Elon Musk and Sam Altman. Photos: Wikimedia and Sam Altman, edited by Decrypt using AI Create an account  "They oscillate between really, really good play and incomprehensible sequences," Carlsen said during a broadcast, following the game. At one point, after watching Grok walk its king directly into danger, he joked it might think they were playing King of the Hill instead of chess. The actual games were like a masterclass in how not to play chess, even for those who don't know the game. In the first match, Grok essentially gave away one of its important pieces for free, then made things worse by trading off more pieces while already behind. Game two got even weirder. Grok tried to execute what chess players call the "Poisoned Pawn"—a risky but legitimate strategy where you grab an enemy pawn that looks free but isn't. Except Grok grabbed the wrong pawn entirely, one that was obviously defended. Its queen (the most powerful piece in the board) got trapped and captured immediately. By game three, Grok had built what looked like a solid position—good positional control, no obvious dangers, and basically a set up that can help you win the match. Then in mid game, it basically fumbled the ball directly to the opponent. It lost piece after piece in rapid succession. This was actually weird, considering that before the match against o3, Grok was a pretty strong contender, showing solid potential—so much that the chess Grand Master Hikaru Nakamura praised it. "Grok is easily the best so far, just being objective, easily the best." The fourth (and last) game provided the only genuine suspense. OpenAI's o3 made a massive blunder early in the game, which is a big danger in any reasonable match. Nakamura, who was streaming the match, said there were still "a few tricks" left for o3 despite the disadvantage. He was right—o3 clawed back to win its queen back and slowly squeezed out a victory while Grok's endgame play fell apart like wet cardboard. "Grok made so many mistakes in these games, but OpenAI did not," Nakamura said during his livestream. This was quite the reversal from earlier in the week. The timing couldn't have been worse for Elon Musk. After Grok's strong early rounds, he'd posted on X that his AI's chess abilities were just a "side effect" and that xAI had "spent almost no effort on chess." That turned out to be an understatement. This is a side effect btw. @xAI spent almost no effort on chess. https://t.co/p18DFFn35A