I haven’t played chess against a human since… oh about 1969. That would be my Dad. He taught me how to play. The moves aren’t that difficult. The strategy is everything.
Anywho, I’m playing against a computer program currently, and find it to be a lot of fun. Do it on my phone.
There are 12 levels of difficulty. I suspect that is how far the computer is allowed to ‘think’ ahead. At level 4 I win 31% of the games.
It’s very interesting. Sometimes I beat the computers ass very quickly (my best was in 12 moves). Other times I get creamed. Mostly it ends up at near stalemate with only 6 or so pieces on the board.
I enjoy it when I don’t have a book to read.
No real question. Just wondering if anyone else on the board is playing computer chess.
I play it semi-frequently. I never used to mind losing to my father because when he played competitively he had a master’s rating. But I hate to lose to the computer, because there’s no level low enough for me to win consistently.
I used to play Chess Titans all the time (loved it!), but i had to get a new computer and the whiz kids at microsoft decided not to add it to windows 10. I am bummed.
I played Chess Titans also, and every time I download it, it gets wiped out whenever this fucking version of windows that I’m using does its “upgrade”. :mad:
I think I can recommend a chess game (not against board rules?). Anyway, on my Android phone I play “Chess Free AI Factory.” Or that’s how you can find it in the Play Store. You do get an ad that you can cancel out of at the beginning of each game.
It has 12 levels of difficulty. I would say at level 1 it just makes random moves. It’s almost silly and hard to lose.
Level 12 is a bit different. Kicked my ass 8 in a row.
And you can see on the board how many moves it’s ‘thinking about’ (the different chess board squares flash). Perhaps it’s ‘thinking’ 12 possible moves ahead (that’s probably a few 10,000 possibilities). It may take as long as 4 seconds to make a move on level twelve. It’s quite humbling.
Now, I must admit I play in casual mode. You can take back a move when you pull a :smack:. Yeah, call it cheating, but the computer doesn’t :smack:. And it’s nice for when your finger hits the wrong board square when moving a piece. That REALLY sucks if you have a good game going.
I downloaded a free program, The Chess Lv.100, a little while back. I think it’s pretty good. The control freak in me really enjoys having such a ridiculously fine level of say over how powerful the computer is. None of that Level 1 through Level 10 crap for me! If I want just a teensy bit more challenge, I can dial things up, like, 19 points or so.
I used to have a standalone chess set when I was a kid. It had 16 difficulty levels, 1-8 and A-H. On the numbered levels, it would make occasional deliberate mistakes, and the lettered levels took progressively longer to think about their moves. I was about a fair match for it at level 4 (halfway through the deliberate-mistakes levels), though I did once manage to beat it in six moves (a Fool’s Mate with a few irrelevant embellishments).
yes, thanks to this thread I am now playing Spark chess and I play someone named Cody who is so dumb I can win over half the time. I need a lot of moves to finish him off and chase his King all over the board, but I can get it done.
I can figure out online chess except for one thing: the godamned Knight. If I had my druthers it is a piece that would be eliminated from the game. It follows no logical movement compared to other pieces in the game. I can mentally envision EVERY piece on the board, but the fucking Knight, and it burns me in the ass every time. FUCK THE KNIGHT!!!
JackieLikesVariety, it might help to set up the board with just a few pieces, and play out some of the standard endgames: King and two rooks vs. king, king and a single rook vs. king, king and two bishops vs. king. Play them against the computer both ways, as the advantaged side (trying to force mate) and as the disadvantaged side (trying to postpone it as long as possible). Not only is it embarrassing to get down to a winnable endgame and not being able to seal the deal, but it’ll give you a better feel for how the pieces are useful in a non-endgame scenario.
I play “Chess Free” on my phone, at level 4. At that level the computer only rarely makes egregious errors and has some notion of tactics - it will take advantage of things like knight forks and it tries to advance pawns. My main complaint is that it is sort of limited in its strategies. It rarely does Sicilian defense, for example.
I used to have Battle Chess back in the DOS days. Great game, great graphics. Pieces would fight when you made a capture. Great game. Wish I could find it in a version that would run on Win10, but no joy so far.
