The queen is known as the most powerful piece on the chess board, so the prospect of sacrificing it invokes an unparalleled excitement among chess enthusiasts. There is something inherently ...

The Queen’s Gambit gets it right. “The chess world exploded,” Power says. “Harmon felt so real, people were Googling to see if she existed. Everyone is still going mad about it.

Because of The Queen’s Gambit, he said, people who thought of chess as a boring, intellectual exercise now see its intrigue – it has made chess cool. It’s been a long time since anything in ...