https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/dy74av/elon-musks-embarrassing-twitter-deal-must-kill-the-myth-of-his-12-d-chess > Elon Musk is a lot of things: an engineer, a successful entrepreneur, clearly a "smart guy" by many measures, and yet there is one thing he is emphatically not—a great negotiator.  > There is a popular image of Musk among his millions of fans of the brilliant tactician always playing 12-D chess, and always a few steps ahead of his competition. He can, in the minds of many, do no wrong. That myth shouldn't have a leg to stand on after Tuesday's announcement that Musk will buy Twitter at his originally-proposed price of $44 billion after a protracted series of events where he tried, very clearly, to wriggle out of the deal.