dec 2025 bot review: holiday special
in january 2024 i decided i would take up chess as my winter hobby, to occupy my mind on cold dark days.
well, this current winter has come early, the days are already cold, and im in the mood to be cozy in bed with something interesting to think about. and for the first time, i get to see what the december seasonal bots are on chess dot com!
will they be merry and full of holiday spirit?
will i fall in love, as i did with the valentines bots in february, or find a new dad, as i did with martin?
and do i remember how to play chess well enough to beat any of them?
all that and more on this month’s bot review!
Dec 2025 Bot Theme Board Design
this months bot page greets us on a clear winters night, coniferous forest branches laden with snow, peppered with ice sculptures of chess pieces.
the background is atmospheric, seasonal, and unobtrusive, with a gentle desaturated blue-gray palette. in my usual laptop view, most of the background is covered, but changing my zoom settings i managed to spy a curious figure silhouetted across the moon, apparently surfing in shorts and a santa hat.
perhaps we will learn more about this mysterious figure as we navigate the story of the bots.
the piece design is also custom for the season, which honestly always brings me joy. sometimes i feel sad all the time, but when chess pieces are adorable it lifts my spirits if even for a moment, and so i posit that custom bot themes with custom piece designs are a pure moral good in this otherwise morally complex world.
i still miss the chocolate valentines pieces from february 2025. i do believe they brought my soul some measure of peace during a fraught time.
while i still enjoy these winter themed pieces as a novelty for this month, i dont consider them perfect enough to stick around as a permanent option the way i think the chocolate set should. for one, i couldnt parse what the black pieces were supposed to be at first. they remind me of the chocolate ones, and when the pieces are a normal size on screen the white lines look like shine lines to give a sense of depth, as if the pieces are 3d. and yet the white pieces are such a flat style. the white pieces seem to be ice, rendered cartoonishly flat, while the black pieces are… chocolate again?
zooming in, we can see that in fact the white shine lines have shadows of their own. they are the icing lines on gingerbread cookie, and the cookie texture is also visible zoomed in. which very much makes me want real life gingerbread chess pieces.
while i do enjoy these, overall the combination of the cookie and ice pieces in such different visual languages feels noncohesive to me.
i think it would have been fun to have the white pieces also be cookies, fully iced. and, if ur pieces r flat cookies, u gotta remove the dark shadows. they make no visual sense! and decide whether ur ice is flat or round, rather than combining textures of both. i think this year should have been all ice, to match the palette of the background. and next year can be all cookie.
dear chess dot com, please take these notes and deliver an amazing holiday cookie set for december 2026.
here i briefly fantasized that maybe i will learn how to bake and make real life gingerbread chess cookies. enjoy the fruits of my internet searches
(above: chess cookie cutters sold by “the fussy pup”)
(above: chess cookie cutters sold by “bakerlogy”)
i think i would really enjoy eating one really good spicy gingerbread pawn after i took it in a cookie game. but who am i kidding, learning to bake sounds harder than learning chess so plz chess dot com let me live my gingerbread chess fantasies via the monthly bots in 2026.
okay now that ur appetite is stoked, time to violently destroy it with the first bot of this months set, which for real u might want to skip past if u have tendencies toward emetophobia, germaphobia, or general dignity.
1. Leftover Turkey (325)
This bot is terrifyingly gross. reading its dialogue lines is not for the faint of heart or queasy of spirit.
and it knows this about itself. it has no shame.
if i gotta play this unfortunate food waste, which among other things admits itself to be revulsively odiferous, im glad at least its online.
i will note that im not one to smell-shame, cuz look, weve all been there. that line is one of the more relatable ones. our human bodies are miracles but also deeply flawed. and full-body sweat is a superpower that raises us above animals and i refuse to apologize for it.
but when confronted with this moldy monstrosity, my sympathy is limited. it takes things to an extreme and it keeps getting worse.
usually when i hear stories of FIDEs exacting dress code standards and sometimes questionable enforcement, i think to myself “wow this organisation sure sounds like something i never want anything to do with. i can play chess without subjecting myself to institutional humiliation for the sake of being allowed to have a number next to my name that is a fancy official number rather than just some number anyone could make up.”
but then i look at this post-poultry abhorrence and think: u know what, maybe FIDE good for somethin cuz bro would get disqualified showin up to a tournament like that, no one wants to play over the board with a sentient heap of rotting flesh.
or at least not one that is so far gone, compared to the rest of us sentient heaps of rotting flesh.
…anyway lets play some chess!
