When I received an email invite for a “blindfolded chess match” against Alec Baldwin, I immediately hit reply. “I would love to go”—SEND
I pulled up to the privately-emailed address earlier tonight, a spacious, very-Utah house sitting at the end of a long driveway. (Ubers were confused, but that’s nothing new this weekend. Uber chaos.)
After signing in, I was ushered into a living room, where match-goers were enjoying drinks and light bites. Then, it started.
With his drink sitting next to him, Alec readied himself for the match against the star of Netflix’s ‘Queen of Chess’—premiering here at Sundance later this week—Judit Polgár. Before blindfolding Polgár (to even the playing field), Baldwin quipped: “If I win, I get to buy Warner Brothers. If you win, you get to buy Warner Brothers,” and “I have a whole Hungarian strategy.”
Then, with a Chess.com emcee on the mic that seemed to get on Baldwin’s nerves (a hand gesture was made at one point), the match began. Baldwin bantered throughout, saying, “to be awarded the point, to make it more even…you must answer a movie trivia question…’Who directed Casablanca?’”
He put up a good fight, but the match was over before it begun. Polgár, as we’re all soon to learn in the forthcoming doc, is a chess legend. (Chess Queen!)
After the match ended, the two took questions. Baldwin talked the entertainment business: “The great thing about this business…is the people you get to meet.”
And Sundance: “I’m a huge fan of Sundance. I can’t believe Bob [Redford] is gone, he was always so kind to me.”
And later talked about his kids having a penchant for chess: “My three older boys, they play…They don’t hesitate, they give it to me…if I play chess with them…but I usually win.” Then joked: “My kids can be very cruel…We go shopping the other day, and my kids are all born and raised in Manhattan…I said, ‘I think you should get this coat in this color.’ And my third oldest son looked at me and goes, ‘What do you know, you’re from Long Island.'”
