Beth Harmon becomes an orphan when her parents are killed in an automobile accident. At eight years old, she is placed in an orphanage in Mount Sterling, Kentucky, where the children are given tranquilizers twice a day. Plain and shy, she learns to play chess from the janitor in the basement and discovers she is a chess genius. Penniless and desperate to learn more, she steals a chess magazine and enough money to enter a chess tournament. She also steals some of her foster mother's tranquilizers to which she is becoming addicted. At thirteen she wins the Chess Tournament. By the age of sixteen she is competing in the U.S. Open Championship and, like Fast Eddie, she hates to lose. By eighteen she is the U.S. Champion. Then she goes to Russia to face the Russians.