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Rook No Further, The Queen's Gambit Chess Is Now on Netflix Games

You can play this game and others for free with a Netflix subscription.

Zachary McAuliffe Staff writer
Zach began writing for CNET in November, 2021 after writing for a broadcast news station in his hometown, Cincinnati, for five years. You can usually find him reading and drinking coffee or watching a TV series with his wife and their dog.
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Zachary McAuliffe
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The Queen's Gambit Chess title card showing a digital version of the character Beth Harmon
Netflix

Almost three years after the premiere of the popular Netflix show The Queen's Gambit, the streaming giant released The Queen's Gambit Chess, a game based on the series, on Tuesday. You can play this game for free and without ads or paywalls with a Netflix subscription (starting at $7, £7 or AU$7 a month) on Android and iOS devices.

The Queen's Gambit Chess is a good introduction to chess for anyone who enjoyed the show and wanted to play the game, and it's a good challenge for people who already know how to play chess.

You can select your experience level early in the game -- I haven't played chess in years so I opted for the easiest setting. Early parts of the game teach you the placement of the pieces and how they move, and once you get the basics down, you'll start tackling chess puzzles and playing games against the computer. 

As you progress, you'll also explore more of the world from the show, including the Methuen Home orphanage, where Beth Harmon learned to play chess in the show, and Moscow, where Beth took on the USSR grand master Vasily Borgov.

There's also an online game mode where you can play ranked matches against other people from around the world. The game even gives you an Elo rating -- the numeric system used to rank chess players -- so you can see how you stack up against others. 

You can access this game and others with any of Netflix's subscriptions, which start at $7 a month. To access Netflix games, open the Netflix app on your Android or iOS device, scroll down the homepage until you see the Mobile Games carousel, and tap into the game you want to play.