05/31/2026
We have to wonder why this deliberate erasure of women is still happening.
She was five years old when her brothers first put chess pieces in her hands.
They made her play goalkeeper in their football matches because she was a girl. At the chessboard, they quickly learned their mistake.
By eleven, she was beating all five of them.
Her name was Nona Gaprindashvili. And she would go on to change what chess meant for half the world — before a billion-dollar corporation tried to erase her from history.
Nona grew up in Zugdidi, a small town in Soviet Georgia, the only girl among six children. When her brother couldn't attend a tournament, the team invited Nona to take his place. On the train to Tbilisi, she defeated the team's top player.
She was twelve.
A coach spotted her. Her parents sent her to the capital to train with grandmasters. At fourteen, she reached the semi-finals of the Soviet Women's Championship. At twenty, she won the Women's Candidates Tournament.
At twenty-one, she didn't just win the Women's World Championship.
She demolished the reigning champion 9–2.
The chess world had never seen anything like it.
But Nona wasn't satisfied with a women's title.
She wanted to prove something no woman had ever proven: that she could sit across the board from the best men in the world — and win.
So she entered men's tournaments.
She faced Estonian legend Paul Keres. Serbian grandmaster Svetozar Gligorić. Latvian world champion Mikhail Tal. By 1968 alone, she had competed against 59 male players — including ten grandmasters.
She didn't just face them.
She defeated many of them.
For sixteen consecutive years, Nona held the Women's World Championship, defending her crown four times. Then in 1977, at the Lone Pine International Tournament in California, she entered the open competition — no separate women's section. Just her, against a field packed with grandmasters.
She won six games. More than anyone else in the tournament.
In the final round, she defeated an International Master to claim a share of first place.
No woman had ever won an elite open chess tournament.
Until Nona.
The following year, FIDE made history.
They awarded Nona Gaprindashvili the title of Grandmaster — not Woman Grandmaster. The same title held by Bobby Fischer. By Garry Kasparov. By every legend the chess world had ever produced.
She was the first woman to ever receive it.
She had proved everything she set out to prove at that kitchen table, age five, beating her brothers one by one.
Then, in October 2020, Netflix released The Queen's Gambit.
The series was a global phenomenon — 62 million households in a single month. Chess sets sold out worldwide. A generation of young girls fell in love with the game.
In Tbilisi, an 79-year-old woman sat watching the finale.
Her name appeared on screen.
And then came seven words that shattered something inside her.
"There's Nona Gaprindashvili, but she's the female world champion and has never faced men."
Never faced men.
The original 1983 novel the show was based on had gotten it right: Nona was described as a player who had faced Russian Grandmasters many times. Netflix's writers flipped it completely — reversing documented history and broadcasting the lie to 62 million households.
Nona contacted Netflix. She asked for a correction. An acknowledgment. A retraction.
Netflix dismissed her.
So at eighty years old, Nona Gaprindashvili did what she had always done when someone underestimated her.
She made her move.
She filed a $5 million defamation lawsuit.
Netflix argued creative fiction gives writers the right to say whatever they want. A federal judge disagreed. U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips ruled that Netflix had acted with reckless disregard for historical accuracy — using a real woman's real name to broadcast a statement that was a complete inversion of the truth.
In September 2022, Netflix settled.
The terms were private. There was no public apology.
But the truth was now on record.
Today, Nona Gaprindashvili is eighty-four years old.
She still plays competitive chess.
In 2022, at eighty-one, she won her eighth Women's World Senior Championship — more than any other player in history. The main chess palace in Tbilisi bears her name. FIDE created a Cup in her honor. She was inducted into the World Chess Hall of Fame. Parents across Georgia named their daughters Nona.
Her success didn't just inspire a generation.
It built one. Georgian women dominated international chess for decades after her — winning World Championships and Olympic gold medals, standing on a foundation she laid brick by brick.
She was never forgotten.
She simply refused to be misremembered.
Beth Harmon is fiction.
Nona Gaprindashvili is not.
She shattered barriers at twenty-one when she became world champion. She shattered them at thirty-seven when she became the first female grandmaster in history. She shattered them at eighty when she looked a billion-dollar corporation in the eye and said: you got the wrong woman.
Some people play chess.
Nona changed what the game meant for half the world.
And at eighty-four, she's still making her moves.
