In today’s day and age, computers are obviously way better at chess than humans, and even the best players in the world have a hard time holding a candle to engines like Stockfish, etc. However, what I don’t understand is how is it possible to have them in different levels of strength. For example, on Chess.com, there are dozens of bots that you can play against depending on your own level. But for the weakest ones, how does this work? One would think that an engine either knows how to play chess efficiently, or it doesn’t. How can you “dumb down” a computer to the level of an intermediate player or even a beginner? Thanks!
In: 15
There are quite a few ways. You can limit its time to think into milliseconds. You can limit how deep it looks to evaluate. But for the weakest bots such as the ones you will find on chess.com, they intentionally play bad moves until their average playstyle equals a certain rating. Computers calculate many different lines. It’s not too hard to tell the computer to play the 15th best move which could be quite a poor move.
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