Chess player beat computer and was then electrocuted

Alright, my roommate just told me this one, I think its total BS, but he seemed very confident and said he read it somewhere reliable. He even tried to make a bet with me that this did indeed happen, but when he tried to find the story, he couldn't.

Anyway, his story went that in 1990 or so in the Soviet Union, a man was playing chess against a computer set up in a weird way where the man moved real chess pieces made of metal against the computer (I can't quite comprehend how the computer moved pieces, perhaps there was a virtual board as well, I don't know). The man apparently beat the computer three times in a row, and when they started the next game, his pieces became electrified and when he grabbed one, he was electrocuted and died.

Someone please tell me and prove to me (so i can win the bet) that this never happened. Unless of course it really did happen, but I just find that so hard to believe.

[Penny]

How could we prove that an event didn't take place?

Originally Posted by Penny

How could we prove that an event didn't take place?

maybe the story came from a tabloid magazine and someone could site that, i dunno, or if no one can find any info whatsoever on it, I'd say thats evidence enough that the story was made up

I googled "chess player electrocuted". I found cifferent versions of the story, all of them presented as fiction . Here is one (scroll down a little) from Weekly World News, the bad guy being the chess playing computer. In one version the victim was an American player who was killed by Russians.

[applepwnz]

It definitely sounds like something from the Weekly World News, I can just picture it being a story to frighten the flea market crowd with tales of wild technology turning on it's makers. What a world we live in when one's own com-puturr can decide to kill you whenever it feels like it!

Originally Posted by applepwnz

What a world we live in when one's own com-puturr can decide to kill you whenever it feels like it!

OMG! It's HAL!

[Fantine]

Wasn't this part of an episode of Blake's 7? I will ask my husband later--he has that show memorized.

ETA: Found it on YouTube. The opponent wasn't a computer, and he was kind of vaporized rather than electrocuted. Oh well. Linky

[diddy]

Originally Posted by applepwnz

It definitely sounds like something from the Weekly World News, I can just picture it being a story to frighten the flea market crowd with tales of wild technology turning on it's makers. What a world we live in when one's own com-puturr can decide to kill you whenever it feels like it!

It doesn't just sound like something in WWN, it just reeks of it. Ironies in life rarely happen like that.

Besides, any computer playing chess versus a computer would not have the computer move the pieces. It would just spit out teh move and somebody else would move the damn pieces. Plus how could the pieces electorcute themselves.

I know, I am over looking it.

[Tarquin Farquart]

Originally Posted by Fantine

ETA: Found it on YouTube. The opponent wasn't a computer, and he was kind of vaporized rather than electrocuted. Oh well. Linky

Fantastic, I love Blake's 7.

Originally Posted by Boomer

I can't quite comprehend how the computer moved pieces, perhaps there was a virtual board as well, I don't know

I'd swear I've seen a board that did that though. Of course it's not the 90's, and we're not talking about the sort of computer grand master's play. Possibly with magnets as I'm thinking you could still lift the pieces ?

(Of course all miraculous and amazing things are done with magnets. I saw a documentary about an event in India where one of the attractions was a wall of death - and everyone was quite convinced it was a magic trick using magnets. And were quite determined not to be taken in by the trick )

Originally Posted by Tarquin Farquart

Fantastic, I love Blake's 7.

As long as you love it in a laughing at way I'd agree. (A serious Blake 7 fan would surely be in a padded cell).

I once had to ask a shop why they had discontinued them on video (a few years back) and they just looked at me.

Victoria J

[Shnoops]

Originally Posted by Victoria J

I'd swear I've seen a board that did that though.

Yes, there are boards that move pieces themselves. I saw one a long time ago, and recently saw one in a Sharper Image catalog.

[Tarquin Farquart]

Originally Posted by Victoria J

As long as you love it in a laughing at way I'd agree. (A serious Blake 7 fan would surely be in a padded cell).

Well of course, I'm a bit young to remember it though.

This story kinda reminds me of Nabokov's The Defense. Only, in the book, the chess player has a nervous breakdown and kills himself...Eat you heart ou Bobby Fisher.

[Gayle]

I swear I read this in a book by DeMille or Patterson or one of the other writers I don't read anymore.

Originally Posted by Tarquin Farquart

Well of course, I'm a bit young to remember it though.

Never let that get in the way of bad television.

Ah, Blake 7 - showing that the future would take place entirely in disused quarries, and that people would evolve bodies that look like parsnips.

I regularly quote Blake 7, in my family when someone is being more than usually odd/pathetic we say "You're a sad man (woman) Space Commander [name]"...

Victoria J

[High Eight]

Originally Posted by Lady Luzhin

This story kinda reminds me of Nabokov's The Defense. Only, in the book, the chess player has a nervous breakdown and kills himself...Eat you heart ou Bobby Fisher.

I remember a story by Fritz Leiber in which a grandmaster dreamed each night of playing a game like chess against an alien entity for the fate of humanity. Each piece was covered with Poisonous spikes and blades - the most deadly-looking being one he called 'The Archer'. As the game progressed, night after night, dream after dream, the time when he would have to try to move The Archer came nearer and nearer......................

[Meka]

Any 007 fans out there? This vaguely reminds me of the "Domination" game from Never Say Never Again - it's a game that Bond and the villain play that seems to be one part Risk, one part Electronic Battleship, and two parts sadomasochism. During each round, the two players fight for control of random country X (assigned some monetary value to be paid to the winner in real money) and the player who is "losing" the round gets shocked by the controller, with the pain level going up the worse their "score". The object is apparently to make the pain so unbearable for the other person that they let go of the controls and thereby forfeit the round.

Honestly, the OP sounds like something out of a sci fi movie, with the evil, secretly sentient computer as the bad guy, or a spy movie, with the game being some over-elaborate torture/death machine devised by some uber-eccentric, chess-obsessed bad guy to be the instrument of his enemies' demise.

[Spikey]

Originally Posted by Tarquin Farquart

Fantastic, I love Blake's 7.

Just wanted to jump in here and profess my love for Blake's 7. And I appreciate it in both a serious and funny way. I'm collecting all the season DVD box sets. I knew the name of the episode mentioned above ('Gambit') as soon as I read it.

[blinkingblythe]

Originally Posted by Victoria J

I'd swear I've seen a board that did that though. Of course it's not the 90's, and we're not talking about the sort of computer grand master's play. Possibly with magnets as I'm thinking you could still lift the pieces

I remember that board too. I imagine it used a grid of long worm gears (like the kind used to move the laser in a CD player) that criss cross above/below each other and each moving a small electromagnet used to grip metal based pieces.

[blinkingblythe]

Originally Posted by blinkingblythe

I remember that board too. I imagine it used a grid of long worm gears (like the kind used to move the laser in a CD player) that criss cross above/below each other and each moving a small electromagnet used to grip metal based pieces.

Thinking about this, the mechanism was probaly the same as what is found in a flatbed scanner* with an electromagnet replacing the photosensor

*A flatbed scanner typicaly has a carriage that runs forward and backward with the photosensor on it moving from side to side. Using this would be much cheaper and allow smooth diagonal movement of the pieces.