Discover the true story behind this series of events that marked a turning point in human history

Discover the true story behind this series of events that marked a turning point in human history

After being awarded the Grand Prix at the Seria Mania festival last March, Rematch appeared on our screens at ARTE. This Franco-Hungarian production, created by Ian Inglis, Andre Gulun and Bruno Nahon, tells the story of the legendary duel between chess champion Garry Kasparov and an IBM supercomputer named Deep Blue.

The 6-episode series, which should appeal to fans of chess and the Netflix series The Queen’s Game, is hosted by British actor Christian Cooke (Cemetery Junction, Love, Rosie, The Oath) and a variety of TV stars such as Sarah Bolger (The Tudors, Once Upon A Time, Mayans MC), Trine Dyrholm (The Heirs), Aidan Quinn (Elementary), Tom Austin (The Royals), Luke Pasqualino (Skins, Shadow and Bone) and Orion Lee (Tyrant).

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You should know that Rematch is inspired by a real story. Although the series is fictional, it is quite close to reality. Garry Kasparov, one of the best chess players in history, took on the Deep Blue supercomputer, developed by a group of IBM engineers led by Feng-Hsyun Hsu, in 1996 and won the match.

A year later, IBM offered him a rematch after redesigning the machine, later named Deeper Blue. It is this conflict that is at the heart of the Rematch series, as this scientific experiment becomes a fascinating battle against man.

This improved version of Deep Blue, which can calculate 100 to 300 million positions per second, destroyed the world champion. This is the first time a computer has officially defeated a chess master.

During the game, Garry Kasparov was interrupted by a sudden computer crash. The champion didn’t understand the move, which he thought was a move suggested by the human grandmaster, he tried to thwart it in vain. But as the series explains, this famous move was actually a computer error in the machine, not a programmed strategy of artificial intelligence.

Garry Kasparov and computers

If the matches between Deep Blue and Deeper Blue are best remembered, it was not the first time that Garry Kasparov had to touch computers for chess games. In 1985, the chess master developed a passion for computer games by participating in the development of Chessbase, which he later used for training.

Four years later, he had already met Deep Thought, a supercomputer capable of calculating 720,000 moves per second, and easily defeated him. Garry Kasparov would meet various chess computer programs over the years before the legendary Deep Blue and Deeper Blue matches.

Defeat to Deeper Blue did not deter Garry Kasparov as he himself founded Kasparov Chess Online, an online game provider in 1999, which closed three years later due to lack of funding.

In the 2000s, the chess master played many exhibition matches against computers, most notably in 2003 against Deep Junior and the program X3D against Fritz, whose matches ended in a draw. In 2017, he opened a new portal “Master class, Kasparov teaches chess online”.

The series “Rematch” airs on Arte and is available on arte.tv.

Source: Allocine

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