CHESS
GOOD Chess players are always portrayed as upper class. (Go to any tournament and see how many rich guys there are there. NONE! They're too busy chasing women and driving fast cars to play chess.)
Chess players in movies are always all around brilliant and charming people. (With very few exceptions, REAL chess players are introverted and so involved with chess they have little time to WASTE pursuing anything as trivial as LOVE, A PROFESSION, or SOCIAL GRACES. Exception: Computers! Most Chess players are, or will become, Computer nurds).
Great Chess players are always honored to play on some rich guy's fancy Philipino Art Set. (In reality, better players are almost always adament about playing on a plain, unadorned wood or plastic "Staunton" set. No red or blue pieces, no ceramic or metal, no elephants for rooks.)
The board is usually set up wrong, with the black square at the players lower right, or with one or both of the King/Queen set up backwards. (WHITE SQUARE GOES ON THE PLAYERS RIGHT. QUEENS on thier own color: white QUEEN on white, black QUEEN on black.)
Supposedly brilliant players usually miss one move checkmates in critical games. This is akin to a professional race car driver backing his station wagon into the garage door.
On the other hand, good players are often portrayed as seeing 15 or 20 moves ahead in detail from a middle game, when there are still many pieces on the board. (One could more easily predict the next president and all 535 congressmen correctly before the election. In the End Game, when the number of pieces is limited, looking ahead often becomes a question of counting moves, who can get to the critical square first, or of very limited numbers of moves, and is more feasible.)
Beginners usually beat experienced players, as a mechanism for showing the neophyte's native brilliance. (This is about as common as a tall, athletic man who's never seen a basketball beating an NBA player in one-on-one. It could happen, if the pro had a really bad day, but who would you bet on?)
Players who are really behind (have lost more pieces) come up with brilliant ways to win anyway. (If they're so good, how did they get behind in the first place?)