Poole versus HAL 9000

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.

For relaxation he (Dave Bowman) could always engage Hal in a large number of semimathematical games, including checkers, chess, and polyominoes.

[12] Parker Brothers had planned a corresponding board game as a tie-in to the film, which was released as Universe in 1967; the cover art on the box included a still from the unused cut.

[13] Murray Campbell, a member of the team that developed the chess computer Deep Blue, contributed an article to a book exploring the scientific and cultural implications of the HAL character.

In contrast, the real computer Deep Blue used "inhuman" brute-force searching and minimax optimization to always seek the best available move.

According to Krabbé, the aesthetic consideration and the simple endgame variation announced by HAL (but not actually played) might explain the character's misuse of descriptive notation when announcing the queen's movement: "A player who would be impressed by that Queen's sacrifice, might be weak enough to make a mistake in its descriptive notation.