(this game includes the dialogue lines but is otherwise only sparsely annotated cuz i dont even want to read those lines again and neither should u)
overall my rating of leftover turkey bot is 6/10. big points for a distinctive personality and art, points for being seasonally relevant to the month and theme, and points for creativity. but also… ew.
in another world this bot might have won the best bot of the month, for the memorable design. but also it loses a bunch of points cuz maybe i want to forget it ever existed?
moving on…
2. Ghost of Games Past (775)
in charles dickens 1843 novella “a christmas carol” the ghost of christmas past is described thus: “It was a strange figure—like a child: yet not so like a child as like an old man, viewed through some supernatural medium… But the strangest thing about it was, that from the crown of its head there sprung a bright clear jet of light…”
i will note that the character design looks neither like a child nor an old man. tho i guess sick burn to this guy if the point is that hes a man-child.
this chess bot is meant to reference dickens, and theres a few dialogue lines that make vague dickens references. but neither the visual character design nor the dialogue really capture any of the spirit of the spirit. a missed opportunity, in my opinion, for a really flavorful and fun bot. (and dickens is long out of copyright, so there would be no issue in copying the authentic voice of the ghost of christmas past in a more faithful representation.)
while i found the writing and visual design a little lazy and flavorless, perhaps that is a blessing in disguise as we saw with the previous bot what happens when a bot has… a little too much flavor. including flavors no one asked for.
i thought the avatar looked familiar, and after some searching around i found that its the same art as for coach danny:
what happened to coach danny that he is a ghost now? am i missing backstory that makes sense of this character? the idea of reliving previous matches makes sense for a coach i guess, but am i supposed to know who he is? this months version of this character makes no mention of ever having been a coach.
im left unsure whether the ghost of games past is meant to reference coach danny and im just missing the joke, or whether the art team went on strike after that wretched leftover turkey bot so chess.com had to make due with modifying existing art assets. i feel like i had to do more research than a normal person would do to hunt down this guy, clicking through every single bot category trying to find a match. but maybe most people on this website do coaching with coach danny bot all the time and this would just make sense to them.
while i didnt find the bot engaging, i impressed myself this game, finding two interesting rook sacrifices in the middlegame, which isnt something ive done before in my short chess experience. there were moments where i had to be very carefully accurate and play very slowly.
a brilliant move! but do i have the skills to convert it into a win?
find out in the annotated game…
game review wasnt as impressed as i hoped given how hard i worked in that game, and i was surprised to see i only had 77% accuracy overall.
i can do better when im on top of my game and play really really slowly. but i guess im still warming back up after months away.
overall i rate the ghost of games past at 5/10. the concept is great but the execution felt like a miss to me, either because im missing something or cuz the bot is missing something. points for the dialogue being mostly consistent within itself, and points for being themed to the season. and an extra point for letting my rook sacs shine rather than blundering something random that would diminish my victory.
maybe if there were the other spirits then this one would have been part of a story that made more sense. actually it would be pretty awesome to have a dickens theme, with the five bots being marley, the three spirits, and scrooge.
3. Frosty (1350)
“frosty the snowman” is a character created in 1950 by songwriters walter rollins and steve nelson. they wrote the song about frosty with the hope of selling it to gene autry, who had just had a big success with another seasonal character-based song, “rudolph the red-nosed raindeer.”
songs that invent stories about new holiday characters were the new cool thing, and if a magic reindeer could be a hit, why not a magic snowman?
well, they were right. this guy took a look at it and said “yes thats my style”
(above: gene autry. pic from wikipedia)
as with “rudolph” the song became a hit. that same year there was a short film based on it, as well as a childrens book, and in following years there was a television adaptation, several television sequels, and eight different covers of the song have charted.
now, on the 75th anniversary of that seminal musical debut, we finally have what the people have been waiting for: a chess bot adaptation three-quarters of a century in the making.
thats right folks, this beloved character and his heartwarming story will be brought to life in a new dramatic medium where triumph and heartbreak are but a misclick away.
will this adaptation remain faithful? or…
…honestly same, tho.
too real.
this is on move 2 and i love this read on frosty. i never heard him compared to frankensteins monster before but i dig it. and unlike the song frosty the snowman, mary shellys frankenstein (or, the modern prometheus) is from 1818 and out of copyright, so the bot can really lean into the original vibes of the original story without fear of soliciting a DMCA.
i enjoy that here on move 2 the modern prometheus has been bestowed with the gift-curse of taking the c pawn as well.
chess is an activity which—we must confront moreso than with other activities—exists within the human mind. thus a healthy dose of existentialism is warranted. i fill my head with thoughts of tactics, openings, and calculations, that i might crowd out more urgent mortal concerns. news, politics, and unpaid bills cant touch me when my considerable powers of consciousness have been entirely oriented toward trying to play a game with 90% accuracy.
