Gambit (novel) - Chess Allusions

Chess Allusions

There is a description, in Chapter 3, of the interior of the Gambit chess club. "In a corner was a chess table with a marble top, with yellow and brown marble for the squares, and the men spread around, not on their home squares. The Gazette had said that the men were of ivory and Kokcha lapis lazuli and they and the table had belonged to and been played with by Louis XIV, and that the men were kept in the position after the ninth move of Paul Morphy's most famous game, his defeat of the Duke of Brunswick and Count Isouard in Paris in 1858,"

In the same chapter, Archie Goodwin tried to guess the next moves of a game that he was watching. After failing every time, he "conceded that I would never be a Botvinnik…."

In Chapter 7, Morton Farrow says, "I'm all right the first three or four moves, any opening from the Ruy Lopez to the Caro–Kann, but I soon get lost. My uncle got me started at it because he thinks it develops the brain. I'm not so sure. Look at Bobby Fischer, the American champion. Has he got a brain?"

Dr. Victor Avery, in Chapter 8, claimed that he didn't hear any conversations during a chess game because he "was concentrating on my reply. I was trying the Albin Counter Gambit. Houghteling had used it against Dodge in 1905 and had mated him on the sixteenth move."