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The chess bot on Delta Air Lines will destroy you (2024) [video]

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Re: The chess bot on Delta Air Lines will destroy you (2024) [video]

#11

Post by strstr »

markgall wrote: post #8

Is this really true? I played a few games with it in August. It's not very good. It's one of those old programs where 95% of the moves are pretty strong. But if you just do nothing and sit back it will occasionally make a random blunder and then you grind it out. I figured it's how they were able to weaken a chess engine back in the day; can't adjust the overall strength, so add random blunders. I'm only about 2000 o…

My suspicion is that the bot was a fairly standard chess bot, but the difficulties were set based on computation time. As airplane computers got better, it turned into a beast.

As a result, if you tried this on older planes, it might have been “easier”

Re: The chess bot on Delta Air Lines will destroy you (2024) [video]

#13

Post by throwaway6977 »

strstr wrote: post #11
markgall wrote: post #8

Is this really true? I played a few games with it in August. It's not very good. It's one of those old programs where 95% of the moves are pretty strong. But if you just do nothing and sit back it will occasionally make a random blunder and then you grind it out. I figured it's how they were able to weaken a chess engine back in the day; can't adjust the overall strength, so add random blunders. I'm only about 2000 o…

My suspicion is that the bot was a fairly standard chess bot, but the difficulties were set based on computation time. As airplane computers got better, it turned into a beast. As a result, if you tried this on older planes, it might have been “easier”

Chess on M series Macs has the same issue. Even level 1 is easily 2000+ Elo because of the same thing.

Re: The chess bot on Delta Air Lines will destroy you (2024) [video]

#14

Post by gowld »

AnotherGoodName wrote: post #5

I wonder if they gave the chess bot X seconds of thinking time in an era when computers were slower? The way you set difficulty for turn based game ai is that you limit how far ahead the algorithm searches. If you set the lookahead based on compute time your difficulties will be way out of line if someone upgrades the CPU.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbo_button

Re: The chess bot on Delta Air Lines will destroy you (2024) [video]

#16

Post by mvkel »

tmathmeyer wrote: post #7

Not only is the delta chessbot bad (My low 1600s lichess-elo self can win handily every single time against any difficulty, white or black), but there's also a sequence of moves I found which deterministically causes the game to crash. I should probably record it next time I'm on a flight.

There's only one difficulty setting

Re: The chess bot on Delta Air Lines will destroy you (2024) [video]

#17

Post by sbrother »

markgall wrote: post #8

Is this really true? I played a few games with it in August. It's not very good. It's one of those old programs where 95% of the moves are pretty strong. But if you just do nothing and sit back it will occasionally make a random blunder and then you grind it out. I figured it's how they were able to weaken a chess engine back in the day; can't adjust the overall strength, so add random blunders. I'm only about 2000 o…

1. Uh, isn't 2000 like extremely fucking good?

2. I played a chess bot on Delta on easy and it was really bad, felt like random moves. I beat it trivially and I am actually bad at chess, ~1000 on chess.com. I wonder if this one is different?

Re: The chess bot on Delta Air Lines will destroy you (2024) [video]

#18

Post by hinkley »

throwaway6977 wrote: post #13
strstr wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My suspicion is that the bot was a fairly standard chess bot, but the difficulties were set based on computation time. As airplane computers got better, it turned into a beast. As a result, if you tried this on older planes, it might have been “easier”

Chess on M series Macs has the same issue. Even level 1 is easily 2000+ Elo because of the same thing.

I found a used copy of Warcraft 3 at the store about ten years after it came out, proudly brought it home, fired it up and didn’t recall the graphics being quite that awful, but the first time I tried to scroll the map sideways it shot to the far end because they didn’t build a timing loop onto the animation and I shut it down, disappointed.

Unfortunately they never released a remastered version of it. They seem to have made some clone of it called “reforged” whatever the fuck that means.

Re: The chess bot on Delta Air Lines will destroy you (2024) [video]

#19

Post by School-Cotton »

sbrother wrote: post #17
markgall wrote: post #8

Is this really true? I played a few games with it in August. It's not very good. It's one of those old programs where 95% of the moves are pretty strong. But if you just do nothing and sit back it will occasionally make a random blunder and then you grind it out. I figured it's how they were able to weaken a chess engine back in the day; can't adjust the overall strength, so add random blunders. I'm only about 2000 o…

1. Uh, isn't 2000 like extremely fucking good? 2. I played a chess bot on Delta on easy and it was really bad, felt like random moves. I beat it trivially and I am actually bad at chess, ~1000 on chess.com. I wonder if this one is different?

Note that 2000 on lichess is probably weaker than 2000 on chess.com (or USCF or FIDE)

Re: The chess bot on Delta Air Lines will destroy you (2024) [video]

#20

Post by dmuino »

tmathmeyer wrote: post #7

Not only is the delta chessbot bad (My low 1600s lichess-elo self can win handily every single time against any difficulty, white or black), but there's also a sequence of moves I found which deterministically causes the game to crash. I should probably record it next time I'm on a flight.

I'm 2100 rapid on lichess, 2050 blitz and bullet. I got destroyed every single time I played the easy mode version on Delta. It knew opening theory. It did not blunder a single time in the middle game. I never made it to an end game.
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