51 pages • 1 hour read
Walter TevisThe Queen's Gambit
Walter TevisFiction | 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 4-7Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary
When Beth checks into the Kentucky State Championship, the two men working the check-in table ask for her ranking. Beth is confused, and they explain that she must play many games to earn one. They put her in the beginners’ section despite her assurance that she is not a beginner. Her first match is against one of the only other girls at the tournament, and Beth’s opponent explains the features of tournament play that Beth has not yet learned: The clock system keeps track of how long each player has left, and the touch rule means that any piece touched must be moved. Beth beats her opponent easily, and as she waits for the next match, she goes to see the top tables, in a room of their own. There, she meets a handsome man who explains that one of the players is Harry Beltik, the State Champion. Beth watches as Beltik’s opponent offers a draw and Beltik refuses, going on to defeat him.
Beth wins her next two games and finishes as one of only four people to go undefeated during the first slate of games. After the dinner break, Beth plays again and is forced to move a piece she has touched despite seeing a better move. It frustrates her, but it makes no difference, and she wins. Her opponent refuses to shake her hand after the game. After the first day, only Beth, Beltik, and one other person are undefeated. Beth hopes that she will play Beltik.
On the second day of the tournament, Beth is matched with a man named Townes. When Townes joins Beth, she realizes that he is the handsome man from the first day. She loves playing with him, and almost regrets beating him. Afterward, she is paired with Goldmann, one of the big names at the tournament, and the room bursts into applause when she beats him. After the game, Beth goes into the bathroom to discover that she is menstruating for the first time. She remembers advice from Jolene and lines her underwear with toilet paper.
Next, Beth plays Sizemore, another big name, and finds that she sees people, including her first opponent, supporting her. She defeats him too, and now it is only herself and Beltik who remain undefeated. Before she leaves for the night, Beltik passes her and says, “Tomorrow.” When Beth returns home, she tells Mrs. Wheatley about her menstruation, and though Mrs. Wheatley points her to the necessary products, she seems preoccupied. She tells Beth that Mr. Wheatley is not coming back.
The next day, Beltik shows up 10 minutes late for their game, casual and unconcerned. They introduce themselves and begin playing. It is a difficult game for Beth, and she struggles to find a way to attack him. Needing isolation to visualize the board, she goes to the bathroom and finds a move that opens up the game. He tries his hardest to fight against her moves, but she finally forces him into a mate. He begrudgingly shakes her hand as the room cheers.
Chapter 5 Summary
Beth wants to open a bank account with the $100 she wins at the tournament, but she cannot do so without an adult, so Mrs. Wheatley agrees to help. Mrs. Wheatley, surprised to learn that it is possible to earn money playing chess, takes an interest in Beth’s chess and plans a trip to Cincinnati for a tournament with a $500 prize. Mrs. Wheatley budgets the cost of travel and hotels and believes that they will come out ahead if Beth wins. Mrs. Wheatley will lie to the school to get Beth out of classes, saying she is sick. With her new money, Beth buys more chess books.
Beth and Mrs. Wheatley travel to Cincinnati, and though Beth still does not have a rating, the people recognize her. As she walks into the tournament, she sees a cluster of people surrounding a young man, debating different chess strategies. The man recognizes Beth as the girl who beat Beltik, but when Beth tries to contribute to the conversation, he cuts her off. Beth wins her first game, and she and Mrs. Wheatley go shopping. Beth finds a gray cashmere sweater, just like the ones the girls of the Apple Pi Club have. Beth wins the tournament easily, and Mrs. Wheatley asks for a small share of the profits.
The next tournament Beth attends is in Houston, over Christmas. Mrs. Wheatley and Beth plan on going to one tournament a month, seeing it as an opportunity to make money. Beth garners attention as well, appearing in a story in Chess Review about how she beat Beltik. She wins in Houston, then in Atlanta in February, and Miami in March. After the tournament in March, Beth receives her rating of 1881. Over the summer, at a tournament in New York City, Beth realizes the pills cloud her mind in the morning, though she can clear it in time for games.
Beth sits for an interview with Life and becomes frustrated when the reporter only asks questions about what it is like to be a girl or whether she has a boyfriend. The article brings Beth attention in school, and she is invited to the Apple Pi Club. She attends one meeting but finds the girls boring. After winning a tournament in Kansas City, Beth sets her sights on the US Open after the tournament director suggests it should be her next step. Beth wants to eventually face the Russians, the best players in the world, and she sees the US Open as a way to move up. Though she enters the tournament, Beth does not go because Mrs. Wheatley grows ill. Beth has to wait another year, and she grows frustrated, believing her career is stalling.
Chapter 6 Summary
Beth competes in the US Open in Las Vegas the following year when she is 16. As she walks through the casino that hosts it the day before the games start, she runs into Townes. He is there as a reporter for Chess Review, not as a competitor. He invites her to his room, offering to take photos and write a short article about her. In the room, they play speed chess, but Beth does not truly want to play. She wants to sleep with him.
That night, in their hotel room, Mrs. Wheatley is drinking beer and offers Beth some. Beth drinks three cans, and although she vomits from it, she realizes that alcohol has a similar effect as the green pills, but with a quicker delivery. Mrs. Wheatley tells her she cannot have any more until she is 18. After her first game the next day, Beth meets Benny Watts. Though she won, Benny points out a mistake Beth made, and although she does not see the error at first, her eventual realization that he is right infuriates her.
