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Why on earth would the phone be running the chess engine 24/7 ? It only has to run the engine when it needs to select its next move.

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Traditional chess applications are "thinking" while waiting for you to move. That's not to say they can't be sleeping while waiting for your move, but it would just delay the game tempo and possibly (slightly) limit the overall competency of the chess AI.

Not slightly, greatly.

Speculative move generation of a chess engine on opponent time is a huge part of the overall strength especially when the engine can see a forced move therby collapsing the tree.

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