Elon Musk is looking for a checkmate in his latest online feud.
It began on Thursday, when the billionaire wrote that the number of chess moves that aren’t “utterly stupid” is small and that “chess will be fully solved one day.”
A challenger then emerged: the online gaming site Chess.com.
The brand reposted Musk’s response, calling it a “skill issue.” Musk replied that chess was hard for humans but easy for computers, and reiterated his point that chess would be “fully solved” by AI.
“Between now and then, or even after, have fun,” Musk wrote. “People enjoy many games/sports where machines are vastly better.”
Chess.com once again reposted Musk’s response. This time, it wrote that there were more possible chess games than atoms in the observable universe. “To solve chess, you’d have to map them all,” the site wrote. “Good luck.”
Rarely one to back down, Musk snapped back that Chess.com was “wrong.” He wrote that “all legal chess positions” are about 40 orders of magnitude less than the estimated number of atoms in the universe.
Artificial superintelligence “will figure out ways to solve and compress that are far beyond what we could possibly comprehend,” he wrote.
For the record: Both Musk and Chess.com’s numbers are right, but the distinction comes down to language. Chess.com wrote about possible chess “games.” Musk’s retort was about legal chess “positions.”
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Musk seemed somewhat self-aware of the situation he had found himself in, ending his response with a face-palm emoji. “Here I am arguing with some random intern at a chess website,” he wrote.
“I’m a full-time employee,” the Chess.com account said. Musk responded with the coughing emoji.
Wrong, all legal chess positions are ~40 oom less than the estimated atoms in the Universe. And ASI will figure out ways to solve and compress that are far beyond what we could possibly comprehend.
(Here I am arguing with some random intern at a chess website 🤦♂️)
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 4, 2026
Musk’s companies have yet to conquer the chess world. In a 2025 chess battle, xAI’s Grok 4 reached the final round but was bested by OpenAI’s o3 model.
He hasn’t always been so loving of the game. In 2012, he shut down a chess tournament among Tesla employees. “Indeed, we do not have time for chess,” Musk told Business Insider at the time.
Meanwhile, another duo was also beefing over Chess.com: Investor-podcaster Jason Calacanis and whoever runs Elizabeth Holmes’ X account. The Holmes account posted Calacanis’ “brutal losing streak” on Thursday.
“Sigh…” Calacanis responded on Friday. “I guess I should stop using chess to fall asleep and get coached.”
Who won the battle between Musk and Chess.com? The chess site is planting the flag.
“We understand losing a chess game can be frustrating, but losing a Twitter fight to a so-called intern must be maddening,” a Chess.com spokesperson said.
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