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gwern comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 6 - Less Wrong
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As a reader, I hate hate hate this strategy, and I always know when it's being used. This sort of copout is an instant fail in my books, no matter how highly reviewed it is. The Master of Go is fine because the author is fictionalizing a real match, which he actually reported on live. The Player of Games is not, because Banks has not worked out Azad in any real detail.
So, weak superintelligence. That might work - does seem pretty much to cover Eliezer's approach for Harry & Quirrel in MoR.
I don't know about "hate" but it always feels empty and hollow, every time I read about a fictional supergenius, and that is where MoR came from.
I think it depends on what the core of the story is... what it's a story about.
If it's a story about chess, then never showing the reader the sequence of moves "feels empty and hollow," as you say.
If it's a story about something else for which chess functions as a setting, it won't necessarily feel that way.
Of course, what I consider a story to be about is in part a result of what I care about. If I really really care about intelligence, then any story involving a supergenius will to a significant extent be about his or her superintelligence, and "not showing the moves" will always feel like a copout.