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posted by on Wednesday March 22 2017, @11:34PM   Printer-friendly
from the i-resign dept.

Movies and television shows are full of blunders, some more noticeable than others, and each with their specific guild of victims. Ornithologists fume when British period dramas are overdubbed with American birdsongs. Government employees will tell you that the supposed main White House staffer in Contact has a nonexistent job. Archeologists hate movie shipwrecks, and marine biologists are already mad about the zombie sharks in the upcoming Pirates of the Caribbean installment, which, as cartilaginous fishes, should not have ribs—even ghostly ones.

But these are merely occasional grievances. There's one group of experts who can barely flip on the television without being exposed to egregious, head-on-desk mistakes: chess players.

"There are a ton of chess mistakes in TV and in film," says Mike Klein, a writer and videographer for Chess.com. While different experts cite different error ratios, from "20 percent" to "much more often than not," all agree: Hollywood is terrible at chess, even though they really don't have to be. "There are so many [errors], it's hard to keep track," says Grandmaster Ilja Zaragatski, of chess24. "And there are constantly [new ones] coming out."

[...] Peter Doggers of Chess.com notes another Dramatic Checkmate move: the felled king. "Tipping over your king as a way of resigning the game is only done in movies," he says. (See Mr. Holland's Opus, in which Jay Thomas slaps his king down after being owned by Richard Dreyfuss).A normal chess player will just go in for a good-game-style handshake. "This falling king thing has somehow become a strong image in cinematography," he says, "But chess players always think: 'Oh no, there we go again...'"

-- submitted from IRC


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  • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 23 2017, @12:24AM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 23 2017, @12:24AM (#483009)

    Yeah, and how come the Star Trek had a black woman phone operator who was somehow a competent electrical engineer? That was just beyond belief.

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  • (Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday March 23 2017, @12:49AM (3 children)

    by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Thursday March 23 2017, @12:49AM (#483021) Homepage

    They compensated for that later on when Worf and his exoskeletal BBC were in the rut [wikia.com] and he broke into Troi's quarters and bit her on the neck while savagely violating her in her own bathtub.

    The crew may have been restored to their current evolutionary state, but that in later episodes Worf and Troi grew close is no accident. This was back in the days of Heavy Metal-style [heavymetal.com] primal fetishism before it devolved into cheesy image macros of captions and pregnant white women overlaid with reproductive system diagrams.

    • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 23 2017, @12:58AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 23 2017, @12:58AM (#483026)

      Rule #1: Kill Ethanol-Fueled dead.

      • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Thursday March 23 2017, @03:21AM

        by Gaaark (41) on Thursday March 23 2017, @03:21AM (#483062) Journal

        He'll just come back as zombie Brains-Fuelled​.

        --
        --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 23 2017, @10:11AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 23 2017, @10:11AM (#483148)

      constantly reminding one of a pet Targ.

      Or is that 'easily beaten like a rented Targ'?

  • (Score: 2) by el_oscuro on Friday March 24 2017, @02:15AM

    by el_oscuro (1711) on Friday March 24 2017, @02:15AM (#483476)

    You do realize that Star Trek was appointment TV for MLK? Back in the '60s, the few black woman on TV were maids, and she was a fricken *Star ship officer*. Nichelle Nichols wanted to quit Star Trek so she could pursue a Broadway career, but MLK talked her out of it.

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