Ancient video game from 1979 beats ChatGPT in a chess game

Being able to "beat the computer" in chess has been something PC, gaming, and tech enthusiasts have discussed for decades. In 1997, IBM's Deep Blue supercomputer made headlines worldwide for defeating Garry Kasparov in a chess game. Compared to the PC hardware we have in 2025, Deep Blue is now what you'd consider retro regarding its capabilities, even though it could brute force its way to evaluate 200 million chess moves per second.

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Compared to Deep Blue, the Atari 2600 video game console is effectively from the Stone Age. It debuted in 1977, predating most modern gamers. With the rise of AI and chatbots like ChatGPT, you might think that it would have no problem beating Deep Blue in a round of chess, let alone going up against an Atari 2600 to play a game using the Atari Chess 'beginner' opponent difficulty setting.

You'd be wrong, as Citrix Architecture and Delivery specialist Robert Jr. Caruso decided to carry out this little experiment and posted his findings on LinkedIn.

Atari Chess, from 1979, runs on console hardware with a 1.19 MHz CPU. Due to its archaic hardware, Caruso notes that the game only thinks one or two moves ahead. According to his post, ChatGPT initially blamed its defeat on not being able to recognize chess pieces like Bishops and Pawns due to the Atari 2600's lo-fi visuals. And hey, based on how ancient Atari 2600 graphics look in 2025, we don't blame ChatGPT.

However, when Carus switched to standard chess notation for the match-up, ChatGPT fared no better. It apparently "made enough blunders to get laughed out of a 3rd grade chess club." Caruso even tried helping the AI chatbot by stopping it from making "awful moves" to no avail. Yes, the hardware inside the Atari 2600 is powerful enough to beat ChatGPT in a game of chess.

"Atari's humble 8-bit engine just did its thing," Caruso writes. "No language model. No flash. Just brute-force board evaluation and 1977 stubbornness."