Chess in fiction
In many ways the chess games in fiction are closer to casual novice games than high-level games, no matter how good the players are supposed to be. This could be because the writers are unfamiliar with high-level chess (or at least they expect the audience to be), but there are indeed some aspects of high-level chess that can be unappealing to a general audience. Most mistakes that are obviously the result of not doing the research (e.g. incorrect board positions like pawns on the first or eighth ranks) will not be discussed in this essay.
Supposedly skilled chess players tend to be either way too good or way too bad at calculating. Those who fall under the former tend to say stuff like "I can win most games of chess in less than ____ moves"note or "I can think 10/20/whatever moves ahead"note . Sure, it sounds impressive, but it's nonsense. On the other end of the scale, you have "skilled" players who fall for Surprise Checkmates. It's supposed to say "hey, the opponent is really smart and managed to surprise them", but it actually means the player falling for the mate-in-one was either not paying attention or just bad at chess.
One problem with chess is that someone unfamiliar with the game has no way to tell who has the better position, and whether a move is good or bad. Broadcast chess games use computer analyses and expert commentary to give casual viewers an idea of who's better off at the moment, but this obviously wouldn't work in most settings. This can be why fictional chess games often feature "obviously good and dramatic" moves like "Bob gains a winning advantage by capturing his opponent's queen" note even though such things are rare outside beginner games. Similarly, fictional chess players saying "check" out loud serves to tell the audience about the check, even if the character being checked is supposed to be skilled enough to notice it on their own immediately after the move is made.
Decisive high-level games usually feature one player subtly building up their advantage until their opponent reaches a hopeless position and gives up. Occasionally, you'll see experts making a particularly bad blunder, but that's usually followed by them resigning shortly afterwards — as in before you even get to see why the move was so disastrous. That's another reason fiction often uses games that have "obviously dramatic" moves and end in checkmate — someone making a seemingly unremarkable move followed by a resignation would seem pretty anticlimactic to a general audience, and possibly lead to people whining about the loser choosing to "give up" instead of fighting onnote . And that's just the decisive games — most high-level games are drawn, but a series of not-obviously-exciting moves ending in the players agreeing to a draw (or just reaching stalemate or a position where neither player can win) would seem even more anticlimactic to many people.
That's not to say resignation never comes up in fiction, but when it does happen, it's almost always done by a player tipping over their own king. This is usually done because it looks more dramatic, even though the standard resignation procedure is simply shaking hands with your opponent. A king being knocked over by accident is sometimes even used as a Diabolus ex Machina to force a winning player to lose the game. In a real game, if your king is knocked over by accident, all you need to do is wait for your turn, say "I adjust", put it back up and play on.
One somewhat surprising aspect of fictional chess is the lack of a chess clock (playing without one is only really excusable in low-stakes casual games). Even classical chess forces both players to manage their time properly. Fast time controls can add tension to a game and prevent players from stalling indefinitely if they really don't want to take the loss. However, even the lack of a clock is somewhat understandable: many fictional chess players just blitz out all their moves anyway. This can serve to make them look smarter ("he saw the right move immediately!") and keep non-chess-buffs from getting bored by someone taking forever to move. This might also be why fictional chess players never record their moves — it takes up a bit of time and isn't very interesting, so it only serves to make the game more realistic, which is pretty pointless if the game features any of the aforementioned inaccuracies anyway.
