Mr. Ching, an influential man from Hong Kong, pull strings to help her as she attempts to make the final episodes of her TV series Whiz Kids World impressive in order to have a better chance of being hired by another company.

[3][4] In his book Planet Hong Kong: Popular Cinema and the Art of Entertainment, author David Bordwell wrote that Tsui Hark "took over Yim Ho's King of Chess".

"[3] Reviewer Jonathan Rosenbaum of Chicago Reader wrote, "Though writer-director Yim Ho (Homecoming) disowned this film after producer Tsui Hark took over the direction, it is still one of the most interesting and original Hong Kong pictures I've seen.

"[4] Regarding the imagery, Jeannette Delamoir wrote, "The King of Chess (1990; Hong Kong; Yim Ho and Tsui Hark) reuses newsreel footage of Red Guard rallies – set to rock music – in its comparative exploration of visuality in modern Taiwan, and in China during the Cultural Revolution.

"[8] The review website hkfilm.net gave the film a rating of 3 out of 10, calling it, "a boring and mundane morality tale that fails to get its' [sic] point across, even while delivering it with all the subtlety of a Triple H sledgehammer strike to the nether regions."

In the 1997 work Hong Kong Cinema: The Extra Dimensions, author Stephen Teo wrote, "Perhaps the most representative film of Yim's, which treats modern Chinese history as a soulsearching endeavour, is King of Chess/Qi Wang (1992).

The story deals with a 'chess king' who is sent to a labour camp during the Cultural Revolution and zig-zags to scenes in Taiwan concerning a chess prodigy who is introduced as the latest sensation in a television ratings war.