51 pages • 1 hour read
Walter TevisThe Queen's Gambit
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1983A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 8-11Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 8 Summary
In Mexico City, Mrs. Wheatley connects with a high school pen pal named Manuel, spending most of her time with him. Beth prepares earnestly for the tournament, studying her books and refusing to spend time with Mrs. Wheatley and Manuel, despite the frequent invitations. When Mrs. Wheatley offers to bring Beth with them to lunch, Beth instead asks that they drop her off at the zoo. At the zoo, Beth walks around and even orders a beer. As she strolls, she sees a serious man with a family and realizes that it is Vasily Borgov, the Russian grandmaster and international champion. She feels frightened by his immense talent and rushes to hide her drinking and evade his glance. She commits to not drinking and even goes to bed early.
Beth defeats a Brazilian named Marenco first, then goes to watch Borgov play at Board One. As Beth watches him play, expressionless, anxiety builds within her. When Beth sees Mrs. Wheatley in the room later, she notices that Mrs. Wheatley seems ill. Beth wins her second game as well, and she is impressed with the rigorous competition. Beth enjoys her time in Mexico City, but Mrs. Wheatley, feeling ill, laments that Manuel has left for another woman.
On the third day of the tournament, Beth faces a Russian boy named Girev. Beth feels frustrated by his quick moves and relentless attack, and she realizes as her hatred builds that her feelings toward him must be what others felt toward her when she was a child. The game lasts a long time, and eventually, both of their clocks run out, forcing them into an adjournment. Beth contemplates her next move before sealing it in an envelope, their game postponed until the next afternoon. Beth wakes the next morning, confident in finishing the game with Girev. She quickly defeats her first opponent of the morning, and when she resumes her match against Girev, she quickly finds a weakness in his strategy and forces him to resign.
Beth wins her fifth game, setting up a match with Borgov for her sixth and final game of the tournament. Beth stays up all night preparing for it, but though she plays as well as she can, Borgov defends her attacks easily. She cannot see all the possibilities he sees, and she makes a mistake, opening herself up to defeat. His cool demeanor throws her off, and she finds herself believing that he has no weaknesses. She resigns and leaves the room.
Chapter 9 Summary
After the loss, Beth goes straight to the hotel bar. It takes three tequila sunrises and four Dos Equis beers for the rage inside her to quiet down. When players from the tournament come into the bar, Beth returns to her room to find Mrs. Wheatley dead in her bed. Beth believes she does not feel anything, but five minutes pass before she lets go of her adoptive mother and calls someone. A doctor arrives and informs Beth that Mrs. Wheatley died of hepatitis and asks if Beth needs anything. Beth asks for a script for tranquilizers, but the doctor tells her that she can buy them anywhere in Mexico.
Beth calls Mr. Wheatley to tell him that Mrs. Wheatley is dead, but he does not care. He asks Beth to handle her affairs, saying he cannot come to Mexico. He tells Beth where to bury Mrs. Wheatley and when Beth asks what will happen to the house, Mr. Wheatley tells her she can have it if she makes the mortgage payments. He gives her a contact at the local bank to help sort it out. The hotel helps plan and manage travel back to the US for Beth and Mrs. Wheatley’s remains.
The funeral is quick, and afterward, surrounded by Mrs. Wheatley’s things, Beth finally feels grief. As she cries, the phone rings. Harry Beltik calls to offer sympathy and advice after her loss to Borgov. He tells her he is in Lexington for school and that he can train her throughout the summer. She invites him over, and he brings his many chess books. They begin going over different strategies, and he encourages her to be more open and less rigid with her attacks. After he leaves, Beth studies the books, but cannot visualize games as well as she did as a child. Beltik returns day after day for a week, and they play, though Beth beats him every time. When Beltik tells her he needs to move to save money, she invites him to stay with her.
Beltik stays with Beth, and she becomes completely absorbed in chess, learning more about its strategies and supplementing her skills of improvisation. The two also develop a sexual relationship and sleep in the same bed at night. By the end of their third week together, Beth has read most of his books and is thoroughly ahead of him in chess, seeing moves that he cannot. He becomes irritated at the gap in their skills, and Beth believes she no longer needs him. He stops sharing a bed with her and soon leaves, moving to an apartment.
In the aftermath of his departure, Beth relies on alcohol and tranquilizers to calm the tension she feels over Mrs. Wheatley’s death. The next day, with a severe hangover, Beth decides to focus solely on beating Benny Watts at the US Championship. She stops drinking and commits to studying her books.
Chapter 10 Summary
At the US Championship in Ohio, Benny offers his condolences over her loss to Borgov. Beth easily wins her first few games, as does Benny, the two on a path to meet each other for the title. Beth is focused solely on beating Benny, and on her first day of the two-week tournament, stops herself from drinking. When she walks into the cafeteria for coffee, she sees Benny and a group of players huddled over a board. Benny invites her over and asks her to analyze the board and suggest the next move. She suggests the same move that Benny does.
Benny invites Beth to play skittles, or speed chess, and they bet $5 a game. Though Beth wins one game, she loses six and draws one. Benny is quick and skillful, often beating her easily. It is the first time in her life she is so thoroughly outmatched, and she finds it frustrating. As she leaves, a player tells her that Benny is the best speed chess player in the world and that this means nothing. That night, she takes four tranquilizers. Benny and Beth continue to win their games, and Benny tells Beth that one of them will be the champion.
