After a few scenes, we see Beth arriving at a zoo where she spots Borgov relaxing with his family along with his bodyguards.
While at the zoo, Beth sees Borgov, meaning he is playing at the tournament. Beth advances through the tournament (that her friends, the Kentucky registrars, are also attending). She even prevails against international grandmasters.
Beth politely takes the doll, under the instruction of Mr. Shaibel, but satisfyingly chucks it in the trash after leaving the room--showing that she will not bend to fit anybody else's idea of who she should be.
She's outplayed and thrown off her game by Borgov. She resigns, after seeing Mr Shaibel's face again in her place, and heads back upstairs to tell her Mother the bad news.
The important game
Beth keeps needing to drink water and Borgov senses that she's not prepared. Cleo joins the audience, and she starts panicking, asking for more water. A tear rolls down her cheek, and she resigns.
She wasn't deliberately trying to sabotage Beth, again she is bored. I would say Beth giving into her impulses to find an excuse to drink and Chloe unknowingly enabling her is all takes for Beth to slip. So, no, there was no bad intent in Chloe asking her for a drink.
Beth Harmon (Anya Taylor-Joy), whilst not declared autistic, was heavily coded as such. And rather than playing into stereotypes (one can just imagine how a lazy interpretation of an autistic chess prodigy would come across), Taylor-Joy gives the role complex and dynamic layers.
WORST: Perfectionism
Without a doubt, Beth's biggest weakness is her perfectionism. She simply cannot accept defeat, and while her persistence may be an admirable quality, stubbornness is not. When she loses, she goes on a severe downward spiral. Throughout the series, dealing with defeat is her biggest struggle.
Rather, Beth's affair was because she has finally started to hit rock bottom; she's distracted, and leaving her chess dreams in her dust. By hooking up with Cleo, Beth has found another fix to soothe her like her alcoholism and drug problem.
Vasily Borgov
Her first match against Borgov was at the 1966 Mexico City Invitational Chess Tournament, where Beth heartbrokenly lost to him. She once again lost to Borgov at the 1967 Paris Remy-Vallon Invitational, although she was very much under the influence.
The Death of Evelyn Dutton
Evelyn Dutton died after getting crushed by her horse after the horse got frightened and both fell over. Instead of comforting or reassuring Beth, Evelyn immediately blames Beth for spooking her horse due to Beth's handling (or lack thereof) of her horse.
He carries around a knife, according to Watts himself for self-defense purposes.
Throughout the show Beth struggles with a prescription pill addiction, eventually realizing the harm her habit is doing.
After reconnecting, Jolene helps Beth recover from her addiction and get into mental and physical shape again. Jolene works out with Beth, helps her clean up the house, and teaches Beth how to improve her diet.
In The Queen's Gambit, Alma Wheatley died in a shocking moment, but it was not completely unexpected — and was a necessary event for Beth's overall character development. In the Netflix series The Queen's Gambit, Beth is orphaned at the age of seven following a car accident.
Beth admits to him that she's never been to a drive-in cinema before. Georgi says he wants to be champion at 16. Beth suggests that if he wins a championship at 16, he will have nothing to do with the rest of his life. He's confused, and Beth tells him he's the best she's played.
Her quirky sense of confidence was observed in a highly-competitive field and this was conveyed among her male counterparts. I love her determination and dedication. For those that are familiar with the subtle ways in which autism spectrum disorder presents in women, it could be argued that Beth was not neurotypical.
The sexual tension is palpable between Beth and Townes in earlier scenes, but Townes is not bisexual, just (ugh) “a little confused.” His interest in her is platonic, yet he flies to the USSR to see and support and celebrate her — and she “kind of broke his heart.”
Beth And Benny's Relationship Failure Explained
It's as much of a rejection of chess as it is a rejection of Benny and his fixation on Beth's chess playing instead of her whole self. Beth's choice clearly hurts Benny. In episode 7, "Endgame," she asks him to accompany her to her chess games in Russia.
On the show, Beth's relationship with Benny is the most romantic one she has, but in the novel, Beth doesn't sigh and say “So that's what that's supposed to be like!” after having sex with Benny.
Wheatley is largely indifferent to Beth and absent from their lives until he essentially disappears entirely, remaining in Denver after a business trip and cutting himself off from them. Mrs. Wheatley helps Beth enter into chess tournaments, taking a cut of Beth's profits as an agent's commission.
Abandoned by her biological father, Beth went to an orphanage after her mother had died in a car accident. While living there, the orphanage's janitor taught her how to play chess, and she quickly became obsessed with the game and embarked on a trip to take on the World Champion Vasily Borgov.
Beth Harmon is a fictional character.
The character, played by Anya Taylor-Joy, was created by Tevis for his book, and there weren't many world-famous female players in the spotlight at the time to inspire him.
While the Harmon character herself is fictionalized, many of the show's narrative beats were inspired by real-life events. Harmon's rise to prominence is loosely inspired by the life of American Chess Grandmaster Bobby Fischer.
Is The Queen's Gambit Based On a True Story? No… but kind of. The character of Beth Harmon and her story is fictional. It came from the mind of writer Walter Tevis (1928 – 1984) way back in 1983 when the novel 'The Queen's Gambit' was first published.