How to make a chess engine play weaker?

Is there any way that I can adjust the rating of the chess engines so that it is possible for me to beat them, but not too easy. Are there any engines out there that I can get that have a rating of less than 2000?

Buy an old engine.  Or, look at the settings as there might be a way to lower the rating.

Depending on the engine, a litte trash talk might help.

It just depends on which engine you're looking at.

Some engines are very strong and only run at full strength.

Some engines are very strong and allow you to set lower strengths.

Some engines are weaker (some even under 1000 elo) and only run at full strength.

Even if an engine doesn't allow you to weaken it, sometimes the GUI will let you adjust the CPU time, ply depth, or number of search nodes. These GUI adjustments usually aren't as desirable as an engine that allows weakening.

Try Lucas chess.  Free with dozens of weak engines.  Let me run and get a screenshot...My copy and paste skills aren't suficient to come up with one but I counted 19 engines under 1200.  Great when you need a quick ego boost...Sad, I know. 

I can recommend downloading an open source one like stock fish and modifying it's evaluation function to something "silly" that way you can bring it down to any level. Also there are command line settings for stock fish which you can set to five it limited time. Using a ui like acid with it should work well.

Well, the OP hasn't logged on in two years, so maybe the screenshot isn't that important.

i jst dont understand it?   i mean, people r always sayin... "if u wanna improve ur game, play better players"  so wat good does it do to disregard this advice to beat an inferior player?  i dont see how this in any way helps us improve?   ther r sooo many chess things i don't understand but this ranks rite up ther near the top:) 

Play on a board. Set up the board move your pieces on the board and screen and move the computer pieces on the board. It helps.

if you lower the time control setting, the engine has less time to evaluate moves effectively resulting in weaker play.

@ lasker lol, don't worry about electrons flowing, electrical potential doesn't work like water flow

I'm assuming that the OP wanted an engine that was rated slightly higher than he was rated...One that he could sometimes beat, but also one that he would mostly lose to. Many people believe it's important to win some games occasionally, otherwise you can get too discouraged.

The advice you often hear about playing other people slightly better than you is based on the idea that those people will push you to play your best chess, and then after they (mostly) beat you, you can ask them to go over the game and point out what you did wrong, thereby helping you to become a better player. (Easier to do over-the-board, harder to do online). It's much harder to do that with engines, so maybe the OP just wanted to play engines for fun, idk.

ok, now i get it...  SLIGHTLY better makes sense...   "discouragement" is something i kno all too well:)  tnx EscherehcsE

Just use a weak engine. There are litterally hundreds of engines that you can download for free, with ratings from slightly below zero to 3400. Just look at the CCRL rating list and pick one with the rating you like.

Fairy-Max, which comes pre-installed with the WinBoard download, would be a good choice. It is rated about 2000 on CCRL, (under the name micro-Max, which is basically the same thing except that it can play only a single Chess variant (namely FIDE) instead of some 20). And if that is too strong you could dumb it down further by giving it hefty time odds (like a factor 10). It is certainly beatable for a good club player.