The Queen’s Gambit

by

Walter Tevis

Vasily Borgov Character Analysis

Vasily Borgov is a Russian chess player and the reigning World Champion. Borgov is in his late 30s when Beth first encounters him in Mexico City; he has bushy eyebrows, coarse black hair, and an authoritarian scowl. She is completely intimidated by him and his natural sense of belonging in and ownership over the chess world. He is often surrounded by other players, particularly other high-ranked Russian players, which makes Beth feel out of place in comparison. Beth believes that he deliberately avoids looking at her or interacting with her as a way to make her feel insignificant. The first time Beth encounters him, she completely falls apart, relying only on instinct. She then studies for months with Benny and Beltik to face Borgov in Paris, but even then, Beth cannot beat him. She continues to prepare, again with the help of friends, to face him at a tournament in Moscow, where, at the climax of the book, she is finally able to use both her intuition, her vast base of knowledge, and her friends’ help to beat him. After this loss, Borgov smiles warmly at her and hugs her, illustrating how Beth’s doubts about him and fear of him are primarily internal and borne of her own sense that she doesn’t belong in the chess world.

Vasily Borgov Quotes in The Queen’s Gambit

The The Queen’s Gambit quotes below are all either spoken by Vasily Borgov or refer to Vasily Borgov. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Talent, Ambition, Dedication, and Success Theme Icon
).
Chapter 5 Quotes

“How does it feel? Being a girl among all those men?”

“I don’t mind it.”

“Isn’t it frightening?” They were sitting facing each other. Miss Balke leaned forward, looking intently at Beth.

Beth shook her head. The photographer came over to the sofa and began taking readings with a meter.

“When I was a girl,” the reporter said, “I was never allowed to be competitive. I used to play with dolls.”

The photographer backed off and began to study Beth through his camera. She remembered the doll Mr. Ganz had given her.

Related Characters: Beth Harmon (speaker), Vasily Borgov, Mr. Ganz
Page Number: 93-94
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

Now she crossed the ballroom’s red carpet and went to the ladies’ room and washed her face again. She dried carefully with paper towels and combed her hair, watching herself in the big mirror. Her movements seemed forced, and her body looked impossibly frail. The expensive blouse and skirt did not fit right. Her fear was as sharp as a toothache.

As she came down the hallway, she saw him. He was standing there solidly with two men she did not recognize. All of them wore dark suits. They were close together, talking softly, confidentially. She lowered her eyes and walked past them into the small room. Some men were waiting there with cameras. Reporters. She slipped behind the black pieces at Board One.

Related Characters: Beth Harmon, Vasily Borgov
Page Number: 129
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9 Quotes

Some of them were books she had seen before; a few of them she owned. But most were new to her, heavy-looking and depressing to see. She knew there were a great many things she needed to know. But Capablanca had almost never studied, had played on intuition and his natural gifts, while inferior players like Bogolubov and Grünfeld memorized lines of play like German pedants. She had seen players at tournament after their games had ended, sitting motionless in uncomfortable chairs oblivious to the world, studying opening variations or middle-game strategy or endgame theory. It was endless. Seeing Beltik methodically removing one heavy book after another, she felt weary and disoriented. She glanced over at the TV: a part of her wanted to turn it on and forget chess forever.

Related Characters: Beth Harmon, Benny Watts, Vasily Borgov, Harry Beltik
Page Number: 138
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 11 Quotes

“Do you want to play another?”

Benny shrugged and turned away. “Save it for Borgov.” But she could see he would have played her if he had thought he could win. She felt a whole lot better.

They continued as lovers and did not play any more games, except from the books. He went out a few days later for another poker game and came back with two hundred in winnings and they had one of their best times in bed together, with the money beside them on the night table. She was fond of him, but that was all. And by the last week before Paris, she was beginning to feel that he had little left to teach her.

Related Characters: Beth Harmon, Benny Watts, Vasily Borgov
Page Number: 171
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 12 Quotes

The piece said she was the most talented woman since Vera Menchik. Beth, reading it half-drunk, was annoyed at the space given to Menchik, going on about her death in a 1944 bombing in London before pointing out that Beth was the better player. And what did being women have to do with it? She was better than any male player in America. She remembered the Life interviewer and the questions about her being a woman in a man’s world. To hell with her; it wouldn’t be a man’s world when she finished with it.