When Beth plays Benny, she cannot help but think of how he saw an error she did not. She takes an aggressive approach to the game, attacking him. Though she thinks that she is beating him, Beth eventually realizes that he has the upper hand. After studying the board for nearly a half hour, she realizes that she cannot win and resigns. Beth needed only a draw against Benny to win the US Open, but her loss means they tie and share the title of US Open Champion. Beth is furious that she could not see his strategy. She goes back to school but does not take her work, which comes easily, as seriously as her study of chess and Russian classes at the local college.
Chapter 7 Summary
After class at the college one night, Beth joins her classmates for a college party. Beth drinks and smokes marijuana and talks briefly about chess with one boy. After Beth goes into a room to call Mrs. Wheatley about coming home late, the boy joins her, and they have sex. It is Beth’s first time, and she thinks of how she wishes the boy was Townes. Afterward, he leaves her alone in the bed and she falls asleep. The next morning, Beth wakes to an empty apartment with a note saying that everyone left for Cincinnati to see a movie and that Beth can stay as long as she likes. She cleans the apartment and calls Mrs. Wheatley to apologize for not coming home. She also lies, saying she went to Cincinnati, and that she will be at school on time on Monday.
Beth stays for the weekend, curious about drinking. She drinks all day and into the night, seeing what it will do. On Monday, she shows up to school with a hangover but feels like a new person. She now knows how to drink, has had sex, and has $3,000 in her bank account from tournaments. When Beth comes home later that day, Mrs. Wheatley is happy for her despite her absence, saying that there are important things other than chess. Beth graduates from high school that June and receives a new rating of 2243, cementing her as a great chess player. She does not celebrate these accomplishments for long, as her first two international tournaments, in Mexico City and Paris, are on the horizon.
Chapters 4-7 Analysis
As Beth begins to earn notoriety and fame for her dominance of competitive chess, she chafes against The Constraints of Gender Norms. She finds that much of the attention is not focused on her skills as a chess player. Instead, girls in her class, and even reporters, want to focus on her identity as a girl in a male-dominated field. In her first interview, journalist Miss Balke seems uninterested in asking Beth many questions about her style of play or what it is like to play chess: “‘Do you have a boyfriend?’ ‘No. I’m fourteen.’ The photographer began snapping pictures. Miss Balke had lighted a cigarette. She leaned forward now...‘Are you interested in boys?’ she asked” (94). The magazine assumes that a teenage girl’s life revolves around dating, and the interviewer sees Beth’s chess playing only as an avenue through which to pursue brainy boys. This sentiment is echoed by girls of the Apple Pi club, who wonder if Beth dates her opponents. Beth wants to receive attention for her talent, skills, and competitive spirit, not for being a girl. She resents the notion that she should be viewed differently as a chess player because of her gender. She notices that male players are viewed simply as chess players: Their gender identity is not foregrounded in discussions of their careers. Beth realizes that if she wants to be appreciated for the way she plays chess, she’ll have to become the best chess player in the world.
As a teenager, away from Methuen, Beth still manages to use the green tranquilizers, stealing them from her adoptive mother Alma Wheatley. When Alma offers Beth some beer during a tournament, Beth forms another dependence on a substance. Beth’s introduction to alcohol offers a glimpse into how she understands Substance Use as a Response to Anxiety: “With the pills there was a long wait before the swooning came into her stomach and loosened the tightness. The beer gave her the same feeling with almost no wait” (102). Beth uses the pills to rid herself of the anxiety and tension produced by the pressures of competition. With the beer, she sees a similar use but with a more effective and quick result. This moment forms part of a pattern that will threaten to overshadow Beth’s genius: Pills and alcohol free her from the anxiety that would otherwise hamper her play, but they also increasingly cloud her mind. The beer offers Beth a quicker way to achieve the looseness she craves, but later, as she begins to drink more and more, alcohol also threatens to erode her cognitive faculties.
Beth struggles to accept and like her appearance when she sees herself in the mirror. Her negative view of her appearance begins at Metheun when other girls call her ugly and imply that her looks are preventing her from being adopted. The psychological harm from this experience stays with her into adolescence, leading her not only to compare herself to others but also to pursue a new look, always analyzing ways to make herself more attractive in her eyes. Through this process, she moves gradually From Self-Doubt to Self-Reliance. By experimenting with clothing, hairstyles, and makeup, Beth eventually learns that she need not try to make herself look like other girls. Instead, she develops a style all her own—one that conveys her increasingly confident self-image. When she spends the night at a college house and wakes up the next morning with no one home, she tries on clothes. She begins tinkering with her appearance, waiting to see for the first time if makeup can meaningfully change her look: “Someone had left a lipstick on the back of the toilet. She went to the bathroom and studying herself in the mirror, reddened her lips carefully. She had never worn lipstick before. She was beginning to feel very good” (112). Her new appearance pleases her and makes her feel good, in a similar way to how her victories in tournaments boost her confidence. Her need to win and her desire to be attractive begin to merge as she enters her teenage years. Though these twin desires can verge on dependencies, leading to crushing disappointment when she perceives herself to be failing, they also motivate her and build her confidence. As she wins more and more, her increasingly unique sense of personal style reflects her growing self-confidence.
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