[1] In some editions, the title is used for a collection that also includes "Amok", "Burning Secret", "Fear", and "Letter From an Unknown Woman".

[2] An anonymous narrator opens the story by describing the boarding of a passenger liner traveling from New York to Buenos Aires.

After absorbing every single move in the book, he began to play against himself, developing the ability to separate his psyche into two personas.

Dr B. agrees, as he wants to know if his chess ability was real or only a self delusion, but warns that he must not be allowed to play a second game.

Thousands of monarchists were executed or sent to concentration camps, and the pretender to the throne, Otto von Habsburg, fled to the United States, being sentenced to death in absentia by the Nazis.

[3] Although the story's game—and its position at the critical moment—are not described in full, the given details (and potential variation) are identical with the real game mentioned by Dr B., played between Alekhine and Bogoljubow, following 38. d6.

Both in its original German text[6] and also in later translations,[3] The Royal Game makes use of algebraic notation to describe chess moves.

During the 1970s and 1980s, algebraic notation was gradually accepted in the English-speaking world and standardized by FIDE as the proper method for recording chess games.

[8] The Royal Game was also the inspiration for the 2021 Philipp Stölzl film Chess Story, originally titled Schachnovelle.

[9][10] In 2024 Jason Kouchak performed the world premiere of his composition The Royal Game at the opening of the 45th Chess Olympiad in Budapest.

[12] The story was the basis of the production 64 Squares from the Rhum and Clay Theatre Company presented at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August 2015.

Most of the movie is set on the last refugee train leaving the country as the 1956 Revolution is being crushed by the invading Soviet army.

However, not everything is as it seems: the chess book he manages to steal was planted deliberately to induce his schizophrenia and break him mentally, while Czentovic is also deeply involved in this plot.