Here are some of the best movies to watch if you liked Netflix‘s popular chess series The Queen’s Gambit.

The Queen’s Gambit is an exceptional Netflix original drama series that tells the bittersweet story of Beth Harmon, who discovers her talent for chess. Starring stunning Anya Taylor-Joy, the series debuted in October 2020 and became a quick sensation. It was received quite well both by the viewers and the critics. The Queen’s Gambit currently has an amazing 8.6 rating on IMDb and %97 on Rotten Tomatoes. The series even made many viewers interested in chess!

Despite its huge success, The Queen’s Gambit is quite short. It only has seven episodes on Netflix, with no second season on the horizon. Although the crew and the cast would want to do a second season, the story left off at a good point, so it’d be pretty optimistic to say a second season would be as good as the first one. Don’t worry though, as there are many other chess-themed movies on the streaming platform. Even if they may not be as good to watch as Harmon’s steps towards success, you can definitely give those chess movies a try.

Starring Sean Nelson, Giancarlo Esposito, and Samuel L. Jackson, Fresh (1994) is a crime thriller, themed chess, obviously. The story is about Fresh, who is a 12-year-old drug dealer. His addicted sister starts to sleep with the local drug lord, so he now has to save both himself and his sister from that crappy life. To build a strategy to do this, he uses the skills he acquired while playing chess with his alcoholic father and the speed-chess champion. You can check out the movie’s trailer below.

Not exactly a movie, but a chess lover would love watching a documentary on the legendary Magnus Carlsen, wouldn’t they? This documentary stars chess masters Magnus Carlsen, Garry Kasparov, and Viswanathan Anand each as themselves while telling the story of Magnus Carlsen, who became a grandmaster at age 13 and world champion in 2013. Not everything was straightforward for him during his childhood. Benjamin Ree directs this documentary, whose trailer you can watch below.

Here’s a more recent and dramatic movie compared to Magnus. The Coldest Game is a historical thriller about chess. It tells of a math genius who has to play chess against a Soviet player during 1962’s Cuban missile crisis. The match will not be your usual chess game though, as it’s a pretty important one. Check out its trailer below.

If you loved The Queen’s Gambit and just want to see more of it, here’s a short making-of video for you. This little short documentary shows us how the crew and cast worked to make The Queen’s Gambit happen with all the BTS footage and commentaries from the cast. You can watch it on Netflix, but it’s also available on YouTube.

This movie unfortunately left Netflix USA pretty recently, but you may be able to find it in different regions. It tells of a young chess prodigy who wants to be a player like the master Bobby Fischer. This is especially interesting for The Queen’s Gambit fans, as Fischer is seen as one of the players that Beth Harmon is based on. Check out the trailer below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gghecEHT4PI