Bots vs Real Life

SO I'm sure this has been asked but I can't find it anywhere. For the people who have played extensively with the bots and real people, how does it compare? If I beat a 900 bot is it really equivalent to a 900 real human? I've kinda thought maybe just beating all bots before going live? 

Bots, especially lower level ones, are severely overrated. It is generally more interesting to play against humans, so I would advise you to do that.

Many bot ratings are considered high in relation to their actual strength. People come on here all the time asking why they lose to players rated much lower than the bots they have beaten.

Why? If you wish to progress optimally, playing with humans is the way to go. Bots do not play as humans do, and you will learn less by playing bots. For instance, you have the account for a year now with 3 live games. If you like playing, what is the point of waiting for months to beat some bot?

The primary purpose of the rating is to pair you with people of similar strength. So no need for you to wait to become for instance 800 rated for real before playing. It will last longer for you to get to desired rating and you will have less fun playing. Even if your real rating is much less than that 900, you will still have others with similar chess skill to play with.

I understand the nervousness to play real people, but trust me that embarrassing defeats happen on every level. So no need to wait for something to play chess.


In any case, just my opinion, it is ultimately your decision.

Hi! My name is Lauren Goodkind and I’m a respected  chess coach and chess YouTuber based in California: 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCP5SPSG_sWSYPjqJYMNwL_Q

I play bots on my YouTube channel.  Bots and people play a lot different.  In my experience, a 900 bot plays lower than a 900 rated person.  

I hope that this helps. 

Don't waste your time with bots! 

Within in a few months of playing chess I could beat the 1200 rated bots but would get destroyed by 700 rated humans. The only bot I sometimes use is the Maia bot, over on Lichess. This is supposed to have human-like play. I will sometimes use this for long games that I set up with a physical board (just because I like actually using my real chess board and pieces). But overall, I wasted a lot of time in the beginning playing bots. They can be a bit of fun but if you are looking for improvement, play actual people.

I find this thread extremely weird... Ever since I started playing against bots (using a real chess board just to get more used to that as well), I find myself analyzing games way better when I come back to play real people here. I see things quicker.

As far as I can tell, the bots play with a much more reliable accuracy, with very fine-tuned and specifically designed ways to give you an opening if you can see far enough ahead depending on what level you're at of course. I'm at ~850 rating in 5min games atm, and I just managed to beat a 1600 rated bot after sitting there for what must have been over an hour, after several tries without hints or takebacks. But it was a maddening process and at my skill level it just feels like they never really make any mistakes. Playing against another person with a time limit at my skill level, however, things go wild and weird very quickly, and it's somewhat hard to learn about proper openings and further tactics when you're constantly facing the weirdest variations and decision.

I dunno, this negativity towards playing bots has me puzzled I have to say..

I play against both. I think humans are more likely to stick with an idea and make several "good" quality moves that follow that idea. Bots tend to go deeper in opening theory, then play more "excellent" moves that are solid but don't always follow a continuous idea like a human does. Then lower level bots are programmed to randomly blunder pieces, but not in a way a human would (i.e. ignore a pawn moving to attack a queen, rather than moving the queen to "safety", but a long-diagonal bishop can capture her that hasn't moved since turn 4 in the opening).

I think the games against humans are more exciting. However, currently I play against computers/bots. I started chess recently (after 30 year break) and I try to now get rid of "stupid blunders" for example hanging pieces etc. Many computers (at certain level) are lacking strategy and advanced tactics but they are very good at noticing these kind of stupid mistakes. When playing with human at lower level both make these errors. The game result depends heavily on the big blunder, who makes a bigger mistake loses. I'm waiting for the games against humans. Those are the real ones. But still for a while I'm playing against bots
But one question about bots and the strength. If the bot here is rated e.g., 1900 I would guess it plays around 1900 rating. However after analyzing the game the result may say that the bots performance rating in the game was much less e.g., 1300. If the bot should be roughly 1900 why it played much worse. And this was not adaptive bot. And just to clarify, I'm not comparing the real elo vs chess.com bot elo etc. I know the bot 1900 is not actually 1900 in real life, it's a way less.

I can beat Manuel, a 2100 bot, but not some high 1200s.

So you have a point.

I can beat Nelson bot (1300) but not a 1300 rayed person, occasionally I beat one in bullet but never in rapid so I think the bots are severely underrated.