Is Beth Harmon behaviour in her game vs Georgi Girev acceptable (then and now)? In S01E04 of the TV series The Queen's Gambit, the main protagonist (Beth Harmon) is competing against a young Russian player (Georgi Girev). This happens in 1966.
Following an adjournment, Beth Harmon is not spending any time at all at the table, whenever she made her move, she would wander around the hotel, looking at the game from far away. She would also sit on the side, fixing Georgi and even tapping her feet.
To me (I do not play chess, except occasionally with my children) this looks like an attempt to distract the other player, which seems to be forbidden (from the various questions I gathered in SE Chess).
Unfortunately, I could not find a publicly available fragment of that episode, but this behaviour was never seen neither before, nor after that specific game.
I understand that there is a lot of subjective elements in the interpretation of &quot;distraction&quot;, so would Beth's behaviour be acceptable in 1966 and today?
I think the idea was that Beth felt uncomfortable because for the first time she was no longer the young prodigy. Here was someone else younger than her competing at the same level. How would she respond?
This scene was, I understand, to some extent improvised. It seemed to show also Girev’s relative mental balance compared to Beth, at that point in her psychological trajectory. Her arrogance here foreshadows her later fall, after which she did some growing up.
Even today there are mean players, for example the one described in this chess.com post. This kind of thing is clearly against the Laws of Chess but there will be those who continue to behave like this if they find they can get away with it, particularly when facing young and relatively inexperienced opponents. Personally, the individual described seems to be horrid, and I would hate to be taught by them.
The role of the arbiter is essential in policing behaviour, particularly where young players are concerned.