There is an old aphorism that claims reality is weirder than fiction but, like most aphorisms, it is mostly bullshit. Take, for example, our subject for today. Copycat is a movie from 1995 about a serial killer who murders people and stages the crime scene to look like those America’s most famous serial killers.1 The main protagonist is Helen Hudson, an agoraphobic criminologist who has the unfair benefit of being played by Sigourney Weaver. Some forty minutes into the movie, she’s playing chess online, using a very strange user interface called Chess Demon.
Her opponent uses the incredibly clever and original username “Czech mate”, but the punishment he so richly deserves for that will probably have to wait: he has black in what is apparently, and against all common sense, the following position:2
I’m not a hundred percent sure about the identities of the pieces on black’s king’s side. But even in the best case that the bishop on g8 is some other piece, this only means that the position is ridiculous instead of ludicrous. Still, the scene gets less plausible from here on.
There seems to be some chat function which Helen uses to spur her opponent to move. But then she moves herself — and the position has suddenly changed dramatically:
Again, I’m not entirely sure about the identities of the piece son black’s king’s side, particularly the piece on g7. But white is obviously winning. She plays Qxc4, which is fine, but just about every other move would have been fine, too.
At this point, she gets an e-mail with a creepy video in attachment.3 I suspect it’s a ploy from her opponent, to distract her. And it works. Apparently, the only thing it takes to make miss Hudson leave her game is a little serial killer going around. Bah.
Realism:1/5 & 2/5 The first diagram is as bad as it can get without being illegal. The second one has some vaguely plausible elements, which earns it an extra point..
Probable winner: In the first diagram white is much worse. In the second one, she’s much better, but she seems to abandon it. So black probably wins.
1. [Copycat, therefore, has quite a unique premise, which contradicts the title.] ↩
2. [I copied the diagrams from here.] ↩
3. [Which she just opens! What are these movies teaching our children?!] ↩