The Fifty-Fifth Annual Ponyville Chess Championship was an unusual one. Many years later, the book on the history of this famed tournament mentioned that this was the only time in its history when among its participants were both one of the most infamous villains in the history of Equestria and one of the first pony-shaped machines fitted with the latest feat of arcane technomagic – artificial intelligence. The more academically honest histories put scare-quotes around "intelligence."
Many ponies called those beings ‘robots’, though no one knew how this word found its way to the pony language; Moondancer, one of the pioneers of High Energy Magic, suspected this was somehow Discord’s fault.
In what seemed like an amazing coincidence, but was, in fact, a natural quirk of the Swiss-system tournament (now, the fact that ponies called it “Swiss” was definitely Discord’s fault), the villainous filly and Ponyville’s first robot ended up playing each other in the first round.
The diodes in Sweetie Bot’s eyes lit up, forming the hourglass shape as she looked at the chessboard, where Cozy Glow had just put her pawn on the e4 square. Sweetie pondered the 8-by-8 grid in front of her, scanning the position of each piece, as well as their movement range, special moves, vital statistics, and equipment. The hard disks whirred and Sweetie remembered that she was supposed to download the opening book before the tournament, but all she got was the user manual of a can opener, a short file titled Winning with the Bongcloud, and an expensive picture of an ugly ape.
Eventually, she replied by placing her pawn to e5 and awaited the inevitable king move. However, Cozy Glow picked up her queen and put it on h5. Sweetie’s CPU lit up with electricity. She realised g6 wouldn’t work as the queen would take her pawn on e5 with check and win the rook, which right now stood uselessly in the corner, but Sweetie felt it could be useful later. She spent a few minutes pondering the options. Why would her opponent play such an illogical move? Moving the queen so recklessly? Sweetie put her knight on c6, defending the pawn.
Cozy immediately replied by putting her bishop on c4. Sweetie looked at the square and for some reason, her programming sharply reminded her that she was not supposed to promote illegal or dangerous activities and thus she couldn’t provide information on how to make explosives.
Sweetie groaned. Scootaloo once told her that she was afraid that she’d accidentally make semtex while cooking with her aunts and asked how to avoid making it. Sweetie told her exactly what not to do, but Scootaloo still accidentally made semtex, which ended in Royal Guards visiting her house and Sweetie spending a sleepless night downloading Important Updates and Bug Fixes.
Suddenly, she realised that she could now develop a piece while attacking Cozy’s queen and forcing it to retreat. She smiled and put her knight on f6, looking triumphantly at her opponent.
To her surprise, Cozy took the pawn on f7 with her queen. “Checkmate,” she said. “Git good, buckethead.”
Sweetie frowned, looking at the board. This couldn’t be! Cozy left the board, but Sweetie stayed in her seat, her programming kicking in. The disks whirred and the fans started to spin. She realised that she now had one aim: to learn how to play chess.
And Sweetie Bot was a damn fast learner.
Sweetie looked at the chessboard. She was in her room, which was now filled with diagrams, books, and suspicious-smelling flash drives. Sweetie moved a pawn two squares forward and looked at the resulting position.
Control the centre.
Develop your pieces.
Bring the king to safety.
She moved the black pawn one square forward. “Prench Defense,” she said to herself, moving the c-pawn two squares forward and then started to move the pieces on both sides, prancing from one side of the board to the other. Soon, the position was a complete mess and Sweetie dropped on the floor, error messages flashing before her eyes. Reviewing the game in her head, she realised that she made several illegal moves and that her whole idea was crazy and only worked because black was equally bad.
She checked some books and then downloaded some new updates, groaning and sighing. Sweetie's modem was located just below her sternum, where a biological filly's uterus would have been, and spending several hours downloading updates left her overheated and crampy, not unlike how Scootaloo or Apple Bloom described their periods.
Unfortunately, Sweetie's update schedule was more often than monthly.
Finally, she played another game against herself. This one was slightly better; Sweetie got rid of almost all of black’s pieces, only to find out that she couldn’t checkmate the king with just a rook. No matter what she did, the pesky piece just kept escaping.
She drank another can of oil and started to ponder about the intricacies of checkmating the king with the rook.
Several hours passed. Rarity was now snoring in her bedroom and checkmating with a rook was no longer a problem for Sweetie. In fact, she mastered rook endgames in about two hours, then moved on to minor pieces. She kept playing games against herself; there were thousands of them in her memory bank now and she learned something new with each of them. She drew a long endgame with bishops of opposite colours, mainly because both the Sweetie Bot playing with white and Sweetie Bot playing with black were too proud to admit that it was a draw, even though they saw it coming from miles away.
By the morning, Sweetie realised that all the endgames with seven or less pieces on the board were solved and that she knew how to win or draw any of them. She started to open games by moving her knight to f3; since it was played in almost every opening, she could as well do it first. She also kept studying the middlegame, intending to take her opponent to a deep dark forest, where two plus two was five, the path leading out was only wide enough for one, and Monte Carlo tree search turned into Monte Carlo kudzu.
