It varies by engine and hardware; better computer = better performance by the engine. A ply is just a half move, 5 ply would be 2.5 moves. It's a depth setting that tells the engine how far ahead to analyze. Generally, the lower the ply count, the weaker the engine will perform.
Ply in engine chess
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Jan 31, 2017
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#3
I don't think there is such a formula. I'd be suspicious of it if there was, since 5 ply in the end game where there are fewer moves to consider would seem to be much weaker than 5 ply in a complicated middle game.
You could try Lucas Chess, which is free and you can play against much weaker engines, each of which has an ELo rating. There's also "Chess King" and NagaShaki which are free and have pseudo human players at various ratings that you can play against.
I see. I just played another game, it was draw this time. When I wanted to analyze the game I found another game on the internet from some tournament where those 2 guys played exact first 13 moves as in my game. It was some less known and probably weaker opening Ruy Lopez. Those guys were 1900+ and 2000+ ELO. So I guess this engine on 5 ply plays as a club player.
When I play against a machine where you can set its strenght in plies is there any formula that we can determinate how many plies is equal to how many ELO and is 5 plies with Rybka same as 5 plies in some small chess programe. I downloaded some small chess programe set to 5 plies and won but it was very hard, I would like to see my progress over time. I heard between 5 and 6 plies is around 150 Elo points. So is there any formula?