Mittens (chess engine)

Mittens was a chess engine developed by Chess.com. It was released on January 1, 2023, alongside four other engines, all of them given cat names. The engine became a viral sensation in the chess community due to exposure through content made by chess streamers and a social media marketing campaign. It was removed from the website on February 1, as expected through Chess.com's monthly bot cycles.

Release

Mittens was released on January 1, 2023, as part of a New Year's event on Chess.com. It was one of five engines released, all with names based on cats.[1][2][3] The other engines released were Scaredy Cat, rated 800; Angry Cat, rated 1000; Mr. Grumpers rated 1200 and Catspurrov (a pun on Garry Kasparov)[4] rated 1400.[5]

Design

Mittens was conceptualized by Will Whalen, a college student at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York.[6][2][7][8] Appearing as a cat,[9] the engine trash talks the other player with a selection of voice lines: these lines include quotes from Robert Oppenheimer, Vincent van Gogh and Friedrich Nietzsche.[8][6][10][11] The engine's "personality" was devised by a team headed by writer Sean Becker.[6][2][4]

In terms of software, Chess.com has not disclosed any information about the software running the engine. It may be based on Komodo Dragon 3.[10][11][12] Mittens' strategy is to slowly grind down an opponent, a tactic likened to the playing style of Anatoly Karpov. Becker stated that the design team believed it would be "way more demoralizing and funny" for the engine to play this way.[6] According to Grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura, Mittens sometimes misses the best move (or winning positions) in some situations.[10][13]

Rating

On Chess.com, Mittens had a rating of one.[1][3] However, the engine's playing style and tactics evidence that it is much stronger than that; Mittens is able to beat or draw against many top human players. Estimates of Mittens' true rating range from an Elo of 3200 to 3500, because of its ability to beat bots of around that level.[10] An upper bound of the engine's rating was found after IM Levy Rozman (known online as GothamChess) made Mittens play against Stockfish 15, a 3700 rated engine.[10] Mittens lost the two games that the engines played.[1]

Games

Against human players, Mittens won over 99 percent of the millions[14] of games it played.[11][12] Skilled chess players such as Hikaru Nakamura, Benjamin Bok, Levy Rozman and Eric Rosen have struggled against Mittens. While Rozman and Rosen both lost against the engine, Nakamura and Bok were both able to make a draw.[1][11][12][13] In particular, Nakamura's game against the engine lasted 161 moves; he was playing as white.[3][15] Rozman later went on to win against Mittens with engine assistance.[16] World Champion Magnus Carlsen has publicly refused to play the engine, calling it a "transparent marketing trick"[13] and "a soulless computer".[15]

Against other engines, Mittens participated in Chess.com's Computer Chess Championships as a side act. Mittens played 150 games against an engine named after the film M3GAN and won overall with a score of 81.5 to 68.5.[4]

Legacy

Mittens went viral in the chess community due to its concept and design, helped by the social media exposure created by Chess.com.[9] This included creating an official Twitter account to promote the engine.[17] Chess streamers like Rozman and Nakamura helped cultivate this through creating content around the engine.[18] A video by Nakamura entitled Mittens the chess bot will make you quit chess gained over 3.5 million views on YouTube.[3][8]

On January 11, Chess.com reported issues with database scaling due to record levels of traffic: 40 percent more games had been played on Chess.com in January 2023 than any other month since the website's release.[6][8] According to the Wall Street Journal, the popularity spike was more than the similar surge following the release of The Queen's Gambit.[6] The popularity of Mittens was cited by Chess.com as a reason for this instability.[19][6][15][2][3] The problems continued throughout January;[20] Chess.com stated that they would have to upgrade their servers and invest more in cloud computing to solve the problems caused by the website's popularity surge.[21]

In February 2023, Mittens and the other cat engines were removed from the computer section of Chess.com. They were replaced with five new engines themed around artificial intelligence. A message was posted on the Mittens Twitter account announcing the engines removal, reading "This is just the beginning. Goodbye for now."[17][22]

References
  1. "What is Mittens? A chess nightmare behind an innocent kitty bot". Esports.gg. Retrieved January 9, 2023.
  2. "Il gattino contro cui tutti vogliono giocare a scacchi". Il Post (in Italian). January 23, 2023. Retrieved January 24, 2023.
  3. "'Psycho' AI bot crashes Chess.com and drives record users to chess site". The Independent. January 24, 2023. Retrieved January 24, 2023.
  4. Pahwa, Nitish (January 24, 2023). "How Chess.com Built Mittens, the Evil Cat Bot Destroying Players' Souls". Slate. Retrieved January 24, 2023.
  5. "Mittens the chess-playing cat bot proving hard to tame". Deseret News. January 19, 2023. Retrieved January 20, 2023.
  6. Robinson, Joshua; Beaton, Andrew. "The Chess World's New Villain: A Cat Named Mittens". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved January 19, 2023.
  7. "El ajedrez online tiene un nuevo campeón: un gatito virtual que pone en jaque a maestros y aficionados". El Español (in Spanish). January 23, 2023. Retrieved January 24, 2023.
  8. PERÚ, NOTICIAS EL COMERCIO (January 24, 2023). "Mittens, el gatito virtual que está derrotando a los campeones del ajedrez | España | México | Estados Unidos | TECNOLOGIA". El Comercio Perú (in Spanish). Retrieved January 25, 2023.
  9. Hörmark, Andreas (February 1, 2023). ""Alla vill se Carlsen spela mot katten"". Svenska Dagbladet (in Swedish). ISSN 1101-2412. Retrieved February 14, 2023.
  10. Kelemen, Luci (January 5, 2023). "What is the Mittens chess bot?". Dot Esports. Retrieved January 9, 2023.
  11. "Carlsen takes on the young guard on Saturday at the 'chess Wimbledon'". Financial Times. January 9, 2023. Retrieved January 9, 2023.
  12. "Chess: Carlsen takes on young guns at Wijk as world champion eyes record". The Guardian. January 13, 2023. Retrieved January 16, 2023.
  13. Posnanski, Joe. "Mittens and the End of Art". joeposnanski.substack.com. Retrieved January 10, 2023.
  14. Chess.com announced at the end of January that the cat engines had together played a total of over 120 million games. "Server Trouble And The End Of Mittens?". Chess.com. Retrieved February 14, 2023.
  15. Whipple, Tom. "Mittens makes mincemeat of grandmasters". The Times. ISSN 0140-0460. Retrieved January 24, 2023.
  16. "Meet Mittens, the AI Chess Bot Players Love to Hate". AI Business. Retrieved January 21, 2023.
  17. "Goodbye Mittens. Chess.com removes the viral cat bot from its site". Esports.gg. Retrieved February 2, 2023.
  18. "Why is the Chess.com cat bot, Mittens, so popular?". Esports.gg. Retrieved January 16, 2023.
  19. Bellingham, Hope (January 11, 2023). "Adorable cat bot credited with a huge spike in players for leading chess website". gamesradar. Retrieved January 16, 2023.
  20. Hoover, Amanda. "Celebrities, TikTok, and a Cat Bot Are Crashing Chess.com". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Retrieved January 25, 2023.
  21. Stanton, Rich (January 24, 2023). "'Honestly, this sucks,' says Chess.com as its servers can't keep up with Chess's explosive popularity". PC Gamer. Retrieved January 24, 2023.
  22. "Meet the innocent looking cat that upended the chess world". CNN Business. February 7, 2023. Retrieved February 8, 2023.
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