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This documentary from Vikram Jayanti looks at the 1997 New York rematch between then world chess champion Garry Kasparov and IBM computer Deep Blue. Their first match, in Philadelphia in 1996, had gone to Kasparov 4-2, but this time, after winning the first game, he was outplayed in the second, and after three games in which he was mostly on top but could only draw, he played an uncongenial opening in game six, made an elementary mistake, and lost in a miserable, mind-boggling 19 moves. With arty, almost surreal touches, Game Over gives voice to Kasparov’s belief that the computer had some human help, at least in game two, pointing at IBM’s refusal to release Deep Blue’s game analysis or to offer a rematch. Headed by American grandmaster Joel Benjamin, the IBM team members (none of them any match for Kasparov without computer help) are all nerdy smugness; American grandmaster Yasser Seirawan, on the other hand, seems the voice of reason in comments that are sympathetic to Kasparov. IBM skullduggery or no, Kasparov lost the war of nerves; his best chess would have got him at least a drawn match. It was, of course, inevitable that a computer would rise to the level of the world’s top players, and just as inevitable that once it did, humans would lose interest in it and go back to playing each other. (84 minutes)
BY JEFFREY GANTZ
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