OpenAI’s o3 crushes Grok 4 to win Kaggle Game Arena AI chess tournament
OpenAI’s o3 dominated the final day of Google’s Kaggle Game Arena chess exhibition, sweeping Grok 4 with a clean 4-0 for the title.
Grok 4 looked unbeatable through the semifinals, but o3 dismantled its opponent mercilessly. Grok blundered repeatedly — dropping a bishop in Game 1 and misplaying the Poisoned Pawn in Game 2. Even when playing white in Game 3, Grok lost key pieces leading to a swift defeat. The final game was close, with o3 recovering from an early queen blunder to turn the endgame in its favor. 
This marks o3 as the first-ever winner of the Kaggle Game Arena chess tournament, while Grok 4 settles for silver.
Google’s Gemini 2.5 Pro grabbed bronze, beating o4-mini 3.5-0.5 in the 3rd place match. Gemini’s games were messier and lower quality overall compared to o3 but enough to secure a podium finish.
Watch IM Levy Rozman’s video recap below:
Tournament bracket:
GM Rafael Leitao broke down the key tactics in the final game:
The Kaggle Game Arena ran August 5-7, pitting top LLMs against each other in single-elimination chess matches. The event’s full code and details are available on Kaggle’s site.
Expect Google and OpenAI to use these results to sharpen their AI models further as the race toward better game-playing and broader artificial intelligence heats up.
