When eight-year-old Beth Harmon's parents are killed in an automobile accident, she is placed in an orphanage in Mount Sterling, Kentucky. Plain and shy, Beth learns to play chess from the janitor in the basement and discovers she is a prodigy. Though penniless, she is desperate to learn more�and steals a chess magazine and enough money to enter a tournament. Beth also steals some of her foster mother's tranquilizers to which she is becoming addicted.