Online chess is broken, I assume you’re cheating until you prove me wrong

@gruuk said ^

this is a great idea. should be opt in for data protection etc. but a brilliant way to increase perceived trust

Nah. A better idea would be to chillax.

@AlexiHarvey said ^

Nowadays I only play in a paid federation tournament, which brings a more human feel to things.

Indeed OTB tournaments have a cool atmosphere.

Really what's the difference between an anonymous player and a Bot?

The fact that you're playing a human.

The interesting thing is that the Bot's absolute elo ratings are benchmarked against LiChess Blitz ratings - there are actually four of the reference Bots available to play here.

I think the future of on-line chess lies in this direction, i.e. 'crafted' opponents.

Certainly not. People want to play against humans, not crafted bots.

PS: I suspect chesscom is thinking in this direction as well, given the amount of money they are throwing at Bot development.

Nope. Btw 'bot development' is simply pasting a cartoon photo onto varied levels of drunk Stockfish lol.

The bots are there to extract money from children.

I am sorry to inform you that, about 19 minutes ago, this discussion struck an iceberg.

@RuyLopez1000 said ^

Nowadays I only play in a paid federation tournament, which brings a more human feel to things.

Indeed OTB tournaments have a cool atmosphere.

Really what's the difference between an anonymous player and a Bot?

cut

PS: I suspect chesscom is thinking in this direction as well, given the amount of money they are throwing at Bot development.

Nope. Btw 'bot development' is simply pasting a cartoon photo onto varied levels of drunk Stockfish lol.

The bots are there to extract money from children.

Should have made clear I meant a paid on-line federation tournament - roughly 30 players across 50+ games in a Swiss format.

Bot development is surprisingly quite different from Stockfish. Essentially the standard move search engine is coupled with position evaluations determined only by a neural network trained on a subset of human games (apparently LiChess Blitz ones!) - each Bot is then given a selected and varied opening repertoire. The interesting thing is that the strength and playing characteristics of each unique Bot produced is completely emergent, so the Bots have to play against each other to get there relative strengths and subsequently there is backward benchmarking with human play to get approximate human elo ratings, on top of everything else there is a whole categorisation system required with regards to play style. The details can be found on the Chessiverse platform, suffice to say you're not looking at detuning of a single 'engine' optimised for playing strength. Based on my own limited experience the results of the whole process would easily pass a chess-based Turing test - in fact, as I hinted above they are even more human-like than humans!

As for 'extract money from children' the platform is indeed very colourful*, but I think this is a little unkind - you can play a limited set of Bots for free and the subscription is a lot less than say chesscom. It's also important to note that as you can only play Bots with no chat service, there is absolutely no safety concerns for parents - nor kids being nasty to each other! The only real niggle in this area is that they are struggling to produce Bots in the sub-800 elo range, currently there are no obvious kiddie features.

*The colour variations can be detuned in the settings, I have left as-is for now.

@AlexiHarvey said ^

PS: I suspect chesscom is thinking in this direction as well, given the amount of money they are throwing at Bot development.

Nope. Btw 'bot development' is simply pasting a cartoon photo onto varied levels of drunk Stockfish lol.

The bots are there to extract money from children.

Bot development is surprisingly quite different from Stockfish.

I was referring to the bot development on chess.com where they paste a cartoon photo of Carlsen and call it Carlsen bot or cartoon photo of Botez and call it Botez bot. Only difference is strength of the engine.

Essentially the standard move search engine is coupled with position evaluations determined only by a neural network trained on a subset of human games (apparently LiChess Blitz ones!) - each Bot is then given a selected and varied opening repertoire. The interesting thing is that the strength and playing characteristics of each unique Bot produced is completely emergent, so the Bots have to play against each other to get there relative strengths and subsequently there is backward benchmarking with human play to get approximate human elo ratings, on top of everything else there is a whole categorisation system required with regards to play style. The details can be found on the Chessiverse platform, suffice to say you're not looking detuning of a single 'engine' optimised for strength. Based on my own limited experience the results of the whole process would easily pass a chess-based Turing test - in fact, as I hinted above they are even more human-like than humans!

Interesting stuff. Thanks for sharing.

As for 'extract money from children' the platform is indeed very colourful*, but I think this is a little unkind

I was referring to chess.com extracting money from children, not Chessiverse.

• you can play a limited set of Bots for free and the subscription is a lot less than say chesscom. It's also important to note that as you can only play Bots with no chat service, there is absolutely no safety concerns for parents - nor kids being nasty to each other! The only real niggle in this area is that they are struggling to produce Bots in the sub-800 elo range, currently there are no obvious kiddie features.
  *The colour variations can be detuned in the settings, I have left as-is for now.

Nice.

@gruuk said ^

After a few months of playing online chess, I’ve noticed a shift in my mindset. I now catch myself assuming that my opponent might be cheating until proven otherwise. It is not a great place to be, but in a strange way it gives me a certain peace of mind, because it removes the emotional rollercoaster. I stop taking every loss personally, and I stop overinterpreting every brilliant move.

At the same time, it says something troubling about the state of the game online. Chess is built on trust, on the idea that two people meet on equal terms, relying only on their own thinking. When that trust erodes, something essential is lost, even if the games themselves continue.

So this is where I’ve landed for now. A more detached way of playing, a bit more guarded, a bit less naive. It works for me individually, but I cannot pretend it is good for the community as a whole.

Anyway. Just putting it out there. Take from it what you want.

Why?

Sorry for my misreadings.

I did play the Bots on chesscom about two years ago, I thought the were fine but they started doing a lot of work on the Bots and the stability was all over the place - i.e. you would centre on Bot X only for it to suddenly become much stronger or weaker etc.

The main pull to Chessiverse for me is actually the training faculties combined with the Bots. I found chesscom to be pretty dire in this area (may have changed but doubt it) and LiChess is a bit weak (outside the Studies) - both sites do an excellent job regards tactics, imo. A lot of the training on Chessiverse involves initial position set-ups and/or selected openings combined with varied Bot strength - this results in easily and quickly configurated player directed games.

I think the site has been running for well over a year, and until a month ago I had never heard of it, certainly seems they have some talented people working on it to have gotten so far in such a short time. Worth a peek if you're tired of same-old same-old or just want a break from elo-chasing/grinding.

Many times I recieved a message from administrator saying 'You lost against a player that does not fulfill site terms, you recover x elo points' ( I translate from spanish, I do not know how is exactly the original message in english).
Sometimes I lose with a 1700 elo and I saw he had a 99% precision in a blitz game 5+3. What must I think ? I cannot understand it, playing without money for what ?
Luckily the 99% players are fair players and no complaint about them.

Chess.com is more attractive than lichess, but more cheater is on chess.com

Assuming all your opponents are cheating is absurd; after all, you yourself might be cheating, so why would you be the only honest one? If your loss rates are between 45% and 60%, it means they aren't.