It’s 2020 and like most other New Yorkers I’ve already run through every puzzle in my ever-shrinking Bushwick apartment at least twice. My roommates and I had baked ciabatta bread and fought over every board game we could find. I had remembered the first time I played chess, when I was something of a child prodigy myself. My father’s drinking buddy, a thirty year old electrician, had taught me how to play one afternoon when I was eight, only to refuse to play me ever again when I beat him in our first game. I had never played since, but started playing again online during the pandemic and got hooked quickly, while watching Queen’s Gambit, released in fall of that year.