Related Characters: Beth Harmon, Vasily Borgov
Related Symbols: Pills/Alcohol
Page Number: 185
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 14 Quotes

At one table where the position looked interesting, she stopped for a moment. It was the Richter-Rauzer, from the Sicilian. She had written a small piece on it for Chess Review a few years before, when she was sixteen. The men were playing it right, and Black had a slight variation in his pawns that she had never seen before, but it was clearly sound. It was good chess. First-class chess, being played by two old men in cheap working clothes. The man playing White moved his king’s bishop, looked up at her and scowled. For a moment she felt powerfully self-conscious among all these old Russian men with her nylons and pale-blue skirt and gray cashmere sweater, her hair cut and shaped in the proper way for a young American girl, her feet in pumps that probably cost as much money as these men used to earn in a month.

Related Characters: Beth Harmon, Vasily Borgov
Page Number: 222
Explanation and Analysis:

No matter how often she told herself she was as good as any of them, she felt with dismay that those men with their heavy black shoes knew something she did not know and never would know. She tried to concentrate on her own career, her quick rise to the top of American chess and beyond it, the way she had become a more powerful player than Benny Watts, the way she had beaten Laev without a moment of doubt in her moves, the way that, even as a child, she had found an error in the play of the great Morphy. But all of it was meaningless and trivial beside her glimpse into the establishment of Russian chess, into the room where the men conferred in deep voices and studied the board with an assurance that seemed wholly beyond her.

Related Characters: Beth Harmon, Benny Watts, Vasily Borgov, Laev
Page Number: 227
Explanation and Analysis:

They went on together, exploring possibilities, following out line after line, for almost an hour. Benny was amazing. He had worked out everything; she began to see ways of crowding Borgov, finessing Borgov, deceiving him, tying up his pieces, forcing him to compromise and retreat.

Finally she looked at her watch and said, “Benny, it’s nine-fifteen here.”

“Okay,” he said. “Go beat him.”

Related Characters: Beth Harmon (speaker), Benny Watts (speaker), Jolene DeWitt, Vasily Borgov
Page Number: 237
Explanation and Analysis:

The applause began. She took the black king in her hand and turned to face the auditorium, letting the whole massive weight of the ovation wash over her. People in the audience were standing, applauding louder and louder. She received it with her whole body, feeling her cheeks redden with it and then go hot and wet as the thunderous sound washed away thought.

And then Vasily Borgov was standing beside her, and a moment later to her complete astonishment he had his arms spread and then was embracing her, hugging her to him warmly.

Related Characters: Beth Harmon, Vasily Borgov
Related Symbols: The Queen’s Gambit
Page Number: 242
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire The Queen’s Gambit LitChart as a printable PDF.
The Queen’s Gambit PDF

Vasily Borgov Quotes in The Queen’s Gambit

The The Queen’s Gambit quotes below are all either spoken by Vasily Borgov or refer to Vasily Borgov. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Talent, Ambition, Dedication, and Success Theme Icon
).
Chapter 5 Quotes

“How does it feel? Being a girl among all those men?”

“I don’t mind it.”

“Isn’t it frightening?” They were sitting facing each other. Miss Balke leaned forward, looking intently at Beth.

Beth shook her head. The photographer came over to the sofa and began taking readings with a meter.

“When I was a girl,” the reporter said, “I was never allowed to be competitive. I used to play with dolls.”

The photographer backed off and began to study Beth through his camera. She remembered the doll Mr. Ganz had given her.

Related Characters: Beth Harmon (speaker), Vasily Borgov, Mr. Ganz
Page Number: 93-94
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

Now she crossed the ballroom’s red carpet and went to the ladies’ room and washed her face again. She dried carefully with paper towels and combed her hair, watching herself in the big mirror. Her movements seemed forced, and her body looked impossibly frail. The expensive blouse and skirt did not fit right. Her fear was as sharp as a toothache.

As she came down the hallway, she saw him. He was standing there solidly with two men she did not recognize. All of them wore dark suits. They were close together, talking softly, confidentially. She lowered her eyes and walked past them into the small room. Some men were waiting there with cameras. Reporters. She slipped behind the black pieces at Board One.

