Newsletter

• In an advertisement posted by Messi on Instagram for ChatGPT, AI taught him how to play chess on a misarranged chessboard; the post received approximately 1.9 million likes within a single day.
• The " GOAT Horns " opening recommended by ChatGPT (1. e4 a6 2. d4 c6 ) will lead to a forced checkmate in the fourth move on this incorrectly set up chessboard, but not on a correctly set up chessboard.
• Reddit Users claim that this is not the first time OpenAI has placed pieces incorrectly in an advertisement; a previous advertisement was said to have placed the black queen in e8 instead of d8.

Lionel Messi posted an advertisement on Instagram on Wednesday, asking ChatGPT to teach him chess. This chatbot, valued at trillions of dollars, completely messed up the lesson, causing even chess-savvy netizens to explode in anger.

This post comes from one of the platform's second-most-followed users, Messi, who has over 517 million followers. In just about a day, this content received approximately 1.9 million likes and 19,600 comments.

If something that is packaged as an “all-knowing teacher” makes a mistake at the very first step, then people will naturally wonder what other credible information it could possibly provide.

In this post, Messi said he asked ChatGPT to “teach me a chess opening that suits my style,” while the chatbot recommended “GOAT Horns.” This name is clearly a play on the nickname “GOAT” that Messi has carried for many years. (For those unfamiliar with sports slang, GOAT refers to “the greatest of all time.”)

Of course, Messi is famous for winning games, not for losing them at record-breaking speeds.

The so-called opening move is merely the first few steps of a chess game. Magnus Carlsen, who holds the world ranking as number one and is also considered one of the greatest players in the history of this sport, has indeed used this opening move; however, he is also the same player who, in 2021 against Hikaru Nakamura, chose to employ the “funny opening” known as Bongcloud, which involves moving the king out on the second move. Therefore, replicating Carlsen’s moves for entertainment purposes is not suitable as a tutorial for beginners.

In real chess, each player's queen should stand on a square of the same color as herself, with the king standing beside her. However, in this advertisement, the positions of these two pieces have been swapped.

This reversal is not just a matter of appearance, because with such a placement, the Goat Horns that emerges in the video will leave a clear diagonal path for the white queen at the start, and ultimately lead to a checkmate of the black king in the fourth move – as fast as the “Scholar’s Mate,” which is one of the fastest ways to lose in chess.

In the correct way of setting up the chessboard, the same sequence of moves will not result in a forced checkmate.

Reddit quickly noticed this. The user with the alias Cannonheim wrote, "How is it that no one—I mean, even taking less than 5 seconds to take a look—shared this thing with the whole world?"

Another user wrote, “There are two possibilities: either they are idiots, or they are too smart, and that’s exactly why everyone is discussing this.” A third user suggested that perhaps the whole incident is just the fault of some random intern.

Messi asked ChatGPT to teach him a chess opening that suited his own style. It recommended Goat Horns. ChatGPT wrote in a post published on October 22, 2026.

Users of the r/ chess subreddit mentioned that an earlier advertisement for OpenAI made the same mistake, placing the black queen in e8 instead of d8. Another comment read, "With a valuation of nearly one trillion dollars, they still can't get the queen in the right spot. Hilarious."

At the time this advertisement was released, it had been exactly two weeks since OpenAI launched GPT-6 which included Intelligent UI. This feature allowed ChatGPT to respond not just with plain text, but through interactive charts, buttons, and forms. Messi's marketing collaboration with OpenAI began in June, when he released a picture created using ChatGPT Images before the World Cup.

ChatGPT is clearly not Stockfish. As early as 2025, in a chess championship for chatbots organized by chess master Levy Rozman, ChatGPT lost in the final; at that time, it made illegal moves, such as "creating" a pawn out of nowhere and promoting it.

Fortunately, OpenAI corrected the issue during post-production and changed the arrangement of the chess pieces in another advertisement published on the X platform. This time the arrangement of the pieces is correct, but the opening itself is still very poor, especially not suitable for beginners like Messi.

The original video is still currently posted on Messi's Instagram account.