The Queen's Gambit: Half a Millennium Old, Still The Best
By Cameron W. · Sat, 31 Oct 2026
From a 500-year-old manuscript to Capablanca-Alekhine and Netflix, this is the story of the Queen's Gambit.
Here is a confession that takes the shine off the most famous opening name in the world: the Queen's Gambit is not truly a gambit. After 1.d4 d5 2.c4, White seems to offer a pawn, but if Black grabs it, White can win it back, and Black cannot keep it without paying a price. A name that promises a sacrifice, an opening that quietly delivers solid, patient chess. It has been that way for roughly 500 years, and this is the third story in our series on the history of chess's great openings.
Born with the modern game
The story begins in a Latin manuscript that now sits at the University of Göttingen. It runs to 33 leaves, with twelve openings discussed in the first fifteen folios and thirty problems after that, and one of those openings is the Queen's Gambit Accepted, 1.d4 d5 2.c4 dxc4. Wikipedia describes it as the earliest known work devoted entirely to modern chess, written in the style of a Spanish or Portuguese speaker. Nobody can say exactly when. Scholars have suggested dates around 1500 to 1505, or as early as 1471, and one source gives 1490. Whatever the year, the Queen's Gambit was there at the dawn of the modern game.
Out of fashion, then everywhere
It did not exactly take the chess world by storm. Gioachino Greco analyzed it in the seventeenth century, and in the eighteenth century Philipp Stamma, who came from Aleppo, recommended it, which is why it is sometimes called the Aleppo Gambit. Queen's pawn openings were out of favor for much of the early modern period, and the Queen's Gambit did not become common until the Vienna tournament of 1873, according to Chess.com and Wikipedia. After that, Wilhelm Steinitz and Siegbert Tarrasch, with their emphasis on positional play, helped turn it from curiosity to staple.
The champion's opening
By the 1920s and 1930s it was at its peak, and the clearest proof is Buenos Aires. The 1927 world championship match between Capablanca and Alekhine began on September 9, and the Queen's Gambit appeared in all but two of its 34 games, according to Wikipedia. Alekhine won 6-3, and simple subtraction from the 34 games puts the number of draws at 25. The deciding game, number 34, was another Queen's Gambit Declined, which Alekhine won by gaining a queenside pawn through steady positional pressure, according to Chess.com. In that match, the opening was less a choice than a battlefield.
Accepted or declined
The two great branches define the opening. In the Accepted, Black plays 2...dxc4, giving up the center for freer development. In the Declined, Black holds the d5 pawn and accepts a cramped position in exchange for solidity, aiming for piece exchanges and the pawn breaks on c5 and e5. In the Encyclopaedia of Chess Openings, the Queen's Gambit as a whole spans D06 to D69, with the Accepted at D20 to D29 and the Declined at D30 to D69. After the Second World War, many players switched to the Indian Defences against queen's pawn openings, and it appeared less often, but it is still frequently played and remains in many grandmasters' repertoires.
The show that made a name famous
Then, in 2020, an opening became a household phrase. Netflix released The Queen's Gambit on October 23. According to Sportico, Chess.com was adding more than 100,000 new players a day by the end of November, and eBay searches for chess sets rose 273 percent in the ten days after release. Chess.com's seven Beth Harmon bots, built with Netflix's approval, played close to 500,000 games a day in the first week.
There is a pleasing irony in all this. Millions of people met chess through the name of an opening that is not quite what it says, and the opening they heard about is an old, honest, resilient idea that has outlived every fashion since the days of that Göttingen manuscript.
Sources
- Wikipedia, Göttingen manuscript
- Wikipedia mirror, Queen's Gambit
- Chess.com blog, Queen's Gambit (jimthemagic)
- Chess.com blog, The Queen's Gambit (New_Chess_1d)
- Chess.com, Alekhine vs. Capablanca
- Chessentials, Alekhine-Capablanca World Championship Match 1927
- Sportico, The Queen's Gambit and chess popularity
