Strength of Tarrasch Toy engine in Lucas Chess

does anyone know what the ELO strength of the Tarrasch Toy Engine in Lucas Chess is for

beginner levels 1,2,3 and 4

amateur levels 1 and 2

Master Candidate level

thanks

Thanks for replying,

my rating is about 1300.

am i better playing against weaker engines that see moves deep or against stronger engines that only see 1-2 moves ahead.

can you recommend any engines at my level

thanks again

The Tarrasch Toy Engine 0.906 has a CCRL 40/4 engine rating of 1482 elo. (Translating that engine rating into a human equivalent can be a bit frustrating.)

The engine is a UCI design. It has no weakening feature. That is, it has no option for UCI_LimitStrength or skill level reductions.

I'm not very familiar with LucasChess, mainly because the almost total lack of documentation turns me off. (I also don't like the limited hints and the fact that you have to "earn" the right to play stronger opponents in some modes.) If the Tarrasch Toy Engine is being weakened in any way, it's being done by the LucasChess GUI...and of course there's no documentation explaining how that's being done.

Ive contacted Lukas himself on different occasions and hes very helpful and always replies.  I think you could contact him regarding the documentation and he'd tell you waht you need to know.

The engine Im using is 0.905 version.

He wasnt sure about the engine strength ELO though. I think beginner 1 and 2 is reduced to 1100-1200.  thats why i posted originally cos i want to know where i stand regarding what engine strength im playing.

regarding earning the right to play stronger opponents in the competition section, you can go to ELO section and choose an engine of any strength and play it or simply choose a stronger engine to start playing against in the comp section.

As Tarasch Toy is the weakest one I wanted to see exactly what strength it is at all levels.

can ypu explain what CCRL 40/4 refers to.  I know nothing about engines and im just getting into playing against them apart from playing against shredder and chess genius on my phone.

Thanks for your help with this

The engine Im using is 0.905 version

CCRL is the Computer Chess Rating List and it rates engines by playing them against each other either at 40 moves in 40 minutes (40/40) or 40 moves in 4 minutes (40/4).  Here is the link:

http://www.computerchess.org.uk/ccrl/4040/

Another good list is the Swedish Rating List which is 40/120: 

http://ssdf.bosjo.net/list.htm

Thanks, how are your games going.i think we played against each other in the dhlc tourneys

Thanks, just playing some unrated engine games in a tourney.  Too busy to play DHLC slow games during the academic year.  I use Deep Hiarcs on a fast Macintosh for the engine games and the quality of play is remarkable to observe.

If you are interested in playing against an engine that can adjust to your skill level I would suggest Shredder which is even available for smart phones.

Shredder is great on the phone alright.  Chessgenius is another good one for phones. 

I found the puzzles in shredder great but I never found out who designed them or what level they were for

have you any idea

I enjoy those puzzles, too, but don't know where they came from.  My tactics rating on this site is in the 1600s and I find the Shredder Android puzzles slightly easier so maybe 1400s-1500s on the whole.

i downloaded shredder classic 4 trial version. it doesnt have the phone puzzles apparently but it gives you puzzles of the day from its site. maybe the full version those.

have you used this version 

Don't think I have used the classic 4.  Got the latest version for Android for about $5 last year.  Amazing to me to have 2600 Elo on my phone.

sorry i meant Shredder classic 4 for Pc.

I use Deep Shredder on my iMac but since I estimate my Elo strength at OTB time controls at well below 2000 the Classic 4 would have more than enough ability to beat me every time at full strength.  I have read that setting an engine's strength to an Elo 200 points above your own is ideal for learning since you will lose 75% of the time but not 100% of the time.  

For engines that don't adjust themselves to your strength (the way Shredder does) you can limit their Elo by limiting their thinking time.  Cutting thinking time in half reduces Elo by about 100 points.  For example, if Elo at full strength (3 minutes per move) is 2500 then Elo at 45 seconds per move is 2300 and at 5 seconds per move is just under 2000.

does the opposite work 

if you use a weak engine but give it a long time to think does it increase in ELO.

ive noticed with Tarrasch toy engine that theres even a huge difference between beginner level 3 and 5.  level 3 thinks 3 moves ahead and level 5 thinks 5 moves ahead and the difference is really noticeable

is setting the time to think the same as setting how many moves ahead for engine to see.

Regarding the max rating of Tarrasch Toy Engine (TTE) 0.905, it's a bit weaker than TTE 0.906. I tried a quick tournament, but I got quite different results depending on whether TTE 0.905 was playing TTE 0.906 or Piranha 0.5. Against TTE 0.906, TTE 0.905 performed at about a 1290 level, but against Piranha, TTE 0.905 performed at about a 1380 level. Which one is more right? Dunno. (These numbers may not even be very accurate, since there were only slightly more than 100 games between each pair of engines.)

Regarding the LucasChess GUI further dumbing down the TTE to beginner levels: If it's dumbing down the engine by limiting the search plies, then yes, you can expect a non-linear rating change.

Doubling the thinking time for any engine should add about 100 Elo.  This ratio may not apply for longer thinking times than 6 min per move.

The benefit of more time varies depending on the engine.  Some search fewer moves deeply, others more moves but not as deeply.  The latter tend to benefit more from more time.  My Deep Hiarcs 14 is 130 Elo weaker than Stockfish 3 at 40/4 but about the same at 40/120.

If a program is limited to looking at all moves but just 3 moves deep (rarely done in comtemporary engines) it will be weak due to missing killer moves that are 4 moves away.  5 moves would be way stronger.  7 moves deep beats world class grandmasters.

Thnaks lads,

when an engine thinks 4 moves ahead does that mean it thinks of the next 2 moves for each player or the next 4 moves  for each player(8 actual moves ahead).

im using tarrasch toy engine and shredder classic 4 atm.

Both reply instantly, yet Tarrasch is set to 5 moves ahead and Shredder is at 1335 ELO strength. Can you explain how this is?

How much time should I be setting engines thinking time to in general

A term in computer chess is the "ply" which is one move by one player.  This is to clarify that the term "move" means one move by each player.  So one move = 2 ply.  A game that lasts 40 moves is also 80 ply in length.  An engine that calculates 7 moves ahead is calculating 14 ply.  In some of my engine v engine games I have reached 31 ply (leaving it to calculate for hours) with queens on board, even more when they come off.

For nearly all engines these days the ply depth of calculation is an average with calculations for strong but tactically complex moves going much deeper, and obvious blunders being dismissed at an early stage.

Elo depends on playing ability relative to other players which, for engines, depends on the details of their programming.  The evaluation function, for example, whereby each position is given a score, is of critical importance.  Engines that calculate to the same depth but that have different Eval Functions will differ in the moves they choose and in Elo, sometimes substantially.

Chess coaches I respect have suggested setting your computer to beat you 75% of the time which is 200 Elo above you.  That way you are tested every game but have a chance in every game as well.

Ive just finished a game with Shredder

Shredder was rated at 1384 ELO and it reported an average search depth of 2 half moves.

it played very weak at this setting. I expected it to be musch stronger. 

If you reduce the ELO setting on it you cant set it to search by a certain depth e.g 5 moves deep.

What I cant figure out is why it would consider the weak moves it made as equivalent to 1384 rating

In my experience, at least at the lower levels, Shredder is weaker than the stated elo. (Also, it can't even perform basic mates at those levels.) HIARCS is stronger than the stated elo. What we need is a ShredHIARCS engine.