It's been a few years since I've played that program, but from what I recall, it had an odd way of creating some of lower skill level personalities. It would play like a grandmaster for a few moves then throw away material.
Chessmaster GM Edition - personalities
Sort:
Thanks. I've been playing against Fritz 16 Rated mode and find it plays a lot more consistently and more like a human than any of the Chessmaster personalities I've tried so far. The best thing about Chessmaster seems to be the Academy, the large annotated games DB and the tournaments.
Thing is, I can't beat Fritz under Rated conditions even at the lowest Elo setting! 
From what i can remember, at the levels I played Chessmaster most often, it would play extremely well for quite a while then sacrifice a piece for my f pawn for really no good reason. It did that often enough that I was annoyed by it.
Jun 30, 2018
0
#5
Yeah, a lot of the lower rated CM personalities play really squirrelly moves at times. There are some personalities that are more well-rounded, but you have to search them out. The different ages of Josh are fairly well-rounded.
Jul 1, 2018
0
#6
My two favorite engines for low-level, nearly human-like moves are HIARCS and Delfi Trainer. Both are commercial, and sadly, I don't think Delfi Trainer is available any more. I have the Delfi Trainer 5.4, and it's some of the best money I ever spent on a chess engine. It's UCI, and you can adjust the rating from 1000 elo to 2300 elo.
There are some free versions of the Delfi engine that are still available:
The Delfi 5.4 UCI demo engine only runs at either 1000 elo or full strength. You can still get it here: http://www.msbsoftware.it/delfi/
The Delfi 5.0 WB demo engine can be set between 1250 elo and 1550 elo. You can get it either here: http://www.top-5000.nl/wbuci.htm or here: https://web.archive.org/web/20070208171602/http://www.msbsoftware.it/delfi/
The Delfi 4.5 WB demo engine can be set between 1250 elo and 1750 elo. It's still available as part of a free Winboard X/Rybka package. (Extract the Delfi files from the Winboard X archive file.) You can get it here: https://web.archive.org/web/20120604090850/http://files.chesscomfiles.com/download_files/614/Portable_WinboardX_Rybka.zip
The Delfi 4.5 engine is perhaps 150 elo stronger than the other two Delfi engines. If you download all three engines, you can get strengths of 1000 elo, and between 1250 elo to about 1900 elo (factoring in the stronger performance of the ver 4.5 engine).
For the two WB engines, you need to specify the elo level in the .ini file. If you want to use the Delfi 5.4 UCI demo engine in Chessmaster, you'd have to import the engine into CM via a polyglot adapter, which I explained here in Post #77: https://www.chess.com/forum/view/chess-equipment/chessmaster-biggest-load-of-crap-ever?page=4
Thanks, man. I actually own HIARCS - I just haven't got around to really testing it yet. It's like I'm drowning in a sea of chess information and options! (Though I'm beginning to navigate my way now). I'll give HIARCS a try soon then. Though I'm also fairly impressed with Fritz so far.
My main question now is: if engines are the tactical monsters we are always told they are, how is it possible to EVER score a tactic against them? Won't they just see it coming, even when dumbed down majorly?
Jul 1, 2018
0
#8
ed1975 wrote:
<snip>
My main question now is: if engines are the tactical monsters we are always told they are, how is it possible to EVER score a tactic against them? Won't they just see it coming, even when dumbed down majorly?
Many dumbed-down engines limit their strength by only looking at a small number of nodes per second, and they also often add a small amount of randomness for each move. So for any move, it's possible that the engine might just miss a certain tactic.
OK, thanks 
Jul 1, 2018
0
#10
Quasimorphy wrote:
From what i can remember, at the levels I played Chessmaster most often, it would play extremely well for quite a while then sacrifice a piece for my f pawn for really no good reason. It did that often enough that I was annoyed by it.
Inknow a few players doing the same
I found an easy way to make CM play like a human throughout the game. Just restrict it's Max search depth and Selective search. Then it plays so much like a human it's excellent for simulating tourney and match play to practice for competition vs humans.
Jun 9, 2019
0
#12
dannygjk wrote:
I found an easy way to make CM play like a human throughout the game. Just restrict it's Max search depth and Selective search. Then it plays so much like a human it's excellent for simulating tourney and match play to practice for competition vs humans.
Can you give a good example? That is, which stock personality you started with, and the exact changes made to that personality?
You can use the Chessmaster personality. Create a personality to compete against by lowering Max search depth and Selective search. The numbers you need to use of course depend on the computer. Max search depth 3 and Selective search 1 gives I think about a C player on my computer. It plays decent moves most of the time, some inaccuracies, and it blunders sometimes just like a D or C player. It won't play like a GM for 10 moves then blunder a piece. It plays like a normal human class C or B player.
Jun 9, 2019
0
#14
dannygjk wrote:
You can use the Chessmaster personality. Create a personality to compete against by lowering Max search depth and Selective search. The numbers you need to use of course depend on the computer. Max search depth 3 and Selective search 1 gives I think about a C player on my computer. It plays decent moves most of the time, some inaccuracies, and it blunders sometimes just like a D or C player. It won't play like a GM for 10 moves then blunder a piece. It plays like a normal human class C or B player.
I just started running it against Delfi 5.0 elo 1550. I'd like the CM personality better if it didn't move instantly.
It's endgame play is horrible but changing those 2 values is an easy way to have it play a lot like a human in opening and middle game.
Jun 9, 2019
0
#16
The modified CM engine was trouncing the Delfi 5.0 elo 1550 engine, so I ran it against a stronger Delfi engine. It looks like the CM engine may be more in the range of a strong Class B player. If that's too strong, I guess you could try backing off the max search depth or the sop (strength of play). I still don't like the instant moving; It's a bit unnerving.
Yeah the instant moving apparently a delay can't be added.
Jun 13, 2019
0
#18
I ran your modified CM personality (max search depth 3, selective search 1) against Delfi 5.0 elo 1550 for several hundred games, and the CM personality had a winning expectancy of about 0.72 to 0.76, which translates to around 1720 to 1750 elo, at least based on the 1550 rating of the Delfi engine. (Bear in mind that the 1550 rating of the Delfi engine is strictly an arbitrary guess by the programmer.)
I actually ran two tournaments. One tournament was in the Arena GUI and produced the 0.76 winning expectancy; The second tournament was in the Chessmaster 10 GUI and produced the 0.72 winning expectancy. In both tournaments, both engines used the CMX opening book.
Jun 13, 2019
0
#19
I like Chessmaster a lot. The AI does play at one second per move up until around the 1200 or 1300 rated players for some reason though.
Find playing against the different personalities to be quite fun, and think it's a really well made game in general.
Anyone out there still playing the above? I'm really enjoying the Academy, however finding in my games against the AI so far few if any of the illustrated themes or moves come up.
Anyway, I just played against an 866 ELO AI personality. Despite this relatively low ELO, it only took 1 (ONE) second to move the entire game (I managed a draw) and seemed much stronger than the approx 1200 ELO player I had played just before.
Weird, much?