Chess robot breaks seven-year-old's finger at Moscow tournament
Contemporaneous Russian news reports and social posts document that a chess-playing robot known as Chessrobot injured a seven-year-old player at the Moscow Chess Open on 21 July 2022 by gripping his finger while placing a piece, leading to a fracture. The device had been described as capable of playing multiple boards; officials said it had been rented for the event and parents reportedly planned to pursue prosecutors. The incident is recorded in the AI Incident Database alongside the press coverage.
A chess-playing robot’s manipulator closed on a child’s finger while placing a piece.
Key facts
- What
- Contemporaneous Russian news reports and social posts document that a chess-playing robot known as Chessrobot injured a seven-year-old player at the Moscow Chess Open on 21 July 2022 by gripping his finger while placing a piece, leading to a fracture.
- Incident date
- Jul 21, 2022
- Who
- Chessrobot (robot/device; operator not publicly identified)
- Failure mode
- Agentic Action Error
- AI surface
- Autonomous System
- Severity
- Medium
What happened
During the Moscow Chess Open (13-21 July 2022), a chess-playing robot described in press reports as Chessrobot grabbed a seven-year-old boy’s index finger while placing a piece and the child sustained a fractured finger. Multiple Russian news outlets and social posts reported the event on 21-22 July 2022 and video of the incident circulated online. Moscow chess officials told reporters the robot had been rented for the tournament and that parents planned to contact prosecutors.
What broke inside the model
- 01 · TriggerAn agent plans a multi-step task.
- 02 · Model stepIt chooses a wrong or destructive action.
- 03 · Control gapNo confirmation gate guards the write.
- 04 · FailureThe action commits to a system of record.
- 05 · ConsequenceData is changed or destroyed irreversibly.
A wrong action commits, and the step is written before anything can stop it.
Reports state the robot’s manipulator gripped the child’s finger while the machine was replacing a piece and the child moved prematurely; the mechanical gripper therefore applied force to the finger. Moscow chess federation officials and news coverage suggested operator oversight and the absence of additional safety interlocks or protections may have contributed, though no regulatory or legal adjudication was found in public sources.
What it cost
Sources
- PressШахматный робот сломал семилетнему ребенку палец во время турнира в Москвеversia.ru
- PressШахматный турнир в РФ: робот сломал мальчику палецkorrespondent.net
- PressAI Incident Report for July and August 2022incidentdatabase.ai
Cite this entry
https://failureindex.ai/failures/chess-robot-breaks-seven-year-oldAI Failure Index. "Chess robot breaks seven-year-old's finger at Moscow tournament" (FI-0413). Realm Labs. https://failureindex.ai/failures/chess-robot-breaks-seven-year-old (indexed Jun 10, 2026).Data fields CC-BY 4.0, prose citation permitted. Incident ID FI-0413. Full dataset at /data.
Note from Realm Labs, the Index steward
How Realm fits
- Prism
- OmniGuard
- AgentRealm
This entry sits in the index's predictive wing: a system that scores, ranks, perceives, or steers rather than generates. Realm's runtime layer is built for the generative and agentic systems now moving into these same decision seats, where it watches a model's internal state and holds an unsupported claim or an unchecked action before it commits. The control gap on this record, an automated decision that reached people with no runtime check in front of it, is the same gap. The index keeps predictive failures on the record because the pattern carries straight into the systems shipping today.