Mittens (chess)

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, later contributing to record levels of traffic to the Chess.com website and causing issues with database scalability.

Various chess masters played matches against the engine, with players such as Hikaru Nakamura and Levy Rozman drawing and losing their games respectively.

[12][13] Mittens' strategy was to slowly grind down an opponent, a tactic likened to the playing style of Anatoly Karpov.

[1][3] However, the engine's playing style and tactics showed that it was stronger than that; Mittens was able to beat or draw against many top human players.

[15] Estimates of Mittens' true rating range from an Elo of 3200 to 3500, because of its ability to beat other engines of around that level.

[3][6] Bok, Benjamin Finegold and Rozman later went on to win against Mittens, the latter with engine assistance from Stockfish.

[12][16][17] Magnus Carlsen publicly refused to play the engine, calling it a "transparent marketing trick" and "a soulless computer".

In the competition, Mittens played 150 games against an engine named after the film M3GAN and won overall with a score of 81.5 to 68.5.

[15] Chess streamers like Rozman and Nakamura helped cultivate this by creating content around the engine.

[8][10] According to The Wall Street Journal, the popularity spike was more than the similar surge following the release of Netflix's The Queen's Gambit.