Why a red kitten has become the most feared chess player in the world

The chess world has a great new enemy, a ruthless robot in the guise of an adorable kitten. His name is mittens, he’s a meme, a chess genius, and proof that cats will rule the internet forever.

Behind the liquid eyes is a ruthless bot led by aartificial intelligence, which in recent weeks has been tormenting pro players, Grand Masters and champions who could fight for the world title. Playing against Mittens itself is just like when playing solo you challenge the computerthe difference is that the cat, in addition to being particularly good, also enjoys humiliate the losers citing French cinema, Nietzsche, Oppenheimer.

Mittens record games played

Mittens hit Chess.com on January 1st and became an obsession that crashed the site. Chess.com is the most popular platform for playing chess online. It even beat the exponential growth of aspiring chess players after the release of The Queen of Chess. Chess.comin fact, in January he recorded 27.5 million of games played, the 40% more than in any month in the company’s history. The video of the great American master Hikaru Nakamuraposted on YouTube and titled “Mittens The Chess Bot Will Make You Quit Chess“, has already racked up 3.9 million views.

The resurgence of chess

Chess is experiencing a mainstream resurgence. Think about the Louis Vuitton advertisement featuring Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, during a match on the brand’s suitcase. At the Sinquefield Cup scandal, when Magnus Carlsen accused Hans Niemann of cheating by using anal beads. Or when to the Slovenian NBA superstar Luka Doncic was asked what she thought of Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, and she shrugged that she uses her phone to play chess. But none of this compares to Mittens, as the chess cat writes at each end of the game: “I am inevitable. I am forever. Meow. Hehehehe“.

The cruellest Chess.com bot

Chess.com, has a number of bots that vary in skill level and styles. Some are designed to play bad and be easily beatable, others, are now able to defeat the Grand Masters. They are all even better performing offspring of Deep Bluethe first computer to win a chess match against a reigning World Champion, Garry Kasparov. “This bot is a psychopath,” the streamer and International Master tweeted Levy Rozman after suffering a fierce checkmate. The next day, he added with the irony of a loser: “The chess world must unite against Mittens.”

How Mittens was born

Mittens was born out of the perverse wish of a Hamilton College student named Will Whalen: hide an unbeatable robot behind the sweet eyes of a kitten. But Mittens’ true transformation into evil genius comes when Sean Becker of Chess.com, together with his team, have transformed the bot into an evil cat that launches terrible replies at everyone it defeats, therefore at everyone. “Meow. Look into the long abyss. Hehehehe“, says Mittens, quoting the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Even his approach to the game is cruel, wearing with exhausting tactics. He follows the philosophy of “why kill them immediately when you can torture them”, a bit like those detailed positional battles of the Grand Master Anatoly Karpov.

The new fashions on the chessboard

There has also been a new wave of interest in previously obscure chess variants. For instance Chess960, also called Fisher Random, for its inventor Bobby Fischer. A version of the game where all pieces except pawns are lined up in a random order on the back rank. It has now become something of a baptism of fire for the chess elite. A new way of emphasizing the ability to see, even more stimulated by the random configuration that razes each opening prepared in advance.

Or for example the fog of warwhere players have a limited view of their opponents’ pieces, the Bughouse Chesswhich is played on two boards with captured pieces moving from one surface to another, or Three Checks, one simply has to checkmate the opponent’s king three times. Now there are also cat robots. Not only Mittens, but also Mr Grumpers And Catspurrov.