It could always play it if you reminded it of the board state every move. And while I know elites can play chess blind, the average person can’t, so it was always kind of harsh to hold it to that standard and criticise it not being able to remember more than 5 moves when most people can’t do that themselves.

Besides that, it was never designed to play chess. It would be like insulting Watson the Jeopardy bot for losing against the Atari chess bot, it’s not what it was designed to do.