[imagesource: Twitter / @davenewworld_2]

In the battle of man versus machine, it’s often the latter which comes out on top.

Consider that a chess robot operated by a computer can run thousands of simulations per second to uncover the optimal move. Even Magnus Carlsen, perhaps the greatest chess player to ever live, can’t compete with that.

That being said, a seven-year-old Russian child clearly managed to get under the skin of his robot opponent during a match at the Moscow Open.

Below from The Guardian:

Last week, according to Russian media outlets, a chess-playing robot, apparently unsettled by the quick responses of a seven-year-old boy, unceremoniously grabbed and broke his finger…

“The robot broke the child’s finger,” Sergey Lazarev, president of the Moscow Chess Federation, told the TASS news agency after the incident, adding that the machine had played many previous exhibitions without upset. “This is of course bad.”

Yes, Sergey, it is. Thanks for clarifying that.

Video of the incident from July 19 show’s the boy’s finger being grabbed by the robotic arm before onlookers rush in and free him:

WARNING: GRAPHIC ⚠️ A chess-playing robot grabs a 7-year-old’s finger during a match at the Moscow Open and breaks it pic.twitter.com/I95VYwjk3S

— Fifty Shades of Whey (@davenewworld_2) July 24, 2022

The vice-president of the Russian Chess Federation, Sergey Smagin, said the robot had yet to complete a move when the boy moved his piece, leading to the incident:

“There are certain safety rules and the child, apparently, violated them. When he made his move, he did not realise he first had to wait,” Smagin said. “This is an extremely rare case, the first I can recall,” he added.

Lazarev had a different account, saying the child had “made a move, and after that we need to give time for the robot to answer, but the boy hurried and the robot grabbed him”. Either way, he said, the robot’s suppliers were “going to have to think again”.

He went on to say that the boy “played the very next day”, finished the tournament, and was not overly traumatised by the fracture.

That hasn’t stopped the boy’s parents from contacting the public prosecutor’s office.

[source:guardian]