Goodbye, Mittens!

Time flies! It has been a month since the chess community was recently introduced to a new player on the scene: Mittens, released along with 4 other cat bots for the New Year. Mittens quickly gained popularity among players due to its unique concept and design. Despite its official ELO rating of one, many players have noted that Mittens plays at a much higher level, with estimates of its true rating ranging from 3200 to 3500. This helped to increase the traffic of Chess.com, as well as boosting Chess Channels such as GothamChess, Hikaru and me (YChess!).

The true upper bound of the engine's rating was found after it played against Stockfish 15, a 3700 rated engine, with a draw. (Blog link for that here)

Despite its impressive performance,  Chess.com will soon be removing Mittens from their platform. So goodbye, Mittens.
Although the program's run was short-lived, but it will be remembered for its unique concept and the excitement it brought to the chess community. The rise and fall of Mittens, the chess-playing bot, has been one of the most exciting developments in the chess community in recent times. It contributed to one of the largest traffic on Chess.com, possibly caused another chess boom, (and Chess.com servers to struggle here)

Remember my blog for Mittens vs Mittens?
What if, we make the last day of Mittens time travel and play the original Mittens bot on Day 1? Did they change the strength of Mittens? As an end to Mittens, here I present my video, Goodbye, Mittens. Before Mittens goes by the end of January, Enjoy while it is still here!