Chess.com’s X account found itself at odds with Elon Musk this week after pushing back on the Tesla CEO’s theory about the game.
The exchange began Thursday when Musk responded to a viral X post explaining chess’s exponential branching, writing that “the actual number of moves that are not utterly stupid in chess is tiny and chess will be fully solved one day.” The @chesscom account fired back with two words: “Skill issue.”
Musk continued, replying, “Chess is hard for humans, but not for computers. One day, it will be fully solved like checkers. Between now and then, or even after, have fun. People enjoy many games/sports where machines are vastly better.”
Chess.com responded by highlighting the nearly endless number of possible games: “There are more possible chess games, by about 40 orders of magnitude, than atoms in the observable universe. To solve chess, you’d have to map all of them. Good luck.”
Musk doubled down, calling the atom comparison “an idiotic metric” and arguing that the number of legal chess positions is roughly 40 orders of magnitude smaller than the number of atoms in the observable universe. He supported his argument with a Grok-generated answer, though the response began by acknowledging that it had overstated the storage claim. Technically, both sides were discussing different figures: Chess.com referenced the possible number of chess games, a figure around 10^120 known as the Shannon number, while Musk cited the number of legal chess positions, approximately 4.6 x 10^44.
The exchange appeared to get under Musk’s skin. He ended one reply with a face-palm emoji, writing: “Here I am arguing with some random intern at a chess website.”
The admin quickly corrected him: “I’m a full-time employee.” Musk responded with a coughing emoji. Chess.com executive Daniel Rensch then publicly confirmed the employee’s status, prompting the admin to mark the moment with “thank you to Mr Bossman.”
This, unsurprisingly, isn’t Musk’s first chess-related feud. After his 2022 comments calling chess “too simple to be useful in real life,” Chess.com published a nearly 1,000-word rebuttal titled “Why Elon Musk Doesn’t — And Can’t — Play Chess,” pushing back on his claim that the game is too limiting.
