Messi just gave chess its biggest marketing moment in years, and the chess community immediately started arguing about whether the opening he played was any good.
On October 21, the football icon posted a ChatGPT advertisement to his 517 million Instagram followers. The video has already pulled in over a million likes and 13,000 comments. That kind of reach is unprecedented for chess content. Most chess journalists would kill for that kind of platform boost.
Here's the problem. The opening itself is questionable.
In the ad, Messi asks ChatGPT to teach him an opening that matches his playing style. ChatGPT walks him through it move by move on an interactive board. The premise is clever. The execution reveals something important about AI and chess that nobody wanted to learn this way.
The opening ChatGPT suggested is not objectively strong. Chess players who watched the clip immediately spotted the issues. The moves lack the preparation and theory that modern chess requires at any serious level. This is the kind of opening that works fine against random opponents online but gets demolished by anyone studying the Ruy Lopez or the Sicilian Defense at a competitive level.
This matters because it exposes the gap between what AI can do conversationally and what it can actually do at specialized tasks. ChatGPT sounds confident. It explains itself well. But when it comes to chess, it makes the same beginner mistakes that club players make in their first year. The algorithm generates plausible-sounding moves without the depth analysis that engines like Stockfish or AlphaZero provide.
The irony is thick. Messi's ad for ChatGPT was designed to show how the tool helps you learn and improve. Instead it showed the world that you should probably use a real chess engine if you actually care about learning opening theory. Chess.com's analysis team could have given better advice. So could any 1800-rated player.
The silver lining is real though. Chess gets exposure to half a billion people. Casual fans see the sport as something worth advertising alongside global celebrities. Kids who never considered chess might click on a Chess.com link because they saw Messi playing. That audience growth could feed the next generation of competitive players.
But don't ask ChatGPT which opening to play in your next tournament. Ask a coach. Ask the engine. Ask a serious Chess.com user. The algorithm is great at many things. Chess openings are not yet one of them.