Although it's not better than existing solutions, it's a cool example of how good results can be achieved in a relatively automatic way - by contrast, the evaluation functions of the best chess engines have been carefully engineered and fine-tuned over many years, at least sometimes with assistance from people who are themselves master-level chess players. On the other hand this neural network approach took a relatively short time and could have been applied by someone with little chess skill.

edit: Reading the actual paper, it does sound like a certain amount of iteration, and expertise on the author's part, was still required.

edit2: BTW, the paper is very clear and well written. I'd recommend giving it a read if you're interested in the subject matter.