On the penultimate day, Beth wins her game, setting up the final game against Benny. Despite her misgivings over him beating her, Beth begins to warm to Benny. Despite this, she is committed to staying focused and does not allow herself any tranquilizers before bed. At the final game, Beth and Benny sit in front of a crowd, the main event of the tournament. As their game begins, Beth worries that she cannot match him, having prepared nothing special for him. But soon, her training becomes apparent, and she finds herself in control of the game, making moves he cannot analyze. She backs him into a corner until he must resign. Beth beats Benny in only 30 moves, and he tells her afterward that he never expected her to play as she did. Beth admits it is a surprise to her as well.
Chapter 11 Summary
After their game, Benny and Beth get dinner. Benny admits his rage at losing to her but goes on to suggest she come to New York City to train with him before she faces Borgov again, first in Paris, and then at an invitational in Moscow as the US Champion. When she orders a drink, Benny warns her it will erode her talent. Beth agrees to go with him, and Benny drives them to New York City from the tournament. During the ride, they play chess against each other in their heads. He tells her she must be more serious about her training, committing to reading books and their footnotes to learn as much about strategy as she can. Benny gives Beth an air mattress in his living room and insists that they will not have sex while she is there. They begin training the next day, and Beth becomes irritated at Benny’s insistence that she analyze every single move as they play through old grandmasters’ games. She is unused to such taxing work and finds it boring. For days, all they do is play and talk chess.
One day, Benny brings a few friends over to play, and he suggests Beth play them all at the same time. Beth suggests speed chess, with a $10 bet on each game. She beats Benny and his two friends with time to spare. They play another game, and Beth wins again, though when she suggests they play one more, Benny angrily refuses. Jenny, another friend who watches the games, looks at Beth in astonishment. Beth does not drink or take tranquilizers while with Benny, and soon she moves past him in skill by a margin and finds she can visualize chess in her head like she could as a child. During their third week, they analyze many of Borgov’s games, and they have sex. The next day, Benny leaves for a poker game, telling Beth women are not allowed to play. Beth goes to the game to spectate and feels as though she could dominate this game as well but leaves early, angry at Benny for ignoring and dismissing her. Soon after, Benny stops wanting to play games against Beth, as he stands no chance of winning. In the weeks before Beth leaves for Paris, they remain lovers, but she finds he cannot teach her anything else on the chess board.
Chapters 8-11 Analysis
Beth faces The Constraints of Gender Norms both inside and outside the game of chess. Often, she finds that opponents discount her ability and underestimate her because she is a woman. Many men will not take her seriously, acting overconfident at the beginning of games, only to storm off when soundly beaten: “Solomon did not say anything, but she could tell from the way he stalked off afterward that he was furious to be beaten by a woman. She had seen it often enough before to recognize it. Usually it made her angry” (127). What Beth wants more than anything is to be appreciated as a chess player regardless of gender. These men diminish Beth’s victories by making the story about their fragile masculinity rather than about her extraordinary talent and dedication. Beth experiences a more personal form of this same resentment from many men in her life, including Benny Watts and Harry Beltik, whose interest in her flag once she surpasses them in chess.
Beth’s dependence on the green pills reaches its height in the aftermath of Alma Wheatley’s death in Mexico. After Beth finds her adoptive mother dead in bed, she asks a doctor for a prescription for the tranquilizers, only to discover that they are over-the-counter medicine in Mexico. With this knowledge, Beth begins hoarding the pills before going back to the US, using them to blunt the trauma of losing Alma and losing to Borgov: “Beth opened her purse and took out one of her new bottles of green pills. She had spent three hours the day before, after signing the papers, going from farmacia to farmacia, buying the limit of one hundred pills in each” (136). Her use of these to deal with Alma’s death and her defeat on the chessboard demonstrates her dependence on Substance Use as a Response to Anxiety. Her instinct after losing to Borgov is to drink, and when Alma dies, her immediate request is tranquilizers. In these substances, she finds relief and escape from the difficult feelings that plague her. It is really the loss to Borgov that she rages against and struggles to accept, as this loss threatens her sense of self, which at this point in the narrative is rooted in her dominance of the chess world.
As Beth begins to carve out more of a name for herself in the world of chess, she begins to realize that her self-worth can stem from her abilities. She becomes more confident in her talents and begins to realize that people respect her for her skill and determination. After years of only ever finding disdainful looks on the faces of her classmates, who did not care for chess and often mocked her intelligence, she finds the world of chess post-graduation to be distinctly different. When she goes to Benny’s apartment in NYC, after beating him in the US Championship, Beth finds herself in a new situation: “Beth looked at Jenny, who was sitting on the floor next to Wexler. Jenny, who was beautiful and intelligent, was looking at her with admiration” (167). Having left her small-town high school behind, Beth now finds herself among people who admire intelligence and talent. In this new environment, she begins to understand that she need not be like others to find social acceptance—an insight that helps her move From Self-Doubt to Self-Reliance. Benny, Jenny, and their friends are interested in Beth because of the talent that makes her unique. They do not see her as an outsider or an oddball but rather as a hero. It is one of the first times in her life that Beth truly feels a part of an organic community of like-minded individuals.
