Poole versus HAL 9000

Poole vs. HAL 9000 is a chess game depicted in the 1968 science fiction film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Astronaut Frank Poole (White) plays the supercomputer HAL 9000 (Black) using a video screen as a chessboard. Each player takes turns during a game in progress, making their moves orally using descriptive notation and natural language. Poole resigns the game once HAL indicates a certain path to checkmate; however, the move which HAL suggests Frank might make is not forced. Stanley Kubrick, director of 2001, was an avid chess player.

The game is shown continuously and legibly for several seconds in a single shot. The board positions and moves made are identical with the conclusion of a real game: Roesch–Schlage, Hamburg 1910, which was reported in a 1955 collection of short games by Irving Chernev.^[1] Chess writers have therefore attributed the fictional game fragment to the real one, equating the two and suggesting that the former derived from the latter.