My chess site now lets you play engines on simulated historic hardware, ranging from 1970 to present

Hi everyone,

Just wanted to share an update about my site CCRL Challenger.

It lets you play against open source engines from the CCRL and it currently has 539 engine opponents across 152 unique engines.

https://www.ccrlchallenger.com

I've recently added a mode where you can play against the engines on simulated historic hardware, for example, a PC from 1970 running a 1MHz CPU. It automatically throttles the engine's CPU use to match the hardware of the time, which makes the engines significantly easier to play against. There are modes for 1970, 1975, 1980, 1985, 1990, 1995, 2000, 2005, and modern.

I've been playing around with it and I find it a lot more fun to play against the hardware handicapped engines in many ways. They feel a lot more manageable to play against compared to the full power versions.

Let me know what you think if you check it out.

Thanks. :)

What happened the engine list? Some previously available are gone while Stockfish is down to version 17.1

Shurely shome mishtake :D

Wow, thanks for letting me know. I don't even know how it happened but somehow an older version of the engine list replaced the current engine list. I've just restored it from backup and it should be back to the proper list now.

wow its so cool I love it

It would be nice to have point and click besides drag'n'drop. The board is pretty large, have mercy on the wrist :P

@samwonelsie said ^

It would be nice to have point and click besides drag'n'drop. The board is pretty large, have mercy on the wrist :P

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll look into it but as I recall, the board library I'm using isn't easy to change the input method on.

I see, too bad then. The site's still great though :)