Magnus Carlsen Beats ChatGPT in Chess Match Without Losing a Single Piece

Magnus Carlsen, the top-ranked chess player in the world, has once again demonstrated that he is at the top. But this time his opponent wasn’t a grandmaster—it was an AI chatbot. ChatGPT, the popular AI in development by OpenAI, played an online game against Carlsen, who won in 53 moves. What made it even more remarkable is that he didn’t lose a piece throughout the entire game.

Carlsen posted screenshots of the game on social media platform X (formerly known as Twitter), with the tongue-in-cheek caption, “just a little bored during travel.” The comment was a reminder of just how casually he took the match. Although the AI opened the game with some powerful plays, the machine could not keep pace with Carlsen’s intuitive and sharp tactics.

ChatGPT resigned and conceded the game. “All my pawns are gone. You haven’t lost a single piece. You fulfilled your win condition perfectly… I resign. That was methodical, clean, and sharp.”

Post-match, Carlsen provided some advice to the chatbot. The Norwegian chess grandmaster said the early part of the game and the piece sacrifice were interesting ideas but the AI didn’t follow through well. The grandmaster also asked ChatGPT to guess his chess rating based on the game, and the bot estimated he was about 1800–2000 FIDE, which we would consider beginner to intermediate.

This could not have been further from the truth: Carlsen has a FIDE rating of 2839, which is one of the highest in the history of chess. With words escaping me, I will just let his rating tell the story, and in case you are wondering, the last time his rating was near 2000 was when he was the age of a beginner at chess… in 2001.

Despite the loss, ChatGPT complimented Carlsen’s excellence in the game. It praised his use of the Philidor Defense and his power-creating positional moves with …Bf8 and …Re8. It also observed his forceful play from …Nf3+ and his endgame skills. Carlsen had played with precision and discipline to convert a small edge into a victory, the bot said. ChatGPT even mentioned that Carlsen spotted illegal moves fast, demonstrating his over-the-board experience as a real chess player.

Carlsen has talked about AI in the past. He liked to mention that AI was exciting to start with because it let players try new ideas. But now, he said, he finds it harder to gain an advantage with AI because everyone has access to it.