba, 1972.
Two men play a game of chess in the ocean in Mexico, circa 1950s.
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Pia Peterson is a photo editor at BuzzFeed News, and is based in Brooklyn.
Contact Pia Peterson at pia.peterson@buzzfeed.com.
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