(Queen of Katwe (2016) Image courtesy of IMDb) Since The Queen’s Gambit graced our screens back in 2020 (was it really so long ago?!) our appetites have been whetted for more chess movies and TV series. Luckily, there are plenty of fantastic ones to choose from including ‘Searching for Bobby Fischer’ and Ingmar Bergman’s fantasy […]

Every month, the FIDE (the International Chess Federation) updates their list of the ‘Top 100 Players’ – the definitive ranking of the best chess players on the planet. Read on to find out why people are calling today’s number one the greatest of all time… The Norwegian Magnus Carlsen is the current world’s number one […]

It’s been around longer than printed books and about 70% of the world’s population has played it at some point.  Today, chess is played regularly by more than 605 million people from Texas to Timbuktu – but who can we thank for inventing this timeless board game? It could be argued that this centuries-old game […]

Beth Harmon’s narcotics-fueled rise to the top of the chess world enraptured Netflix’s viewers for 7 perfect episodes. But many of us want to know, is The Queen’s Gambit a true story? Or is the whole thing a genius work of fiction? Photo courtesy of Netflix. A surprise hit, The Queen’s Gambit was one of […]

The Queen’s Gambit was THE show of 2020, and the fact that we’re still talking about it years later shows how much we were impacted by Beth Harmon’s fictional rise to the top of the chess world. When we last saw Beth, she was contentedly playing chess with an old man in a Moscow park […]

Chess has been played for 1,500 years, but since a certain Netflix show emerged last year, the game has reached explosive levels of popularity. There’s no doubt that we have The Queen’s Gambit to thank for putting chess back on the map – but there are other factors that are causing chess retailers to buckle […]

For many of us, chess is not merely a game of skill and chance, it represents life and the struggle to survive, to keep pace, and to prosper.   And if we’re willing to be its students, the ancient game can teach us some valuable life lessons. There is a myriad of advantages to learning to […]

Here at The Regency Chess Company, we couldn’t help but notice a surge in demand for chess sets since the mini-series ‘The Queen’s Gambit’ debuted on Netflix. As big fans of the series, we thought we’d investigate just what it is about the show that’s inspiring the world to learn the game – or dust […]

The subject of ‘The Greatest Chess Player Ever’ will always be a subjective one for the simple fact that there is no perfect system for comparing them. Statistical methods of ranking chess players do exist, the most famous being the Elo system. But, they’re not perfect – ‘rating inflation’ makes it impossible to properly compare […]