'Rematch' Miniseries Revisits Famous Kasparov vs. Deep Blue Chess Match

In 1997, the world watched in amazement as the world chess champion, GM Garry Kasparov, lost to IBM's chess-playing supercomputer, Deep Blue, in a high-profile chess match. Now, the most famous "man vs. machine" battle in history—Kasparov vs. Deep Blue—is the subject of a miniseries called Rematch. 

• Deep Blue: The Match
• Deep Thinking: The Aftermath
• Rematch: The Miniseries
• Review by Peter Doggers
• Conclusion

Deep Blue: The Match

Why is the series called Rematch instead of Match? Because Kasparov's first run-in with a chess computer did not come in 1997. In 1989, the program that became Deep Blue was known as Deep Thought, and Kasparov won a match against it in a 2-0 sweep. In 1996, with the engine now known as Deep Blue, Kasparov won another match, this time by a 4-2 score. Deep Blue actually won the first game of the 1996 match, but the overall result went Kasparov's way, and the world moved on. 

In 1997, Deep Blue won more than a game, but it didn't seem that would be the case initially, as Kasparov won the first contest this time. The computer came right back, though, and won the second contest. Three draws followed, leading up to the most sensational—and last—game in the Kasparov-Deep Blue saga. Kasparov shocked everyone by playing an opening he knew to be objectively dubious because he didn't expect the computer to know the best way to react like a human would.

But it did, and Kasparov resigned after just 19 moves.

Deep Thinking: The Aftermath

Deep Blue had won (and would never play again). Kasparov would allege that human interference during the match, rather than the artificial intelligence itself, had been the decisive factor in his loss in game two. Controversy reigned for years afterward, coming to a head with the sensationalist 2003 documentary Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine.

In recent years, Kasparov has not only accepted the results of the 1997 match, he has, in some sense, embraced them. In 2017, he wrote a book called Deep Thinking, which was about artificial intelligence more generally, but based in part on his experience in 1997. In the book, while admitting that going back over his match with the computer was "a painful process," Kasparov would also write: "My loss to Deep Blue was also a victory for humans , its creators and everyone who benefits from our technological leaps... The machines work for us, after all" ("after all" in the sense of an unexpected outcome, not for emphasis).

By that point, it had been 20 years since the match. It has now been more than 25 years since, but interest has not declined.

Rematch: The Miniseries

Now, in 2024, the Kasparov–Deep Blue match has been dramatized for the screen in a psychological thriller. In the six-part miniseries, Rematch, Christian Cooke plays Kasparov and Sarah Bolger an IBM executive. The English-language show was produced in France. Promotional materials refer to "Two brains, face to face. A man against an empire. This human vs. machine battle will forever change the perception of artificial intelligence."

As of publication of this article in October 2024, Rematch is available in Europe on Arte in France while expected to be available soon on HBO Europe, and on Disney+ in the United Kingdom.

Review by Peter Doggers

Warning: the following review by our senior contributor Peter Doggers contains spoilers.

Four years after the Netflix miniseries The Queen's Gambit hit TV screens worldwide, another big, chess-themed production is being launched, and it is great too. While it may not reach the same Queen's Gambit level of popularity, Rematch has some of the same qualities: excellent production (Bruno Nahon's Unité, with Yan England as the director and Jérôme Sabourin as the director of photography), a great story that is loosely following the facts (scenario: André Gulluni), and damn good acting. Besides, this one is based on true events.

According to Variety, the series has been sold to major outlets around the world, including HBO Europe for Spain, Portugal, the Nordics, Iceland, Baltics, Central Europe, Greece, and the Netherlands, while U.K. viewers will find it on Disney+ and in France (where it is currently available on Arte's website).

