Endgame is a fictional television series that premiered in March 2011. The show deals with Arkady Balagan, a former World Chess Champion who has developed severe agoraphobia ever since his fiancée (Rosemary) was killed in front of their hotel. Now, he cannot bring himself to leave the hotel, and has been living in the building for months.

From his suite, however, Balagan is still able to make a difference in the world.


He turns his chess skills into a way to help solve crimes, creating a rather unusual spin on the classic detective story.

Balagan has several allies in his crime-solving adventures. Sam Besht is a graduate student and avid chess player (he is said to have a FIDE rating over 2200) who helps Balagan in exchange for getting the former World Champion to play games with him. Alcina, a cleaning lady at the hotel, befriends Balagan and helps him gather evidence from within the hotel. Hugo, the head of hotel security, often plays an adversarial role, but also helps the grandmaster on occasion.

There’s also Danni, the hotel bartender, who proves a valuable source of information and seems to know everyone. Finally, Pippa – the younger sister of Balagan’s fiancée – works with Balagan to sole the most important crime of all to him: Rosemary’s murder.

Chess in Endgame

Not surprisingly, Endgame relies heavily on chess themes throughout the show. In fact, it probably offers more chess content than just about any other television show that I can remember (other than those strictly about chess, of course).

In many episodes, the show finds interesting ways of forcing chess into the plot. For instance, in one episode, the current World Chess Champion – a 16-year-old from Brooklyn – shows up at the hotel en route to a tournament and plays a private game with Balagan while also helping him solve a crime. A surprising number of suspects, witnesses and other characters just happen to have serious amateur backgrounds in chess – not enough to challenge Balagan, for certain, but they give the impression that club-level players a dime a dozen in the show’s universe.

Perhaps the most incredible use of chess as a plot device comes in the show’s 11th episode, “Mr. Black.” Balagan finds that a player has challenged him to five blitz games on the internet at a cost of €200 per game (one of the many ways in which Balagan has continued to earn income while trapped in the hotel). The player then announces that for every game that Balagan fails to win, he will execute one of five hostages.

Balagan is not familiar with the challenger, so it becomes evident that he is using a computer to play his moves for him. Despite this, Balagan plays passionately to save the hostages while also trying to track down the mysterious Mr. Black. For the final game, the opponent agrees to play without the computer, but against Sam instead; with a rating that would make him a FIDE Master, Mr. Black is certainly a formidable opponent.

Overall, I was pleasantly surprised at how chess was depicted in Endgame. Balagan is a little crazy, but this isn’t suggested as being a result of chess, but rather because of his fiancée’s death. Technical chess terms are often used, and while they’re not always 100% correct, they tend to at least make sense in the context they’re being thrown about.

As a show, Endgame was also fun to watch. If you don’t like mystery shows like Monk or Matlock, you won’t enjoy this program either, but for fans of the genre, it’s an interesting twist on a classic storytelling device.

Where to Watch

Endgame was originally produced for Showcase, a cable network in Canada. Those in the United States can now watch the show for free on Hulu.