i started this first game just to check out the character, even though i didnt have time to play a real game as slow as i will need to to win against this level of bot. i knew as soon as i did this that this was a mistake:
why do i think i need to move the bishop back to break the pin? the queen can just move. there is no reason to do this. and then frosty pushes the d pawn and my advantage is gone like a snowball in summer and im just losing on move 8.
i may not have had time to enjoy a slow game, but i did enjoy the relatability of some of the dialogue lines.
i feel like this writer has been around a child or two, this year of 2025. i love that frosty is being given a sense of place and time with this line, set solidly in the modern day on some front lawn of a busy street with children playing. id like to see more followthrough and consistency on stuff like that. paint me a picture of this snowmans brief existence on this planet. this line is the only one that hints at the setting, and it does it while also showing us the pain of waking up into a society plagued with apathy and antipathy.
i played quickly in my second game with frosty as well, thinking now that im warmed up i should have no problem winning against a bot of this level. frosty blundered into allowing me to promote an entire extra queen early, so i thought i had room to have some fun.
for the past year i have had the dream of someday long-castling into checkmate. in this game i could see that long-castle checkmate was off the table, but i could at least achieve my lesser dream of long-castling into check. i was very excited in this position, i just need to block the rook that has line of sight…
frosty did not cooperate, and i “sacrificed” a bunch of pieces trying to draw his pieces out of the way and block the sight lines. i did not care if i lost as long as i could see o-o-o+ in my review. but alas it was not to be.
finally, my third game i was determined to play seriously. dialog lines and analysis included.
i enjoy this frosty, he gave me a new perspective on the classic character, and i actually bothered to read the voice lines as i was playing. this is a 7.5/10 bot for me.
his mix of existentialism and everyday concerns doesn’t quite hit the right spot for me, because much of the writing sounds the same as for many other bots, and doesnt make sense for the character. i would have liked to see frosty channel a little more mary shelley and a little less jaded millennial.
compare to goose bot from this februarys valentine set, who had a contrast between the philosophical voice and honk goose noises, with both aspects of its personality being equally distinctive. that was a 10/10 bot.
of course, writing character voices that dont all sound the same is one of the more difficult skills that professional writers develop, and i dont expect california tech companies to value professional artists of any kind.
i also find the visual design generic. i want to see the deep pain of existence in frostys eyes, is that too much to ask? was frostys inner turmoil even mentioned in the brief u gave ur graphic designer?
i just think the monthly bots thing could go from a fun little feature to a legendary must-see piece of monthly media. i want to see a review in the arts section of the nytimes. instead, i just know that someone somewhere in that company is thinking “we should pivot our monthly bots to lower costs and pursue more strategic partnerships. also someone bullied me into feeling like if i dont integrate ai then im irrelevant and chess will die, so we should do more ai to things, people love ai right?”
frosty bot is still pretty cool for a chess bot. if i think he could be great, thats only my compliments to the medium, believing more in frosty bot than the ones who created him.
anyway moving on…
4. the abominable chessman (1825)
this bot makes it clear immediately that he is a reference to the abominable snowman from the 1964 stop-motion claymation tv special “rudolph the red-nosed reindeer.”
rudolph himself originates in 1939 with the book “rudolph the red-nosed reindeer” by robert l may. however! the source material for the movie is not actually the book, but the song.
astute readers may recall who is responsible for said song…
yep, this guy again!
gene autry, the same guy who sang the original frosty the snowman sang the original rudolph song in 1949, written by johnny marks, who wrote a ton of other christmas classics for various singers.
while the claymation special is based on the song, the abominable snowman comes from neither the song nor book. the song is pretty short so u can understand why the writers of the film decided to fill things out with lots of original characters and story arcs.
(above: abominable snowman scene in rudolph the red-nosed raindeer)
the adominable snowman is meant to be a depiction of a yeti, a cryptid purportedly native to the himalayan mountains. the moniker “abominable snowman” came from westerners when they decided to get in on the himalayas, but the tradition of the yeti originated with those native to the area.
it makes sense that chess dot com lists the bots country as nepal, as thats prime yeti territory.
but once u go into game review u get the full player name of the bot rather than the user-friendly title, and sometimes there are discrepancies. in this case the country is listed as greenland.
i guess he gets around, on those big feet.
johnny marks, gene autry, and the production company videocraft international are all from the united states, so a u.s. flag might also have been acceptable. but we already had u.s. flags for leftover turkey (given thanksgiving is a u.s. holiday), frosty (written and sung by u.s. artists), and even for the ghost of games past—despite that a christmas carol is distinctively victoran-era british.
so i liked to see the yetis national roots represented.
the chess yeti charmed me early with puns, as i clicked to start the game:
so i tried really hard to do my best.
