During a recent match at the Moscow Open chess tournament, a chess-playing robot seized hold of its seven-year-old opponent’s finger and broke it.
“The robot broke the child’s finger,” said Sergey Lazarev, president of the Moscow Chess Federation.
“This is of course bad.”
A video of the incident released by the Baza Telegram channel shows the boy’s finger being held in place by the robot, with the child expressing visible discomfort. Onlookers then rushed to help free the contestant.
Sergey Smagin, vice-president of the Russian Chess Federation, suggested that robot acted after taking one of the boy’s pieces in the game. He added that, instead of waiting for the machine to finish its next sequence, the boy moved again quickly.
Smagin outlined the robots’ safety protocols as causing the incident, which he claimed was the first of this kind he could recall.
