Author: Mike Hood
Date: 03:37:00 10/25/01
There have been a lot of posts (over the years) about how to make engines weaker. This is an interesting question that I'd like to revive. I mean, it's not just about getting to the top of the SSDF list. Very few people who buy a current chess program at its full unleashed power stand a chance of even drawing against it. It's a matter of playing enjoyable (and instructive) chess in your spare time. I'm disappointed with most of the handicap levels in chess programs. Everything from "Drunken Assassin" to "Paranoid Scaredycat" delivers poor chess, making stupid blunders that anyone with an ELO rating over 1000 can take advantage of. The only successful handicapping that I've seen is limiting the ply depth of the search. Limiting the ply search of an engine to 4 (or maybe 6) ply leads to the engine playing solid but beatable chess. Maybe I'm just speaking from my own limited perspective as a 1550 player, but I have the impression that the blunders made by a plydepth-limited engine are very "human". I think Chessbase's "Sparring Mode" makes a choice based on a limited ply search, then announces a warning if it sees a better move at a deeper depth. Right? I'm not sure what Chessbase's "Friend mode" actually does. It seems to play reasonable chess while it's in a level game, but when it's winning it throws away the victory. Yesterday I played a curious game against Fritz 6 (in Friend mode). After 40 moves it announced Mate in 4 against me. After 70 moves I managed to reach a draw. But maybe I'm getting away from my reason for posting this message... my question is: What IS the best way to handicap an engine? Should it be done on engine level? Or should the handicapping be done by a meta-engine interface that looks at an array of valuations for the n legal moves and says "Let's pick that one"?
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