Elon Musk Reignites Old Feud With Chess.com Over His Chess Skills

Elon Musk spent much of this week arguing with the social media manager of a chess website and, by general consensus, came off looking bad. It all began on September 3, when Musk replied to a viral post explaining how quickly chess games branch out from the opening move. His view was that the number of moves that aren't—in his words—"absolutely stupid" is minuscule, and that "someday chess will be totally solved." Chess.com responded with two words: "skill issue." What followed was a roughly 24-hour period during which the world's richest man traded messages with an anonymous account administrator; he called the person an "intern," was corrected regarding their actual role, and ultimately resorted to a scatological metaphor to illustrate a point about cosmology. This isn't their first run-in, either: the same website published an article in 2022 discussing why Musk doesn't—and can't—play chess, a piece that ran to nearly a thousand words.

Elon Musk claims that chess will be solved just like checkers, and that AI will achieve it

His claim, in itself, isn't far-fetched. Chess is difficult for humans but not for computers—he wrote—and someday it will be completely solved, just as checkers was. Checkers was "weakly solved" in 2007, with the proof showing that perfect play by both sides leads to a draw. No such proof exists for chess. Computer engines have been beating the best human players for years, but that tells us nothing about whether flawless play would result in a win for White, a win for Black, or a draw.

Chess.com highlighted the atoms; Musk, the orders of magnitude

A subsequent post from the site noted that there are more possible chess games than atoms in the observable universe—a difference of about 40 orders of magnitude—and that solving chess entails mapping them all. Musk dismissed this as incorrect, pointing out that legal chess positions fall about 40 orders of magnitude short of the number of atoms, and that an artificial superintelligence would find ways to solve and compress the problem that we would be unable to follow. Both figures are correct. Chess.com was referring to games—approximately 10^120, a figure known as the Shannon number—whereas Musk was referring to legal positions, around 4.6 x 10^44. Musk then posted a reply from Grok accompanied by laughing emojis; the situation became somewhat awkward there, as the response began by admitting that the claim regarding storage had been exaggerated. He also dismissed the comparison to atoms, noting that there are more ways to relieve oneself in a chamber pot than there are atoms in the universe, calling that metric idiotic.

The dispute between Elon Musk and Chess.com actually began in 2022

In December 2022, Musk remarked that he had played chess as a child but found it too simple for real life, citing the 8x8 board, the absence of "fog of war," the lack of technology trees, and the non-existence of random spawn points. The website’s response article pointed to castling, ‘en passant’ captures, pawn promotion, and the eight possible destination squares for the knight. At the time, Musk ignored the rebuttal; however, this week he did not. After referring to the person managing the account as "some random intern at a chess site," the account replied by clarifying that the individual was a full-time employee. Daniel Rensch, a Chess.com executive, then stepped in to confirm the administrator's status, prompting a note of thanks addressed to the "boss." A spokesperson capped off the matter by noting that "losing a Twitter argument to someone you call an intern must be infuriating."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kahekashan

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Kahekashan is a passionate technophile with a keen eye for cutting-edge gadgets, emerging technologies, and everything in the digital realm. Raised in a Defence family with strong values and a background in literature, she has consistently pursued excellence in every endeavour. Her last full-time assignment involved content writing with the Indian School of Business.

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