Older chess fans might be especially interested in checking how accurately the series follows what really happened in 1996-97, but are advised to let go of that. Already in the first episode we see things move in a different direction, we see that names (except that of Deep Blue, Kasparov, and his mother Klara) have been changed, and we see the occasional cringy scene (e.g. the nonsensical notion that, after a complete reprogramming of Deep Blue, the computer "is now using brute force").

But it doesn't matter. Once you accept that you are watching a dramatized version of the Kasparov vs. Deep Blue battle and you let yourself be taken away, into the story and into the minds of the different characters, you'll enjoy Rematch tremendously. It does help that Christian Cooke (That Dirty Black Bag) does an excellent job in playing Kasparov.

"I’ve seen a few videos of Garry," Cooke said about his preparation. "When he enters a room, he has a presence about him and people turn their heads and they’re just aware that he’s in there. I just wanted to try and have that directness. It’s important to grab hold of a few traits and try and identify the spirit of him, and communicate his spirit, his drive, his ambition. What was at the heart of him, the essence of him. I think we’re trying to communicate some of that power, some of the force that he is."

Cooke's hair needed to be dyed much darker than it usually is, and to make it curly took an hour and a half every day. He was also wearing dark contacts to make his eyes more similar to Kasparov's, and he wears (often three-piece) suits in 1990s style, so slightly baggy.

"I am not trying to imitate, I think that would be a danger," Cooke noted, "but there are things that you want to bring in the performance, things that I’ve seen him do at the chessboard. I just thought it was quite interesting and quite fun for people to recognize."

Kasparov meets his main antagonist early in the series: Deep Blue's main programmer Ren Guan Lin, called P.C. (for "perpetually cringy," a nickname he earned in high school). This character, played by Orion Lee ("First Cow"), clearly references the real mind behind Deep Blue, Feng-hsiung Hsu, who was called C.B. (Crazy Bird).

P.C. is put forward as the typical, socially-awkward computer nerd, but he is also depicted, in the series, as the one person who wanted to play the 1997 match fairly, having conscientious objections to the shady practices that his company follows in the story. ("I feel like a pawn in a game where the rules have changed and no one has told me what they are!" he says in episode five.) Ultimately, Kasparov and P.C. have in common that they both want to see what the AI is truly capable of: the scientific experiment.

P.C. is also presented as someone who humanizes Deep Blue. He calls it "my baby" and when movers are pushing the big machine into a room, he shouts to them: "No, she doesn’t like that! She is extremely sensitive." The humming sound and the swirling circle of lights on the side of the machine adds to the idea of Deep Blue having its own consciousness, similar to HAL 9000's red light bulb in 2001: A Space Odyssey, the famous 1968 film adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke's novel by chess-lover Stanley Kubrick.

An important character is Garry's mother Klara who, just like in real life, was always traveling with her son, partly as his manager but basically helping him with everything. She is played by the Danish actress Trine Dyrholm ("The Legacy"), who said about her role:

"I think that being so talented like Garry, it must bring a special kind of loneliness to the table and I think she knows that, she recognizes it. She knows that she can’t do anything about it. She can embrace it. She can be there and I think she will never leave him. I read a beautiful letter that the real Garry Kasparov wrote, the tribute to my mother when she died. It was so respectful and so beautiful. So in a way, this gave me this belief in what a beautiful relationship this was."

There is also Paul Nelson, a chess grandmaster (modeled after GM Joel Benjamin) who helps P.C. with chess strategies. Other characters in the story are harder to recognize, or might have been made up completely, while some are missing. Kasparov's long-time second GM Yury Dokhoian, for example, is not there, the German computer expert Frederic Friedel is only briefly seen as himself in a TV interview from back then, and we don't get to see commentators GM Yasser Seirawan and GM Maurice Ashley (although we do get to hear their voices at some point.)

