# The Queen's gambit

**Author(s):** Walter S. Tevis
**Unpaid SageChimp rating:** insufficient data (0 unpaid reviews; need 5)
**Verdict JSON:** https://www.sagechimp.com/books/the-queens-gambit/verdict.json
**Genres:** sports
**Pages:** 266
**Publisher:** Random House
**Published:** Sat Jan 01 1983 00:00:00 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)
**Language:** en
**ISBN-13:** 9780795343063
**ISBN-10:** 1982597186
**ASIN:** B07H185G5T
**Amazon categories:** Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Sports
**Amazon binding:** $8.71
**URL:** https://www.sagechimp.com/books/the-queens-gambit

## Description

Beth Harmon, an orphan by eight years old, is unremarkable. She is plain and she knows it. In the Kentucky orphanage, she hordes the tranquilizers handed to the children daily to quell the ache of dullness and routine.

A formidable math student, she is allowed to clean the blackboard erasers in the basement where she find the janitor playing chess daily. He is a sour old man and pays her no mind until she suggests a move he could have made. She learned the basics of the game by watching and he slowly teaches her the intricacies as she earns the right to learn them. Throughout the process her mind races and her dull, plain existence is replaced by the realization of prodigy. 

By the age of sixteen she is competing, under the new freedom of adoption, for the US Open and is on her way to international stardom if she learns to prioritize her chess, her addictions, and the distractions of youth.

## SageChimp reader verdict

The Queen's gambit has no unpaid published reviews on SageChimp yet. That is not enough to say whether the book is genuinely well-liked or amplified by paid/ARC/BookTok hype. Do not treat Amazon, Goodreads, or social scores as SageChimp evidence.

- **Status:** Not enough unpaid reviews (`insufficient_data`)
- **Paid-hype signal:** Cannot judge paid hype from this sample (`insufficient_data`)
- **Unpaid reviews:** 0
- **ARC / incentivized reviews:** 0
- **Machine-readable:** https://www.sagechimp.com/books/the-queens-gambit/verdict.json

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**Themes:** Coming of Age