Potato Salad is not 1400

Took me several attempts to beat potato salad.

Look at us: two senior technical leaders with deep software backgrounds arguing about minutia - we're our own stereotypes!

I pushed back on the confirmation bias assertion because subjective ≠ biased by definition. That's attribution error, plain and simple. When something feels different, it's an invitation to try to understand what's happening. Hence my OP. Bias is just one of many possible explanations.

As to chess.com's developers - I see them advertising C++ devs, backend (Java/PHP) devs, app devs. I don't see a lot of AI action going on there... Maybe there's some very specialised NNUE stuff in their engine teams (e.g. Torch). You can get a long way with a stockfish binary, some opening books, some fairly dumb heuristics, and a PRNG. And that is how the chess.com bots feel to play against (yes, just another hunch) - or at least the lower Elo ones.

I am sure the former Komodo team is also pretty well versed on NNUE by now. I would say that Chess.com probably advertises for rank and file positions (pun intended) and does more selective searching and hiring for niche development slots. There's also a lot of ghost positions advertised these days just to keep fishing hooks in the water, not sure how many dev positions are truly open right now.

I had a bit of trouble with it also, although I was distracted. Certainly stronger than Chesster, but not amazing.

I have beaten potato salad every time all you have to do is don't blunder

I just crushed potato salad

I beat potato salad in 20 moves and I'm humble about it

I beat potato salad in 16 moves and im not humble about it

Yeah, it's a rigged bot. Plays masterly one game and so-so the next. If you kick it around enough, it'll turn up to whatever it takes to win. Another chess.com failure . . . what else is new?

Popsicle is also not 1850.

You played it once and won. You also supposedly beat Popsicle(one rung up at 1800) in only 20 moves with a 96 rating(2100elo) in only one try, so questions abound about any of your "wins".

<iframe id="13743000" allowtransparency="true" frameborder="0" style="width:100%;border:none;" src="https://www.chess.com/emboard?id=13743000"></iframe><script nonce="chesscom-diagram">window.addEventListener("message",e=>{e['data']&&"13743000"===e['data']['id']&&document.getElementById(`${e['data']['id']}`)&&(document.getElementById(`${e['data']['id']}`).style.height=`${e['data']['frameHeight']+37}px`)});</script>

I still need to play potato salad

I'm just bumping this thread because i still can't beat potato salad bot. I totally agree though it seems to play whatever it needs to play to beat you. But I'm terrible so what do I know lol