Lionel Messi’s latest ChatGPT advertisement has become a talking point among chess players after viewers noticed that the digital board shows both sides with their king and queen exchanged. The error appears alongside an opening recommended by the chatbot that, from that incorrect setup, allows a forced checkmate on White’s fourth move.
The Instagram video, posted by Messi on Wednesday, presents ChatGPT as a chess tutor. Messi says he asked the system for an opening suited to his playing style, and the chatbot responds with “GOAT Horns,” a reference to the nickname often associated with the football star. GOAT is commonly used as an abbreviation for “greatest of all time.”
The post attracted approximately 1.9 million likes and 19,600 comments in about 24 hours. Messi has more than 517 million Instagram followers, making the advertisement highly visible well beyond the chess community. According to Decrypt, the clip has prompted online discussion about the reliability of artificial-intelligence systems when they present confident answers in areas requiring precise rules.
The board changes the result
In standard chess, each player’s queen begins on a square matching its own color, with the king positioned next to it. The advertisement instead depicts the king and queen switched on both sides of the board. That is not merely a visual inaccuracy: it changes the possible lines of play.
The opening shown in the ad begins with 1.e4 a6 followed by 2.d4 c6. From the incorrectly arranged board, those moves give White’s queen a clear diagonal route that leads to checkmate on move four. The source material compares the speed of that loss with Scholar’s Mate, a well-known quick checkmate pattern.
On a correctly arranged chessboard, however, the same sequence does not create a forced checkmate. The opening itself is therefore not automatically a losing line in the standard position, although Decrypt reported that it would be a poor recommendation for a beginner in the context of the advertisement.
The “GOAT Horns” name also adds a layer of presentation to the recommendation. Grandmaster Magnus Carlsen has played the opening, but the source notes that Carlsen has also used deliberately unusual moves for entertainment, including the Bongcloud opening in a 2021 game against Hikaru Nakamura. That history does not make an unconventional opening a straightforward lesson for a novice.
Online reaction and earlier mistakes
Chess users quickly highlighted the misplaced pieces on Reddit and in the r/chess community. One commenter questioned how the board could have been approved without a basic review, while others debated whether the mistake reflected carelessness or had helped generate publicity. Another suggested that responsibility might have fallen to an unnamed intern; the source does not establish who made the error.
Reddit users also said the incident was not the first OpenAI advertisement to display a misplaced chess piece. They pointed to an earlier spot that reportedly placed Black’s queen on e8 rather than its normal square, d8. The source further says that OpenAI later corrected the pieces in a separate advertisement for X, while the opening shown in the Messi video remained unchanged.
The episode follows OpenAI’s rollout of GPT-6 with Intelligent UI two weeks earlier. That feature allows ChatGPT to respond with interactive charts, buttons and forms rather than only plain text. The Messi campaign itself began in June, when he posted an image created with ChatGPT Images ahead of the World Cup.
The source also recalls a 2025 chatbot chess tournament hosted by International Master Levy Rozman, in which ChatGPT lost the final after making illegal moves. Those included promoting pawns that did not exist. The comparison underscores the difference between a language model that can discuss chess and a specialized chess engine designed to calculate legal moves and positions.
Moneyiar market picture
Moneyiar data at 23:18-23:19 on October 22, 2026, showed declines across the listed assets:
- Ethereum Name Service (ENS): $5.4935410999, down 4.81% over 24 hours and 4.68% over seven days.
- Four (FORM): $0.2312071419, down 7.91% over 24 hours and 9.48% over seven days.
- ONEchain (ONE): $0.1013802621, down 1.89% over 24 hours and 4.70% over seven days.
OpenLedger (OPEN) was priced at $0.1014754745, down 1.04% over 24 hours and 10.16% over seven days, according to Moneyiar data recorded at 00:24 on October 15, 2026. Messi’s original video remains live on Instagram.
