Film suggests that Kasparov was rooked
By John Anderson, Newsday
Sun-Sentinel, Florida
May 20 2005
Game Over: Kasparov vs. the Machine
Sunrise 11, 4321 Pine Island Road, Sunrise.
Running time: 84 minutes
Unrated: Mature theme.
Shot, edited and scored like a psychological thriller, which is
precisely what it is, Vikram Jayanti’s Game Over: Kasparov vs. the
Machine is the Gaslight of the chessboard. Was Kasparov just a
frustrated genius? Or the victim of an elaborate corporate scam?
Either way, the story behind the Kasparov-Deep Blue match of 1997 —
he beat the computer in ’96 — should be seen as a tribute to the
pugnacious grandmaster, generally acknowledged as both the greatest
who ever played the game and a perpetual outsider: That he was
an Armenian Jew playing a Russian-dominated game made his rival,
Anatoly Karpov, the establishment favorite during their glory days
under Soviet chess. Or so Kasparov thinks. Of course, he also thinks
IBM rigged the match between its computer and himself. And Jayanti’s
investigation makes a good case that it did.
To beat the reigning champ, it took a team of programmers, years
of research and a roster of consulting grandmasters. But did they
actually succeed? As Jayanti tells it — while also making world-class
chess not only digestible but appetizing for the average viewer —
it was in Game 2 of the match in New York that Deep Blue suddenly
ignored a Kasparov ploy and played like a human.
That IBM’s stock jumped 15 percent after the match — and that the
company refused a rematch — doesn’t help its case. Neither does
Jayanti’s use of Raymond Bernard’s 1927 silent The Chess Player, in
which a mysterious chess machine is found to have a human operator.
That IBM’s Dr. Murray Campbell can’t seem to get the back panel
off the retired Deep Blue for Jayanti’s camera probably is just a
coincidence. But the film is shot in such eerie, suggestive fashion,
the viewer can become susceptible to Kasparovian paranoia.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress