what's the attraction of playing the computer on chess.com

Playing against a 3000+ computer at full strength is good practice. It makes you humble.
You always lose against it, so you can always learn from it.

Quite frequently, yes. It gives a chance to conveniently play against an opponent of higher strength, if you don't have a friend that is better and available at the time. Of course punching upwards will help you learn better. For example I play the Magnus bot every now and again, which helps me keep my theory sharp and learn to mitigate weaknesses in a way that opponents my elo generally fail to exploit. It's also rewarding on the rare occasion I squeak out a draw against it. Having an actual person to discuss the game with will always be more helpful, but as an alternative it's quite nice.

Playing against the computer is indeed very good practice. For one thing, the computer opponent is always available. Also, the computer won't bother you with childish trash talk. It just plays. I have an old chess computer that I play against quite often. Any actual play is good practice.

I find bots are useful when you want to experiment with new lines or ideas. They're always-available training partners. You can also undo moves when them, too, to try different things - which you can't do with live opponents.

Plus, bots are great for when you want to play a game but can't do it uninterrupted - you can make a few moves, leave, and come back half an hour later to make another few moves, and so on ... The bot never gets impatient or logs off from boredom. It's always there for you to continue your practice.

When I first started playing OTB I used to practice by playing long time control games against an engine on full strength mode. It was helpful to improve my concentration but I would always lose without understanding why despite my best efforts to analyze the game and learn from it. I find it much more useful to play a game with a titled player and analyze with them afterwards.

Far from it.

I like to play the GM chess bots and see how many moves I can last before I go down in flames 🔥!

@llama -- Human opponents may be available 24/7/365, but 99.999 percent of the people I see on this website are immature trolls that I would not waste my time playing against. I have a handful of nice opponents and I will play against them when I want to play against a person. If your experience on this website has been better, then more power to you.

Only reason now is because the ui

You can only improve against the GM-level bots

I am at a low rating and people are either nice or don't talk at all. I've never ever seen a trash talker or troll.

I like seeing the computer's reactions when I do moves like capturing the queen or winning against GMs by spamming hints. Magnus Carlson talks a lot.

1 : It's interesting to play against bots on chess.com because they are humanized and quite fun to play.

a : A bot has the advantage of always being correct (bot doesn't troll or do cyber-maliciousness, for example bot is not going to play two moves then "leaves to tidy its room" then just come back towards the end of his time to play one or two moves, another example a bot won't harass by clicking from start to finish on "proposition of a draw")

b : We choose our level and a bot level can be more meaning because there is no factor of psychology, tiredness, motivation, missclick or the report of the fairly substantial progression or regression of the player.

c : We can play without time pressure and the bot plays 1 or 2s per move and to play in longer times (like for example 15m+10s per move) can be more interest on the net against a bot (which is always correct).

d : And just (like in many video games) there are people who like to play against bots.

2 : There is no false dilemma that holds, there is no it's either against bots or either against humans and it's not because we play against bots that we can't play against humans or vice versa.