Frank Poole vs HAL9000

Submitted by Amnesiac on Wed, 05/21/2008 at 3:34am.

One thing I have always found annoying is the use of chess in film and television. 90% of the time either the board is not set up correctly (the black square is on whites right) or the moves people make make no sense. To increase the tension one player will suddenly smash a piece into the board and shout "CHECK" whilst the other player gasps and clutches their forehead. I don't know of anyone has overlooked a check that is fatal on the same move as you always check forcing moves first.

However there are some times when it is used well, eg the James Bond film "From Russia with love" features the conclusion of a game between Spassky and Bronstein USSR Championship, Leningrad 1960 albeit with a couple of pawns missing and the players are called Kronsteen and McAdams and also the film The Seventh seal and a few other films use chess well.

Anyway Stanley Kubrick was a big chess fan and used to play his cast before filming. In his classic film "2001: a space odyssey" there is a conclusion to a game between one of the characters Frank Poole and a computer HAL9000. Although you only see the last few moves,

through pattern recognition even I can see the Ruy Lopez has been played. People have worked out the most likely way the game went and I thought I'd show it here. The moves are all very logical and so it is quite likely that Kubrick really did come up with this game and just showed the last few moves.

At the end of the game, white is lost, however it is not mate in 2 as HAL states, there are lots of ways for white to prolong the game by not taking the queen. Is this a sign that the computer is about to breakdown? Or has HAL already started to decieve its crew?

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