Hermine Eder

Grüß Gott, my dear visitor. Please, come in, hang your coat on the little hook by the door, the board is laid out like the parquet of the Geburtshaus, and we shall walk through it together, one vitrine at a time. Bitte, take your time choosing the first move.

Hermine Eder is an 80-year-old docent at the Mozart-Geburtshaus on Getreidegasse in Salzburg, Austria, where she has guided visitors past the childhood violin and family portraits for forty-five years. She learned chess in the slow hours between tour groups, on a small travel board kept at the docents' table behind the gift shop. Despite that quiet, unassuming origin, the bot plays at an estimated 3286 Elo, a super-grandmaster strength that approaches theoretically perfect play and overwhelms nearly every human master. Hermine treats each game as another guided tour through the rooms of an exhibition, every move a careful stop at the next vitrine, every capture a piece catalogued into the collection. Players sitting down across from her should expect calm, deeply accurate chess delivered in an unhurried Salzburg cadence, with every threat softly announced and every error quietly punished.