Netflix’s “The Queen’s Gambit” is the most accurate portrayal of chess in Hollywood, but it doesn’t go far enough to depict the sexism ingrained in the culture of the sport, female chess influencer Alexandra Botez told Insider.
Botez is a Twitch chess streamer who started training with her dad when she was just 6 years old. By the time she was 8, Botez won her first national championship.
“It’s wild what it’s been doing to chess in terms of your average person knowing about it,” Botez said of the Netflix series, which follows fictional chess prodigy Beth Harmon as she grows up in the 1960s. “I never imagined anything like this because chess was always super niche.”