All the great artists suffer for their craft, but I do, too. Every now and then, I sit through one of those godawful attempts at comedy that have been haunting movie theatres for decades because there’s a very brief chess scene in there somewhere.1 This week, it has happened again. The American pie series is a bunch of American sex comedies.2 I was very tempted to add a rather pejorative adjective in there, but I have only seen one of these movies and can apply said adjective only to that one.
As the title suggests, the movie focuses on the antics of the members of Beta house, a fraternity of the typical Hollywood type in which students do every possible thing under the sun except for studying. Their main rivals are the geek house. And the president of the geek house, being a geek, plays chess.
His opponent is a scantily clad young lady who is entirely irrelevant to the plot and his position is as follows:3
Sadly, I’m rather sure about that. “Why ‘sadly’?”, the attentive reader may ask, “1.d3 d5 2. Nd2 d4 3. Nc4 c5 is not quite a standard opening, but it’s not ridiculous for a game between two beginners.” True, but the problem is that black, our main geek, is making a move.4 I’m not exactly sure which move. I think he’s moving his king’s knight to f6, which is not horrible, but b5 was obvious and probably stronger.
And there is just no reasonable way in which white could have lost a tempo. The only possibility is that both sides made a couple of useless moves and black undid his one move faster. Clearly, they’re both going to fail their studies.
Realism: 1/5 It’s black’s move — that’s the problem. Without that, this would’ve been at least a 2, quite possibly a 3.
Probable winner: It’s too early to say, particularly as neither player seems very experienced.
1. [To be clear: the chess scene is why I watch the movie. I highly doubt it’s why they’re haunting movie theatres.] ↩
2. [Unfortunately, there’s no actual pie involved.] ↩
3. [Belgian chess history presents: Apronus diagram editor ] ↩
4. [On the board, not on the woman.] ↩