As a reader, I hate hate hate this strategy
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.
Update: Discussion has moved on to a new thread.
After 61 chapters of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and 5 discussion threads with over 500 comments each, HPMOR discussion has graduated from the main page and moved into the Less Wrong discussion section (which seems like a more appropriate location). You can post all of your insights, speculation, and, well, discussion about Eliezer Yudkowsky's Harry Potter fanfic here.
Previous threads are available under the harry_potter tag on the main page (or: one, two, three, four, five); this and future threads will be found under the discussion section tag (since there is a separate tag system for the discussion section). See also the author page for (almost) all things HPMOR, and AdeleneDawner's Author's Notes archive for one thing that the author page is missing.
As a reminder, it's useful to indicate at the start of your comment which chapter you are commenting on. Time passes but your comment stays the same.
Spoiler Warning: this thread is full of spoilers. With few exceptions, spoilers for MOR and canon are fair game to post, without warning or rot13. More specifically: