> How does having a bot succeed cause appeal to be lost?

You might think not beating bots is OK. Not for me and many people have been involved in competitive scene. The moment machine beats human, a large part of the competition is gone. The essence is that you want to be the best. But if all you can do is to beat some other inferior opponents, what's the point?

> Secondly.. Chess & Go have been around for thousands of years and they still are played en masse daily.

This is irrelevant.