Related Characters: Beth Harmon, Vasily Borgov
Page Number: 129
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9 Quotes

Some of them were books she had seen before; a few of them she owned. But most were new to her, heavy-looking and depressing to see. She knew there were a great many things she needed to know. But Capablanca had almost never studied, had played on intuition and his natural gifts, while inferior players like Bogolubov and Grünfeld memorized lines of play like German pedants. She had seen players at tournament after their games had ended, sitting motionless in uncomfortable chairs oblivious to the world, studying opening variations or middle-game strategy or endgame theory. It was endless. Seeing Beltik methodically removing one heavy book after another, she felt weary and disoriented. She glanced over at the TV: a part of her wanted to turn it on and forget chess forever.

Related Characters: Beth Harmon, Benny Watts, Vasily Borgov, Harry Beltik
Page Number: 138
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 11 Quotes

“Do you want to play another?”

Benny shrugged and turned away. “Save it for Borgov.” But she could see he would have played her if he had thought he could win. She felt a whole lot better.

They continued as lovers and did not play any more games, except from the books. He went out a few days later for another poker game and came back with two hundred in winnings and they had one of their best times in bed together, with the money beside them on the night table. She was fond of him, but that was all. And by the last week before Paris, she was beginning to feel that he had little left to teach her.

Related Characters: Beth Harmon, Benny Watts, Vasily Borgov
Page Number: 171
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 12 Quotes

The piece said she was the most talented woman since Vera Menchik. Beth, reading it half-drunk, was annoyed at the space given to Menchik, going on about her death in a 1944 bombing in London before pointing out that Beth was the better player. And what did being women have to do with it? She was better than any male player in America. She remembered the Life interviewer and the questions about her being a woman in a man’s world. To hell with her; it wouldn’t be a man’s world when she finished with it.

Related Characters: Beth Harmon, Vasily Borgov
Related Symbols: Pills/Alcohol
Page Number: 185
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 14 Quotes

At one table where the position looked interesting, she stopped for a moment. It was the Richter-Rauzer, from the Sicilian. She had written a small piece on it for Chess Review a few years before, when she was sixteen. The men were playing it right, and Black had a slight variation in his pawns that she had never seen before, but it was clearly sound. It was good chess. First-class chess, being played by two old men in cheap working clothes. The man playing White moved his king’s bishop, looked up at her and scowled. For a moment she felt powerfully self-conscious among all these old Russian men with her nylons and pale-blue skirt and gray cashmere sweater, her hair cut and shaped in the proper way for a young American girl, her feet in pumps that probably cost as much money as these men used to earn in a month.

Related Characters: Beth Harmon, Vasily Borgov
Page Number: 222
Explanation and Analysis:

No matter how often she told herself she was as good as any of them, she felt with dismay that those men with their heavy black shoes knew something she did not know and never would know. She tried to concentrate on her own career, her quick rise to the top of American chess and beyond it, the way she had become a more powerful player than Benny Watts, the way she had beaten Laev without a moment of doubt in her moves, the way that, even as a child, she had found an error in the play of the great Morphy. But all of it was meaningless and trivial beside her glimpse into the establishment of Russian chess, into the room where the men conferred in deep voices and studied the board with an assurance that seemed wholly beyond her.

Related Characters: Beth Harmon, Benny Watts, Vasily Borgov, Laev
Page Number: 227
Explanation and Analysis:

They went on together, exploring possibilities, following out line after line, for almost an hour. Benny was amazing. He had worked out everything; she began to see ways of crowding Borgov, finessing Borgov, deceiving him, tying up his pieces, forcing him to compromise and retreat.

Finally she looked at her watch and said, “Benny, it’s nine-fifteen here.”

“Okay,” he said. “Go beat him.”

Related Characters: Beth Harmon (speaker), Benny Watts (speaker), Jolene DeWitt, Vasily Borgov
Page Number: 237
Explanation and Analysis:

The applause began. She took the black king in her hand and turned to face the auditorium, letting the whole massive weight of the ovation wash over her. People in the audience were standing, applauding louder and louder. She received it with her whole body, feeling her cheeks redden with it and then go hot and wet as the thunderous sound washed away thought.

And then Vasily Borgov was standing beside her, and a moment later to her complete astonishment he had his arms spread and then was embracing her, hugging her to him warmly.

Related Characters: Beth Harmon, Vasily Borgov
Related Symbols: The Queen’s Gambit
Page Number: 242
Explanation and Analysis: