Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine

I'm not sure who this movie is targeting. There are interesting tidbits concerning the history of the challenge to make a chess machine. These might intrigue both chess fans and non-fans alike, though much more could be made of this, as the history is richer than even this film implies. More could also be made of the history between Kasparov and his arch-rival Karpov (two almost perfectly matched players, though you'd never guess from this movie). More could be made about the connection between chess champions and paranoia, or between chess and politics in the USSR (a connection which makes one understand better why chess players are so paranoid).

Instead, the makers of this film push the silly idea that IBM's Deep Blue beat Kasparov in '97 because of human intervention (ie, IBM cheated). The film bases this on one piece of evidence: Kasparov believes his loss in game two of the match was the result of a move that no computer would ever make. This is made all the sillier because a typical home chess program (Fritz 7) makes the very same move as Deep Blue after only a moment's thought. The film also claims that IBM never released the logs of Deep Blue's analysis after the game (just go to IBM's historical site concerning this match, and you will see this is not accurate).

Are documentaries getting lazier with their facts, or am I just finally wising up after years of taking them at their word?

I saw the documentary, and saw the actual games in 1997.

Kasparov could surely be a fine actor, since the guy is very expressive and charismatic.

Whenever he felt good and winning, you could see it. And when he was losing and crumbling, you could see it too. Was way obvious. Like the documentary say, Kasparov would be the worst poker player in the world.

Now, did IBM cheat?

Who knows. Anything is possible

Arguments against it: Kasparov could've taken for granted Deep Blue's playing antics as the one of a normal computer, and since IBM had a grandmaster chess player advising the programmers, it's not so wild to conceive that they managed to program Deep Blue to be able to spot traps like the one Kasparov set up that wouldv'e nailed any other computer. And he's a paranoid (coming from the U.R.S.S. no one can blame him), since chess is also psychologic warfare, IBM surely did it's best to psyche out Kasparov and play his paranoid assumptions.

Arguments for it: Kasparov won fist game easy, but lost second when Deep Blue didn't take a bait a compute would've taken. Maybe losing the first game was intended to lower Kasparov's defenses so he would try a play like that, and there Deep Blue would surprise him, psyche him out and steamroll. But that's a human strategy, not a machine's (the computer only knows the game in front of it, doesn't know there are six games total, so it would NEVER sacrifice one to try to surprise Kasparov in the next one).

Also IBM,s attitude, while could be attributed to psyching out Kasparov (fueling his paranoia), looked totally like a cheater's conduct. Also when they won (no rematch, no further research, dismantling of Deep Blue) doesn't look like honest behavior (first truly artificial intelligence? Who would NOT follow through with research?), but like a cheater who won and now has to skip town before he's discovered.

And, the final nail: Why shouldn't IBM cheat? To IBM, it's nothing but a marketing stunt, nothing else. The whole point was not to beat Kasparov or improve artificial intelligence (or they would've continued the work on Deep Blue, published the groundbreaking work, patented programming code, etc), but only to improve stock value and reposition themselves on the market. So why not cheat if necessary? Like a company would be above that (Enron, etc.) or anything for that matter to increase profit.

But since there's no way to verify what Deep Blue did (thanks to IBM, like e-voting paperless machines, "trust us"), we'll never know...

I was very much entertained by this film, which I saw at the 2003 Toronto International Film Festival. I was also disappointed; it lacked the objectivity I expect in a documentary. Overall it presented too much imagery, and not enough facts to satisfy my desire to know more about what "really happened" during May of 1997.

The film recounts the 1997 chess rematch between Gary Kasparov and IBM's "Deep Blue" computer. Much of the film describes and investigates the aftermath of one key event that occurred during the match. During the second game, the computer played a chess move that surprised the entire chess community, including Kasparov. Kasparov was in disbelief a computer would be capable of the style of play corresponding with the move, and lost the game. Afterwards he accused the IBM team of cheating (through human intervention). IBM denied the accusation.

While this film will be of particular interest to chess fans, I believe it is still accessible to those without chess knowledge (I know the rules and have played some games of chess so I could be mistaken). Any chess understanding necessary to understand the critical "move" is explained by various people in non-chess terms. In my option, the interesting stuff is not on the chess board anyway.

