YEAH - BOTS RUN ON YOUR CPU

Here's a little secret...You think chess.com is run by some funny guys, joking around? So they make 2000 bot play like 600? Some 400 players claiming they play engine @3200 "for fun". Do you even understand what's 3200 elo - that's stronger than Carlsen and all players who ever played chess!!!

TELL YOU WHAT: START A GAME AGAINST BOT, TURN OFF INTERNET CONNECTION AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS. You will be able to finish the game, and even start a new one. It runs locally, on your machine.

So....... you want to run Komodo engine, or Stockfish in REALTIME....on your laptop!?? Or even better... YOUR PHONE  : ))))). That's literally insane.Bots move almost instantly, so if you play them on sub optimal CPU, you'll never get their rated levels.

You need a proper desktop CPU to play bots, preferably i7/Ryzen 7 with 8gb of DDR4 memory. Older generations are also fine, because single thread performance is most important. Even first gen i7 desktop CPU is like a God to any phone CPU. i9 on laptop is inferior to i9 on desktop. Cooling and many other factors are suboptimal. Don't use laptops for chess engines! Also, when playing bots you need to control background processes - I mean, you can't render video and play bots at the same time: )))

In reality, bots perform a bit stronger than rated elo levels. On a HIGH END DESKTOP SYSTEM, 2000 blitz players on chess.com would struggle against Antonio bot, even 1700-1800 OTB players sometimes struggle against Antonio. Bots over 2000 elo play beautiful positional chess, they blunder sometimes, but if you don't exploit the opportunity they will get you in the end. Congrats to whomever programmed them, they're incredibly human-like. They're like human intelligence on "steroids", because they DO NOT RESIGN after big blunders. They never give up!!! Much to learn from them.

For example, play Noam (2200) on a POWERFUL DESKTOP, and you'll suddenly realize you don't know sh***** about chess......even if you gave your self an hour for the game LOL

For those who actually want to improve... know that chess engines are even more demanding than video games. ChessBase recommends i7 or i9 with 8gb of memory for their products.

It appears that LEVEL 1 CPU CACHE is most important. More threads = more L1 cache = better performance. L1 cache is something like working memory in humans. It's very important for calculating lines. For serious OTB preparation, ChessBase, chess.com bots and lichess computer are very good. Today, they're even better than human coaches. Fritz even has a brilliant option "explain all moves".

On lichess, Stockfish always plays at stated levels, since it runs on server CPUs. But if you loose internet connection, your game is completely lost...

If you travel for tournaments, use laptop to connect to your desktop. Desktop CPUs with 512K of L1 cache are excellent for chess, but they need to be used with high end motherboard, high end PSU, fast RAM/SSD etc. Even the old i7-980 is very good - it's got 6 cores! Mobile CPUs often don't list L1 cache, it's "unknown" and some pages blatantly lie about L1 cache sizes. They suck for chess. Unfortunately, even the best laptops are unreliable for chess, since they have many "bottlenecks".

What I'm saying is, even 1MB of Level 1 cache on phone CPU is useless, while 256K of L1 cache on a desktop CPU used in a perfectly optimized system with fast memory and huge bandwidth (something like quad channel Intel chipsets) is VERY, VERY GOOD FOR CHESS ENGINES.

I found the most important feature of CPU for chess playing. Yes, L1 cache is important, speed, many other components in your PC, but the thing is: CHESS ENGINES USE SPECIAL INSTRUCTION SETS TO PERFORM CALCULATIONS. AVX/AVX2 IS MOSTLY USED.

Guess what... AVX2 is found in Intel/AMD CPUs for desktops & laptops made from 2013. So i7-980 is NOT OK, it doesn't have AVX2. CPUs in phones &tablets DO NOT support these instruction sets. There are solutions for Android & iOS, but compatibility as well as performance issues are unavoidable. Particularly if real time performance is required.

This page explains it:

https://www.chessengeria.eu/post/how-to-choose-chess-engine-for-windows

"Why is this important ?

 Because if you choose wrongly, at worst the chess engine will not work, and at best the chess engine will work and play at a lower level and with less power than it could."

Basically, if your CPU doesn't support AVX natively, app or browser needs to consume resources - clock, cache, bandwidth - in greater extent. If these resources are insufficient, chess engine performance becomes suboptimal.

So, it's very difficult for chess.com programmers to optimize bots for EVERY DEVICE. Actually, this is impossible.

Use high end desktop with CPU made in the last 10 years, and bots will perform as expected, very consistently. Same with other chess engines. Laptops are risky, but if CPU supports AVX2 it will most probably perform very well.

@ligaya81

You certainly know a lot about the tech side of things. So thanks for this info.

I run chess engines that are installed locally on my phone. They all work fine, except for Lc0, which is terribly weak. I guess it's because it's supposed to run on a GPU and not a CPU.

It was just a quick research - I was worried that Bots do not perform at real levels on my system. Everything seems to be fine.

When I saw a player bragging about defeating 2700 Elo bot, I had to look into it. Then I saw that 2700 engine played almost exactly like Nelson on my PC. What a....?

There is always a rational explanation. Coding issues, hardware compatibility issues, CPU/GPU issues. It's complicated.

Yeah, I think as a rule of thumb it's safe to assume that online ratings are essentially meaningless, or at best very unreliable. The only ratings that matter are OTB games rated by national chess associations and by Fide in its tournaments.

Absolutely! I think one has to play at least 3 OTB tournaments to gain realistic perspective on his/her performance.

I will continue to train with these engines, and then maybe try OTB chess. I'm particularly annoyed by notation in OTB games - why can't they use electronic boards, or temporarily install cameras on the ceiling, feed the signal into AI which recognizes the moves? There are so many ways for automatic notation. It's 2023!!!