Just finished the book, and I enjoyed it, as I suspect anyone who liked the show would. The show is faithful to the book in its broad outlines, but there are some relatively significant differences.
In addition to the NSFW point noted above,
- Ferguson, the pill-distributing guy at the orphanage, doesn’t quote plays or literature at all
- There’s nothing about Beth’s mom’s high IQ, apparent mental illness, the attempted contact one night by (presumably) Beth’s biological father, her outreach to whoever that was in the big house while Beth sat in the car, or the implication that she committed suicide by car crash
- Beth doesn’t imagine ghostly chess pieces moving around on the ceiling at any time
- She doesn’t have a brief department-store encounter with her former high school classmate who’s already had kids
- She doesn’t go on a bender after Mrs. Wheatley dies (that comes later), and is never so far gone in her drinking and pill abuse that she’s ever sprawled out on the front lawn
- There’s no awkward scene with Beth, Townes and the other guy in the Vegas hotel room (there is no other guy, and actually no hint that Townes is gay or bi)
- There’s a much greater focus on Borgov in Beth’s and Bennie’s studying in his skeevy NYC apartment
- Beth doesn’t have a booze-fueled one-night-stand with the brunette in Paris, oversleep or show up flustered for her match with Borgov (in fact, she plays extremely well, having intensively studied his past games for months beforehand, but still loses to him)
- There’s much less pill abuse by Beth overall
- There’s more detail on a chess tournament she attends in San Francisco
- She writes at least one article for a national chess magazine
- She loses her Kentucky state title when she’s recently been drinking too much and loses her self-confidence, even wondering if booze has damaged her ability to think effectively about chess
- Mr. Shaibel, the janitor, dies before Beth goes to Moscow (but she still never repaid the $10 he lent her, or had any contact with him after she left the orphanage, which still sticks in my craw)
- Jolene from the orphanage earned her college degree in Phys Ed, is an excellent all-around athlete, and through a rigorous fitness regimen (which Beth resents at first) gets Beth in much better physical shape before she goes to Moscow
- The climactic tournament in Moscow is played in an enormous auditorium before a huge crowd that only gets bigger, filling the aisles as the tournament progresses
- Beth goes for a walk during a break, and is recognized and cheered by old Russian men who are playing chess in a park
- Beth nearly loses the game just before her big climactic game with Borgov, but pulls off a come-from-behind win
- Booth, the State Department (or CIA?) guy sent with her to Moscow, appears much less than in the miniseries
- Townes doesn’t come to Moscow
- Beth, in her impromptu press conference there, blasts the orphanage director, Mrs. Deardorff, by name for punishing her by keeping her from playing chess, despite Mrs. D. having provided her - against orphanage rules - with Jolene’s phone number just a few months earlier when Beth really wanted to get in touch with her
- After her big win, there’s a party at the U.S. Embassy which bores her, and she leaves early
- She then returns to the same Moscow park as before and cheerily offers to play chess with an old man there, just as in the show