I read the article. Their chess section makes no sense as in "why this wouldn't work for CTF".

But I don't know enough that's why I asked.

I imagine one could do CTF in public, machines you work on vetted/prepared to some spec, yada yada.

If chess and Go can do it why can't CTF?

That was my question when I wrote "what am I missing here".

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

"Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that"."