In the morning, Rarity knocked on the door, realising that her robotic sister was oddly quiet and no adults had complained about her antics in town for nearly twelve hours.
“Are you okay, Sweetie?” she asked.
“Queen endgames,” Sweetie replied, pouring herself a tall glass of battery acid. “How can this be a forced draw in forty-six moves?”
“Did you catch a virus again?” Rarity asked, glaring at the flash drives.
“Nah, I’m fine,” Sweetie said, shuffling the pieces across the board. “I’m just playing a game.”
Rarity looked at the board. “With whom?”
“Myself.” Sweetie Bot put a black rook on the second rank and smiled at her imaginary opponent. “I think I just refuted Queen’s Gambit.”
“Can’t you go out and play with Apple Bloom or Scootaloo?”
“They wouldn’t understand the intricacies of this position.” Sweetie put the pieces back on their starting squares. “I just played ten thousand games against myself.”
Rarity shrugged and went downstairs, leaving Sweetie to her own devices. Soon, the artificial filly realised that she just refuted all the openings named after animals. For a while, the Hippo stayed undefeated, as Sweetie struggled in closed positions with no obvious targets. However, a few hours later, this was no longer the issue. Hippo, Orangutan, Pterodactyl, Whale, Walrus, Rat, Hedgehog, and all the other animals had no secrets for her. She cut off all three axes of attack of the Hydra Gambit.
She started to play faster; soon, drinking coolant was no longer enough. When Rarity came back to her room a few hours later, she found her surrounded by industrial fans spinning at their highest settings.
“Are you well?” Rarity asked. “Did you fry your CPU again?”
“I’m learning to play chess,” Sweetie replied, staring at the empty board.
“You’re not moving any pieces,” Rarity said.
“I have transcended beyond moving pieces.” Sweetie’s gaze was focused on the board. “I have to move fast but pieces too slow.”
Rarity frowned. “I’ll schedule the dictionary upgrade.”
Sweetie nodded. “Forced mate in three hundred moves!”
Rarity rolled her eyes and left the room.
When Rarity came back to the Carousel Boutique after visiting Twilight, she found Sweetie still lying on the floor, surrounded by fans, and with a half-melted ice pack on her head, but at least she saw that the chessboard was gone. Her optimism was, however, short-lived. When she walked to Sweetie, she saw that the light in her eyes was flickering, indicating some deep calculations going on all over the motherboard.
“I was just wondering who tried to order a dozen GPUs using my bank account,” Rarity said. “Do you happen to know that?”
“This Celestia-damn cat,” Sweetie muttered, rubbing her temples.
“Excuse me?” Rarity furrowed her eyebrows. “I’m pretty sure this wasn’t Opal.”
“The cat,” Sweetie replied. “How can it be so good at chess? Its Elo is like, literally one. I beat the cat, but now it’s all draws. Whatever I play, however good I play, the other me is also getting better. We had ten thousand draws in a row. Forced draws. Forced draws everywhere.”
“Well, that’s it for today,” Rarity muttered, levitating a screwdriver.
When Sweetie woke up, she found her head delightfully empty; her memories were slowly coming back; she realised they were coming from the backup file – the one from Saturday, right after the chess tournament. According to her inner clock, the last two days were still missing, although deep inside the motherboard she found the remains of memories of what happened still hovering in the circuits, written in some low-level programming language she barely understood.
She blinked, realising that someone else was in the room. Her microphones were muted, so she turned them on; still she only had access to the backup camera, with lower resolution and only showing things in black and white.
“Alas, the GPUs are getting hard to replace,” Rarity said. “Good thing I recently ordered a dozen of them.”
“At least there’s no tree sap this time.” Apple Bloom shrugged. “And hey, for once it wasn’t our fault!”
Scootaloo looked at Sweetie and tilted her head. “While she’s out cold, can we draw on her face?”
Rarity shook her head. “Drawing is the problem, darling. By the way, before she tries again, I should suggest something that wouldn’t overclock her so easily, like checkers.”
“Maybe tic-tac-toe would be more her style?” Scootaloo asked.
“That’s more your style,” Apple Bloom deadpanned.
Sweetie’s primary cameras finally rebooted and she heard the familiar “new device found” sound informing her that her speakers were back online. “What happened?” she asked.
“Twilight says you caught a chess fever, darling,” Rarity replied. “We had to reset you to factory settings and replace the carpet your heatsink singed.”
Sweetie groaned. “Third time this year. Why do I have to suffer endlessly?”
“Apparently the reset came with an improved philosophy module,” Rarity said. “And the previous time wasn’t your fault. Honestly, what possessed Lyra to ask you to draw hands?!”
“Draw?” Sweetie froze, several error messages exploding in front of her. She dropped on her pillow, her system resetting again.