Chess Robot Breaks a 7-Year-Old’s Finger at Moscow Open

While chess isn’t typically considered a physically dangerous pastime, an incident at a Russian competition proved the opposite when a robot grabbed and broke the finger of his 7-year-old opponent. As The Independent reported, the bot was playing the child at the Moscow Open when it took one of the boy’s pieces. The child reportedly reached for the board before the robot’s move was over, causing the artificial assailant to pinch his finger for multiple seconds until a group of adults freed him from the bionic grasp. “There are certain safety rules and the child, apparently, violated them,” the vice president of the Federation of Russian Chess said, noting that the incident was rare. “When he made his move, he did not realize he first had to wait.” He maintained that the robot is entirely safe, and said that “apparently, children need to be warned.” The president of the Moscow Chess Federation noted that the machine had played many matches without incident, but that “the robot broke the child’s finger. This is of course bad.”