The world’s top chess player defeated ChatGPT in an online match in only 53 moves.
Magnus Carlsen won the game without losing a single piece, while ChatGPT lost all its pawns, screenshots the Norwegian grandmaster shared on X on July 10 showed. ChatGPT resigned the match.
“I sometimes get bored while travelling,” Carlsen captioned the post.
“That was methodical, clean, and sharp. Well played!” ChatGPT said to him, according to the screenshots Carlsen posted.
Carlsen told the AI bot that he thought it “played really well in the opening,” but ultimately “failed to follow it up correctly.” He went on to ask ChatGPT for feedback on his performance.
“Your play showed several strong traits,” ChatGPT told him. It complimented him for his opening, patience, tactical awareness, and endgame technique. It estimated his classical strength to be around 1800-2000 FIDE or USCF, though the AI bot acknowledged it could be higher.
Both FIDE and USCF ratings calculate chess players’ skill levels based on their performance in official tournaments using the Elo rating system, which takes into account the outcomes of matches and the rating of each player going in. Under the system, matches with unexpected results—such as those in which lower-ranked players defeat higher-ranked ones—have a greater impact on players’ ratings.
FIDE ratings are managed by global chess’s governing body, the International Chess Federation (FIDE), and USCF ratings by the United States Chess Federation. Carlsen’s actual FIDE rating is 2839, making him the top-rated player in the world.
Carlsen is widely considered to be the best chess player in history. The 34-year-old has won the World Chess Championship five times, most recently in 2021. He has not competed in the championship since then, previously saying, “I don’t have any inclination to play” in it.
About a week after Carlsen posted that he beat ChatGPT in the online chess match, he lost the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour in Las Vegas to teenage Indian grandmaster Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa.
Carlsen recently faced controversy after wearing jeans at the World Rapid and World Blitz championships in December, for which he received a $200 fine. FIDE requested that he change in adherence with its formal dress code, or risk being disqualified from the competition. But Carlsen withdrew from the event. The grandmaster later told The Athletic that he forgot to change his jeans after a meeting he attended before the match.
“I put on a nice shirt and a jacket, and when they told me that I shouldn’t be wearing jeans, I thought, ‘Well, yeah, sorry, I just forgot to change,’” he told The Athletic. “The main fact was they wanted players to be presentable at this tournament, even though it’s a 200-player tournament and people come from a lot of different financial backgrounds. I definitely met the standard of smart casual. To disqualify me over that was so stupid.”
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