Kasparov really fills the screen. He is certainly very engaging. As too are most of the other people he shares the screen with.

Throughout the film, scenes are connected with images invoking an 18th century chess playing machine called "The Turk". This "machine" is now known to be an illusion; a human operator was making the decisions during games. Other scenes are connected with short haunting stills of hallways, presumably at the IBM research centre where "Deep Blue" was created.

I found these scenes to be tiresome after the third iteration. In the case of "The Turk", I don't know if they were intended to reflect the "mystery" of the cheating accusation, but as some of the images clearly show a human operating the machine, it left little room for doubt in my mind that these were intended to in some way support the cheating accusation. In the case of the "spooky hallways" images, again, they suggested to me that the filmmaker supports in some sense the accusation.

I wish more time was spent presenting the IBM side - especially more screen time with Joel Benjamin, the chess expert on the IBM team most qualified to defend IBM's assertion that the machine was capable of playing as it did during the second game of the match.

After the film's screening, the director, Mr. Vikram Jayanti answered some questions from the audience. During this session, he first made it clear he had no option if IBM "cheated" or not. In answering a subsequent question, while not directly stating it, his comments made it seem that he did in fact think IBM cheated. This pretty much reflected what I experienced during the movie. I wished if he really thought that IBM cheated, he would have been more clear, and more fully explored the facts.

In 1997 the world of flesh suffered a major body blow when it was announced that chess Grandmaster Gary Kasparov, perhaps the greatest player in the history of the game, had been trounced by a tool shed. A rather advanced variation, granted; IBM's supercomputer Deep Blue – designed especially, it seemed, to tip latent paranoiacs over the edge. Had we genuinely inched that much closer to Jimmy Cameron's dystopian vision of a machine-run planet? Or were there cruder, more political ramifications at work? (i.e. were Deep Blue's programmers a bunch of cheating brigands?). Kasparov, who compared IBM to Enron, and the outcome with Maradona's 'hand of God' goal certainly thinks so and, superficially, the evidence appears compelling: with Apple taking the market lead, IBM were desperate to win at any price, and thus raise their profile. Whatever, it worked; the next day their stock share jumped 15%. IBM refused to allow anyone to inspect Deep Blue or its printouts, and dismantled it as soon as the game was over. But the real controversy centred on Round 2, during which Deep Blue made a risky – and suspiciously 'human' move – having hitherto played with number-crunching logic. Ranged against all this is the fact that Kasparov has an ego the size of the Matterhorn, and more chips on his shoulders than a tree surgeon. For Gary's been here before: in 1985, he claimed the Soviets, who'd looked down on him as an Armenian Jew, had used dirty tricks during his match with their champion Anatoly Karpov… For a documentary about such a cerebral, closeted subject, Game Over progresses like a taut little thriller, ultimately yielding more questions than answers, to leave you wondering long after the credits.

Not sure why everyone is saying that this is biased. There was lots of screen time for IBM. Their reasoning for concealing everything was pretty weak in my opinion. Legal mumbo jumbo about private vs public matches, absurd excuses about concealing code and game logs. Not on the up and up in the least. The movie itself was a fascinating discussion about the nature of corporate PR and the possible taking advantage of a tightly controlled publicity campaign. They made it seem like everything was out in the open, but if you look a layer below, the signs of opaqueness are, at the least, concerning. Engineers being allowed to tinker in between games, putting the computer in a locked room, refusing to display code or log files, immediately abandoning a rematch and destroying the computer. The IBM engineer in the movie even seemed to be gaslighting and turning the screw deeper on film. He relished in the controversy and mind games. If that is the man behind deep blue, I would be very concerned. He seemed like a sociopath. But that's just my two cents. If they played it fair, they certainly didn't behave like they did after the fact. Let alone the suspicious mistakes mixed with brilliant moves in game 1 and 2. The movie is fascinating and less biased than people give credit for. The turk B Roll is a bit gratuitous, but overall, IBM got to march out their weak excuses for hiding and controlling everything. The upside for them was way too high to not make all the circumstantial evidence baseless. Its a must see if you are a chess fan.