Can I Adopt Santa? Holiday Bot Adoptions Part 3
I wish we could all multitask as well as Santa can. How does he manage to direct elves, maintain the reindeer, watch us all when we're sleeping, put us on the naughty and nice lists, eat cookies, and most importantly for us, play chess, all at the same time?
I'm sure he's used to being adopted many times by Mrs. Claus, but how will he feel if I win ten straight games against him? I don't want to make Santa too sad...
Now let's continue with the challenge. To get past Stage 3, I need to win ten games in a row, a draw or loss is mission failure.
Technically I adopted Powder and Eve in 11 games, (you can check out why here and here) but I'm not going to do that today. No reason to risk a loss, even though it doesn't count.
Santa is rated 1200. Powder was rated 800, and Eve was 1000, but to be honest, I expected that there would be more of a skill difference for a 200 point rating gap. Both Eve and Powder eventually blundered material for no reason eventually, although Eve somehow did know a lot of openings. Let's see how Santa plays.
By the way, each time I attempt to adopt these bots, it is the very first time that I've ever played each one. I haven't warmed up against them and don't know how they play, which is part of the challenge.
Let's get started:
Round 1 (Black)
Does defeating Santa at chess make you naughty? No, but maybe you can be a little "nicer" to me in our next game!
- Santa after losing
I didn't know that Santa talks about himself in third person! Sorry, but for the next nine games I can't be nice to you at all.
My apologies in advance.
Round 2 (White)
Alright, that seems like a good capture.
- Santa after "sacrificing" a knight on d3
Thanks. It was a great capture.
Round 3 (White)
I haven’t seen this move before!
- Santa on 1. g3
Did you or did you not play this against me in our first game?
Round 4 (White)
Holly taught me that the queen is the most powerful piece, but it took me a while to understand why it was so important to keep my queen on the board unless I was trading it for another queen.
- Santa
Good job!
Round 5 (White)
Weird how I got four whites in a row.
Okay so I mouseslipped in the worst possible way and hung my queen... for the sake of this I'm not going to let my run end so stupidly.
Round 5.1 (Black)
Well, that was a naughty move! Maybe you should play Dash or Holly instead of poor old Santa!
- Santa after 36...g8=R
Since when has underpromotion been naughty? I was being nice to you and extending the game for a few moves!
Round 6 (Black)
What do you call this opening?
- Santa on the French Defense
I'm surprised how you can play such a variety of openings yet forget the name of this.
Did you like my naughty underpromotion?
Round 7 (Black)
That looks like a nice move!
- Santa on 1. Nf3
I agree, knight moves are aesthetically pleasing.
More importantly, I blundered a WHOLE ROOK (I was acting like this was a thirty second bullet game) and you gave me the material back.
Yes, I know. We're not going to talk about how long it took me to mate. It's the end of the day, and braincells do get tired. But I hope you appreciated my third consecutive underpromotion to a rook 
By now I'm almost playing with Santa, but I have to remember to slow down sometimes. That was a close call.
Round 8 (Black)
That wasn't nice! Well, I guess I can keep playing without my queen.
- Santa after hanging his queen
Oh yes, it was very nice - of you to hand me that queen.
I was honestly thinking of trying to get a passed pawn just so I could underpromote.
Round 9 (Black)
Underpromotion is soooo lit
I wish Santa would actually say something like that. Maybe in the future there would be some sort of algorithm so that the bots could make up chat messages on the fly, generating fun lines according to the position.
Four underpromotions! I'm so proud of myself.
Round 10 (White for the adoption)
Aw no underpromotions. That was lame.
- me
Unfortunately I couldn't end with an underpromotion or five... it would have been nice to spawn a few new knights.
Santa's in the bag! Three for three adoptions so far. Tomorrow I'm going for Dash's antlers. It's two days before Christmas tomorrow, so some relaxing games of chess should get Dash ready to fly. Let's hope Santa viewed today as a learning experience. I wouldn't want to be on Santa's bad side (or worse, naughty list 💀).
I was trying to grind and practice suffering through the French, trying to get my old feel for it back. Unfortunately I didn't get the chance, because Santa tossed a few pieces before any action could start. I guess for the past three bots, action means throwing material. 1200? No way. I've played 1200s. They won't just ignore a piece that's clearly attacked.
Seems like these bots know their openings but not their material value. I feel like there should be a way to make bots play at their rating other than delaying material blunders more and more as their ratings go up.
Anyway that's enough of belittling the bots for today.
Tomorrow I get to test out Dash. Labeled 1600. So far, I don't trust the ratings, but it seems that some people have trouble with him. Thankfully my first day of winter break starts tomorrow, so I'll have all the time I need tomorrow to deal with him (that's why I've posted these first few so late, I had school and some other activities before I got to write. fyi if you ever need to contact me, I live in EST).
Thanks for reading this! Wish me luck for tomorrow and possibly the day after. I have a feeling I'm going to need it.
Happy holidays!