i was in there tryin to calculate lines like a billion iq chess human.
honestly rude of this guy to not follow the lines i calculated.
this is only the second queens indian game defense game ive ever played against, and i didnt remember anything about what to do. so i made early mistakes and decided not to spend the time to see if i could make a comeback. its not an interesting game but it is here i u would like to see the abominable chessmans dialogue lines.
overall, i give the abominable snowman 5/10. its fine. thematic, inoffensive, and forgettable. it gets points for a strong opening pun, and points for christmas spirit, with the nostalgic references to the claymation special. but once again, i feel a lot is lost by not staying true to any particular character. theres some nods toward trying to be grumpy and unpleasant, but the voice of the writing all sounds like stuff we have heard before. the visuals are also generic and dont match a claymation aesthetic.
u could be making ART here, chess dot com, why bow to the needs of a consistent user experience? give me the kind of yeti that makes me want to obsessively hunt it down and secure claymation checkmation.
5. cabana santa (2840)
i think its nice that after a u.s.-heavy opening lineup, chess dot com is showing us it knows about the southern hemisphere, with a summer santa in december. to me “cabana” reads as a distinctly spanish-american term associated with the southwest u.s., but maybe australians say it too, u tell me.
we also now have a suspect for the identity of the silhouette surfing through the sky in the background art. is there a tradition where in australia santa surfs across the sky to deliver presents?
santa has by far the earliest origins of any of the five characters referenced by this months bots. cabana santa looks to be adding something new to the tradition, and while my first impression was “they probly running out of santa ideas after years of christmas bots”, maybe they really do have something new and interesting to add to the santa lore.
if after over a millennium of santa, one poem about “the night before christmas” could completely reinvent santas image for the 19th century, just think what a really great chessbot could do!
wait what??? this is more than a small addition to santa lore. who will deliver presents to all the good little children?
…were all the children bad this year, because they brought life into the world and then abandoned it to shout memes at traffic?
luckily cabana santa gave me a present, and played one of the few opening lines i know. will that be enough for me to win against such a high level and high-flying opponent?
game includes both sides of our dialogue, as well as some analysis:
i played with the best accuracy ive had all day and was excited to finish up the game and see where i went wrong in the analysis. we were book until move 8, and even at move 13 theres a master level game in the database that has our position. so i must be learning something.
also, looking at the game review, im just now realizing that thats probly how the bot writers think we r supposed to know coach danny. i have always had it set to coach mae, so i didnt recognise the other character. i think she would make a better ghost of games past, personally.
but back to cabana santa, who has achieved the highest rating for writing quality out of this set.
i enjoyed my time with cabana santa more than i expected to, and despite a lukewarm first impression im giving him a solid 7/10. there was a large variety of lines with many different puns. there was a distinct sense of setting and character motivation. i felt like the writer was able to draw on their own personal experience to make certain aspects of this character feel more real, in ways that were more difficult to do with some of the other character concepts.
on the negative side, i wasnt immediately engaged, cuz my first impression was of a southern california surfer reskinned as an australian santa. having the voice of the character still be so similar to the vibes of other chess dot com bots wasnt as jarring as it was for some of the other bots, because the design of the character is that hes just a normal guy struggling with work and relationships and needing a vacation. i liked seeing the lines once but i dont feel much motivation to replay.
i wish it were written a bit more distinctively, creating a world that i want to remain immersed within for a little longer.
closing thoughts
i like playing bots cuz im an adult beginner who enjoys calculation and analysis more than winning or “gaining elo”, and the bots let me take all the time i want. i can eat while i play, go make a cup of tea, take a nap, whatever.
when the bots are distinctive and engaging, of course i want to try my best at a game with each of them. this set of bots definitely succeeded in bringing me back to chess dot com this holiday season, so in that sense they are a resounding success!
compared to other months, i thought this set was fairly strong but not peak. we had creative and memorable concepts as well as good execution, even if those things didnt always happen at the same time. and the overall theme, complete with custom pieces and background, gives those holiday vibes i want in a seasonal monthly event.
tho i have many nitpicks, it is only cuz the bots are “good enough to criticize”. theres enough good here that i want to see more commitment to the bit / commitment to character.
considering the bots in retrospect, leftover turkey bot perhaps should get the most points for creativity and commitment to an original character. but why can we only commit to character when the character is bad and gross? i refuse to give that thing any more points than i already have.
in my last few bot reviews ive waited to post until ive got wins to share on at least the 4th bot, but this time im coming in rusty and i want to get this up while theres still time for readers to be inspired to play them. give them a try and let me know ur opinions!
happy christmas and holiday time, and see u later this month for the final annual awards judging all the bots of 2025 
