Play against computer in variants

I know this is not a trivial feature to develop, but I'm interested in knowing if other people think this is a good idea too (or if this has been discussed already).

I think this is particularly good for variants like bughouse where it is difficult to find other teams to play against at certain times of the day/week, or 4 player chess.

I'm thinking that nowadays with these self-learning neural networks, training the AI might not be such a headache (though not trivial).  Building the services would def take some work, and might not pay off for the website though...

thoughts?

This is a great idea categoriaopueta.  I´m 100% with you.  

To put things in perspective: Having the self-learning network (LeelaZero) learn normal Chess took more than 6 months by a collaboration of some 100 volunteers donating the use of their computer to the project. Making a given engine available for on-line play might take a week of programming by a single person, at most.

Of course there already exist many engines that play variants. Even a Stockfish version. And I don't know exactly which variants they offer here, but chances are Fairy-Stockfish already plays several of those.

Great insight HGMuller! I didn't know about Fairy-Stockfish, went through the repo, looks like it would do the job for this case, i.e.  I don't think a super AI that can beat the best humans would be necessary here at all, just a decent engine to play against when there are no human players available.  

Is there a part of the forum for feature requests/suggestions? Can't seem to find that, and I'd like to see if something was discussed already along these lines - one week for one dev doesn't sound too much work for this.

Ah, missed the search in the forum page.  Found one small discussion

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/site-feedback/feature-request-bots-for-variants

will go through the rest and comment there.

you guys look like fluffy bunnies.

Edited by Doris.