Hacker News Reader

Comment by DeathArrow | Hacker News Reader

Is there a chess game where you can toggle the level of AI with ease? I ask for my kids and myself as I am a poor chess player.

View on HN

Yes. The app simply called "Chess.com" (it's a website and Mobile app) probably offers the simplest interface, along with nice breakdowns post game and guided tutorials.

It's not just "the simplest interface", it's the de-facto application/web page for playing Chess. You'll find grandmasters like Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura playing there. You can access their games and every game ever played on the website. You can track your performance, analyze your games, train with puzzles, play against various bots, etc.

Feel appropriate to mention that for people drawn towards OSS alternatives, we also have Lichess.org.

Thank you!

Since the 1980's there have been chess computers with levels that you could set that would handily defeat most club level chess players.

The Stockfish software from TFA is a very far removed descendant from those early dedicated chess computers and usually you can set the level of your opponent by limiting the depth of search to a certain number of ply. That alone is a powerful switch to control how well it plays.

More so than limiting the depth of search, the "level" knob in Stockfish makes it select suboptimal moves with some probability.

Hehe, that's an interesting approach! Presumably because even at its lamest setting it still has too much of an advantage.

My assumption would be that it's because it wouldn't make for a great game, it would be "quite good generally, with some huge obvious blunders here and there", but I don't know for sure.

chess.com has different "AI players" with personalities that you can play against.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com