I guess i dont need to say much, as the question speaks for itself!! But i would like to know all your opinions on this!!

no.

/thread

I'm not. I still love paper books.

I never use a chess engine - I don't own one.

I spend time with a game and I'm having fun.

Are you saying I'm doing it wrong ?

I personally think it has affected the game a lot, even gm's play most of the engine moves.. I think thats why we dont see tactical brilliancies and sacrifices much nowadays:(

I don't know about the rest of you, but I can't even get a chess engine to work.  I hooked up an old 500 cu. in. (8 L) 4 bbl. V-8 big block on a stand with a small fuel supply, and got it running.  I put a chess board on top of it, and every time I started the thing, the pieces just went flying everywhere.

That wasn't working at all, so I called a guy I know who has an engine out of an old '60s fighter plane.  I built a stand for that thing, rigged a big fuel supply, and fired it up.  The pieces that didn't fly off started turning black and charring instantly from the intense heat.  That sucked.

Finally, I called a guy I know who works at a railroad museum and rented an old gear-driven steam locomotive for the day.  If I pulled out at low speeds, the pieces stayed put on the board just fine, but they wouldn't move by themselves, no matter how much fire I built up in the boiler.  I thought the point of a chess engine was to move the pieces for you and show you how to beat Gary Kasparov, but the only thing that happened using that steam engine was the pieces eventually vibrated around and fell off.

I gave up on all that, and just started using a magic 8-ball to plan my moves.  Now I have a 2700 rating!

Being dependent on me is worse.

How do you know that "humans" wrote the algorithms?!

I never use an engine apart from the tiny handful of my games I have run through the chess.com computer analysis on completion.  They do have an inevitable place in top level chess though and can suggest ideas that humans don't think of which can include spectacular sacrifices.

I don't like commentary relying too much on engines though.   

I was thinking about alien intelligence. Maybe the UFOs that crashed in Rosswell had these algorithms onboard?!

"Are we too dependent on chess engines these days??"

I would estimate the answer to this question as somewhere between 0.35 and 0.58 in our dependency upon them...

If anyone really knowed his math he'd know that the above post suggests we're anywhere between 40 % and 60 % dependant on chess engines.

If by a chess engine you mean a computer program,or computer, it is a nice tool and can be used to improve ones game. It you are referring to the practice of actually using one to try to win a game against a live opponent on this site, I think that would be poor sportsmanship and dishonest.  You should rely on your own skills in the game. To do otherwise is to put your ethics into question and begs the question "Are you honest in your dealing with your fellow man?" I would rather be honest and lose than dishonest and win.

Very funny!! Thanks for the laugh.

I think it all depends a bit on what it is people want to get out of watching a game. To me it can be interesting to know that one of the players blundered at a certain point and that his opponent is winning if he finds the right move. Knowing this makes following the games much more enjoyable to me.

Then one can't just look at the engine score without thinking if one wants to really enjoy a game. I don't know how many times a top player is evaluated as +0.6 and the engine recommends moving back and forth without anything happening. When the move that is played changes the evaluation to +0.2 people call it a blunder, while black now is forced to find several difficult only moves not to lose, and maybe is in time trouble, so the move played was probably the clearly best option. So the line recommended by the engines, especially those low ply engines of many online sites, isn't always the best.

Even beginners come well prepared to the board with computer generated novelties.  It's just the nature of the modern game, gone are the days when two people just sit down and have a game of chess. 

Chess engines are great for analyzing your games (for blunder detection and missed mates), and they are also great for playing when you don't have a human partner.

The problem with chess engines is that they have become so tactically proficient that they can beat the top human players who may have superior strategy. This leads some people to believe that the optimal moves selected by chess engines are always the best moves, when that is clearly not the case. 

Chess engines can easily find ?? moves, but do not know enough about chess to find the !! moves.