How To Use A Chess Engine
With AI getting more efficient every day, the world worries that humans will eventually become obsolete. Chess players, however, don't really have to fret. Chess engines have been crushing humans for years now.
But, as sad as it is to get rolled by your grandmother's old cellphone in your favorite game, engines can also help us to get better at chess.
In this article, I'll teach you how to use a chess engine to have fun and improve your game.
What Is A Chess Engine?
Let's start from the beginning. What exactly is a chess engine?
In simple terms, a chess engine is an evil entity sent by the gods of checkers to destroy chess a computer program that analyzes a position and determines the best moves to play. But what do I mean by that?
Engines are much stronger than even world number-one GM Magnus Carlsen would be on steroids. This means engines can determine which side would win with best play in any given position. They can "see ahead" and tell you who stands better and how any legal move would affect the game's outcome.
Nowadays, the strongest engine is Stockfish, which powers all of Chess.com's analysis and Game Review (more on those later). However, other strong engines like Leela Chess Zero, Komodo, Torch, and many more are out there.
How To Use A Chess Engine
We've all heard how you can use chess engines to do shady business. While a few people love using engines to get banned from Chess.com (and you will get banned if you use it to cheat), you can actually put them to good use.
First of all, you can use engines to have some fun playing against our bots. From creators to musicians to athletes to cute hippos, you'll find all sorts of different bots you can challenge, all powered by a chess engine.
Many people like to play against bots so they don't feel the pressure of facing another human. Others enjoy the deeply intellectual comments our bots convey from time to time.
But if you would like to use a chess engine to get better, here's what you need to know.
Understanding Chess.com's Engine
Once you load a game, things might look confusing if you're not familiar with how engines work. So, just to make sure you understand what's what, I'll be like a guitar player and break things down for you.
Here's what you'll see once you load up a game:
That tall, thin, black-and-white thing to the left of the board is the evaluation bar (or eval bar, as the cool kids call it).
Much like rappers, chess players really care about their bars. In chess, the eval bar shows how good or bad a position is for each player. The more white you see, the better the position is for White (and the worse for Black). If there's a lot of black in that bar, let's just say you wouldn't be enjoying the game if you had the white pieces.
If you like numbers and science, you don't even need that artsy bar to know what's up. The engine also shows a numeric value that pretty much says the same thing the eval bar does. A value of 0 indicates the position is equal. A positive value indicates a better position for White, and a negative value is better for Black.
It used to be that the value an engine gave to a position was tied to the material count. Nowadays, things are a bit nerdier and more complicated. If you are a nerd or, like Avril Lavigne's crush, complicated (I'll stop with the musical references now), check out the explanation on Stockfish's FAQ page on GitHub.
In practical terms, you just need to know that a value of +1 means White is better, and a value of +3 or more means White is super better and most likely winning (and -1 and -3 mean the same, except for Black).
Finally, you'll notice some action going on at the top right of the screen. These are the best moves the engine could find in a certain position, along with the entire lines it calculated for each move.
By default, Chess.com shows the top three lines (you can change that to show up to five lines). The engine orders the moves from strongest to weakest, and you can also see the evaluation of the final position of the line.
This is all you need to know about how engines work to use them well. Now, let's go to how you can actually do it.
How To Use Chess Engines To Improve
Now that you understand how to use Stockfish on Chess.com and where everything is, it's time to put it to use. You can use an engine to analyze your games and learn from your mistakes in many ways.
If you'd like some assistance to analyze your games, you should try out our Game Review. This tool will guide you through the game review process and show you the critical moments of the game, where you might have missed a tactic or played a bad move.
However, if you'd like to analyze your games on your own, you can use our Analysis page. Below, you can see a video by IM Kostya Kavutskiy from ChessDojo teaching you how to use a chess engine for that purpose:
Chess Engine Settings On Chess.com
Now that you can brag about using an engine to your chess-playing friends (do it with no context, it's fun), we'll go a step further! You can tweak the engine's settings to cater to your every quirk and whim.
I mean, there's nothing like saying, "Oh, I'm sorry, it's just that my engine's set to depth 22, so I guess it sees further than yours," to your friends in a braggy way. Even if it doesn't really make that much of a difference for your level of play.
If you want to have this sort of fun, you can click the cog icon next to the chessboard on the Analysis page.
Here's a quick summary of each setting and what they do:
Strength: this determines how much weight your engine can benchpress. Also, how strong it is when you're going through Game Review. The stronger it is, the higher the quality of its analysis—but also the longer it'll take to review your game.
Chess Engine: this selects which engine the Analysis page will use. The default is a lite version of Stockfish. You can pick an even stronger fish by investing 60 MG more of your device's power, or experiment with other engines like Torch and Komodo.
Maximum Depth: an engine's "depth" is how far it calculates into the future. A depth of 20 means the engine will look at 20 "half-moves," meaning 10 moves for each side.
Number of Lines: remember when you saw the three best lines the engine suggested? Well, you can make it five lines if you want (or just one if you're the type of person who spends more time browsing Netflix's catalog looking for something to watch rather than actually watching a show).
Threads: Not to be confused with the one in social media. Basically, how much processing power from your computer will go into the engine's work. In practice, a bigger number means a better analysis that will also demand more from your computer.
Cloud Chess Engine: This setting only affects the engine used on our Events page. You can switch between Stockfish and Komodo Dragon. Stockfish is stronger, but Komodo Dragon is a much cooler name, so there's no right answer here.
Life hack: in days that are especially cold, turn all the settings to the maximum to turn your computer into a bonfire. Have a fire extinguisher nearby, and always do it under the supervision of an adult. You can only do it once per computer. Also, please note that this is a joke, so don't do it and then blame me for what happens.
Conclusion
While chess engines can be evil and cruel (remember Mittens?), they can also be a lot of fun and a great way for you to learn more about the game. Use it well, use it wisely, and make sure you share your brilliant, engine-approved games in the comments!
Pedro Pinhata is the Writing Lead for Chess.com. He writes articles, feature announcements, event pages, and more. He has been playing chess since 2019 and lives in Brazil.