In a way, Kasparov's true rival in this story is Helen Brock (Sarah Bolger, "The Tudors"), IBM's VP of Research and Development. She is the one mainly responsible for the match taking place and under pressure from the CEO himself to make it a success, and stop the company's stock from continuously going down. She is presented as a strong woman who combines her private life (husband, toddler) with her stressful business career, a balancing act only the viewers get to see. She is both feminine and severe. Eventually, she seems to become a victim of the money-making business that she is in as she damages her marriage and loses her job, a mirror to Deep Blue's decisive sacrifice in game six.

The series actually starts in 1996, when Kasparov won the first match against Deep Blue 4-2. That was in Philadelphia, which he calls the city of Rocky Balboa. This theme of the underdog boxer, and the famous scene of him running through the city while training for his match with Apollo Creed, seems to have inspired a scene in Rematch where we see Kasparov running through the streets of New York, cheered on by many fans.

But most of all, Rematch captures the essence of what happened in 1997 (with episodes 2-6 focusing on that rematch): the psychological struggles Kasparov went through, which ultimately led to him losing a match for the first time in his life, and becoming the first world champion to lose to a machine.

To deliver the psychology, the story even goes back to Kasparov's youth, with touching scenes of his dying father (Kim Weinstein in reality, who sadly died of lymphatic sarcoma aged 39, not long before Kasparov's eighth birthday). There is also a side story about Klara trying to see her granddaughter, which references Kasparov's real daughter Polina from his first wife Masha.

Mostly, it's the psychological warfare with IBM that is put forward very convincingly. The tension, the cinematography, and the buildup to Deep Blue playing the surprisingly human move 37.Be4 in game two is very well done – btw you can find all six games for replay here! – and rightly presented as one of the key moments (like in The Queen's Gambit, all the actual chess is genuine and flawlessly presented) – just like early internet users discovering and discussing Deep Blue's error at the end of that game, after which Kasparov erroneously resigned, and his manager Roger Laver (Aidan Quinn, Elementary) continuously asking IBM for analytical data.

Sure, chess fans will have their moments of bewilderment for seeing things that just don't make much sense. Kasparov buying all the computers from a local computer store and playing some kind of computer simul in his hotel room to "prepare strategy" (saying the line "too weak, too slow" that GM Magnus Carlsen once said to GM Laurent Fressinet!) and later using these computers to play amateurs from all over the world over the internet as his final training for game six as he is "looking for a strategy." What?

But these moments are rare and unimportant, and countered by lots of nice details that did happen: the giant billboards in New York City with Kasparov's portrait (in this case Cooke's) and the tag line "How do you make a computer blink?", the beautiful remake of the wooden, digital clock that was used at the time, the animated pieces showing Kasparov's calculation process, the globe that his father once gave him and he always kept, and the opening Kasparov and Paul play in a blitz game in one of the final scenes: a Berlin Engame!

What stands out is a well-produced series telling a story that further cements the importance of the Kasparov-Deep Blue matches and makes it part of cinematic popular culture. The series, which won the International Competition grand prize at the 2024 Series Mania festival in Lille, France in March of this year, references the importance of this match in the history of AI, and shows how it was looked at back then and now. 

"What it’s about, I think in spirit, is the idea of... more for tomorrow, and the idea of creating something that excites us and scares us: technology and all the things that we now live with every day," said Bolger, the actress playing Brock. "Rematch is a show about tomorrow and it’s a show about fighting and belief in yourself. It’s also a show about chess and I think whilst many people know how to play chess, this is a really sexy way to teach people about chess and I really love that."

Even this author (Peter Doggers), who has been around for a while and did lots of research on Kasparov-Deep Blue for his book, was captivated by Rematch. I love it too.

Conclusion

It's no wonder the world remains enthralled by the Kasparov-Deep Blue match, enough to support a series like Rematch. Artificial intelligence only becomes more important as time goes on, and chess was one of the first dominos to fall in the idea that computers would become more efficient than humans in various fields. 

Have you seen or do you want to see Rematch? Do you have any memories of Kasparov-Deep Blue or first learning about it? Let us know in the comments!