In GM Stan Vaughan's 2010 award winning novel, Paul Morphy, Confederate Spy, contrary to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's stories that Sherlock Holmes never played chess while arch nemesis Moriarty did (A sure sign of a scheming mind, Watson) the author recounted that Sherlock Holmes was taught chess by the greatest chess player in history, Paul Morphy, while as a nine year old in Paris 1863 while Sherlock's father, in the British intelligence was there.

In the new movie, Sherlock Holmes, Game of Shadows (opening December 16, 2011, the movie takes the proposition that while Sir Arthur Conan Doyle never showed Sherlock Holmes as playing chess, somehow he had acquired the knowledge and skills to defeat Moriarity in a chess match near the end of the movie prevailing over Moriarity one of the world's best chess players.