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

[woopwoop]

Last time I flew Delta they no longer had this bot, which made me sad. One of my favorite parts of flying was getting absolutely crushed into a tiny cube by the airplane seat's easy chess bot, and then again by the airplane seat itself when the person in front of me reclines their seat.

[mrandish]

> then again by the airplane seat itself when the person in front of me reclines their seat.

This reminds me of the time I had my laptop open on the tilt-down tray and the very large man in the seat in front just repositioned his girth (not even reclining the seat) but it flexed the seat back enough that my laptop screen was momentarily caught between the tray below and recessed lip above and was almost crushed.

[crystal_revenge]

> when the person in front of me reclines their seat.

As a reasonably tall person I have never reclined my seat and will forever consider anyone who does an asshole.

The very fact that you can but don’t do something is the precise space where assholeness is defined.

[johnyzee]

The only winning move is not to play.

[kazinator]

Some low cost airlines no longer have anything. A small fold-out tray to hold your tablet. There is Wi-Fi to access an intranet with flight information and maybe some entertainment. If you have that, you just load it up with games from your play store.

[adityaathalye]

> getting absolutely crushed into a tiny cube by ... the airplane seat itself

Perhaps this is the real reason why they call themselves "Delta".

[eschneider]

Yeah...I know some delta pilots and apparently the inflight computers were sometimes spending more time playing chess than flying the plane...

[sudokatsu]

You have 30 minutes to move your cube

[jbn]

this is a beautiful zeugma you have here.

[nimski]

bravo

[nomilk]

There's a bug in the Delta Air Lines chess program. After cxd6 en passant, the captured pawn isn't removed [0]. White's bishop is then able to check the black king through the pawn (the pawn that should have been removed) [1].

[0] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Nyov4F7eWbT8uNoeclPY8uXVG6f...

[1] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eEPBHqE5rpefE9gWflgS_hUwYGS...

[teraflop]

I guess it's just a display bug, then? Though it's hard to imagine what kind of bug would lead the game state and the visual representation to get out of sync in that particular way.

[AnotherGoodName]

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.

[Telemakhos]

Something similar happened to the macOS chess game, which has always been bundled with OSX/macOS. Once upon a time it was easy to beat in easy mode, which restricted how long it could thing in advance.

When Big Sur rolled out around 2020, Apple introduced a bug which disabled the difficulty slider: no matter what it was set to, it was hard or impossible to beat. In macOS Sequoia, the Chess app got updated again, and supposedly they fixed the difficulty slider, but in the interval silicon improved so much that the old restraints (like think for only a second) mean little. The lowest levels play like a grand master.

[Disparallel]

Getting more thinking time tends to give surprisingly small improvements to playing strength. For a classical alpha-beta search based engine, for a given ply (turn) you might have ~20 moves to consider each depth of the search tree. If you're trying to brute force search deeper, a 10x increase in compute time or power doesn't even let you search an extra ply.

Elo gains for engines tend to come from better evaluation, better pruning, and better search heuristics. That's not to say that longer search time or a stronger CPU doesn't help, it just doesn't magically make a weak engine into a strong engine.

[gowld]

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

[Nition]

Alternatively, since there's only one difficulty provided ("easy"), I wondered if the programmer have selected say, DifficultyLevels array index 0 meaning the easiest, but it was actually sorted hardest first.

[owenversteeg]

In short: it plays far too well (~2500 ELO.) People think it originally played at a reasonable level and accidentally got more powerful as the seatback computers got more powerful; the same thing happened to the Mac chess app with the release of the M1.

[xxs]

>Mac chess app with the release of the M1.

That would be exceptionally sloppy development. Phones have had more than enough power for long enough. 4 core Skylake (Mac 2016) would be well beyond human capabilities, if it's just raw power.

The "thinking" (difficult) limit should be considered moves ahead, both depth and count. With a possible limit to time, if there is any time control.

[ghc]

> the same thing happened to the Mac chess app with the release of the M1

I fired up Chess shortly after getting an M1 and got destroyed a bunch of times. I thought that I was just extremely out of practice and quit playing for years. I guess it's better to find out late rather than never.

[dylan604]

we used to stress test Macs by running the Chess app full tilt. Does it even make the fans run on AppleSi?

[anthk]

Eh, no. A single Core Duo would be enough to challenge most masters with GNUChess or StockFish, no Apple fanboyism it's needed.

Heck; even Nanochess was rough for a novice like me, and that on an n270 CPU.

[markgall]

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 on lichess but I beat it pretty much every time, especially once I realized there is no reason to try anything sharp.

[strstr]

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”

[lurk2]

> I'm only about 2000 on lichess

That puts you in the top 7% of players on the site. I have a hard time believing you could get to that rating without knowing that.

[Uehreka]

> 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.

In tom7’s Elo World, he does this (“dilutes” strong Chess AIs with a certain percentage of random moves) to smooth the gradient since otherwise it would be impossible to evaluate his terrible chess bots against something like Stockfish since they’d just lose every time. https://youtu.be/DpXy041BIlA?si=z7g1a_TX_QoPYN9b

[sbrother]

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?

[mna_]

What's your name on lichess? Wanna play me?

[tmathmeyer]

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.

[dmuino]

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.

[mvkel]

There's only one difficulty setting

[ChipopLeMoral]

If, as people suggest, the difficulty is time based, it would be easier on older planes.

[saberience]

I think you must be talking about something else, the Delta bot in discussion here has about 2500 ELO and basically crushes anyone who isn't a professional chess player.

[conartist6]

There used to be a chess program in windows 3.1 that would destroy me every time. Not that I was very good, of course! But I think if you just code the known opening books it's not too hard to make a bot that requires a skilled player to beat.

[s3p]

I am so glad this made first page news on HN!!

Years ago I remember flying with Delta and wondering why the delta bot could beat me in a handful of moves on EASY. Absolutely insane.

[tromp]

Sometimes the airlines chess app gives you the option to play another passenger, but even after waiting for half an hour I've never been hooked up with another player. Has anyone else been able to?

[chrisfosterelli]

Yes, as someone who is usually flying with my GF, I love this feature! Unfortunately air canada's implementation is abysmal and anytime there is a pilot announcement it interrupts the game long enough to break the network connection and cause it to end the game.

[tantalor]

The best part about this is sneaking a look at your opponents screen if you are lucky enough to sit behind them.

[nightpool]

It only works with passengers on your same flight. In practice, it's good for kids in the same family or school group who are sitting across the aisle from each other. I've used it for some of their other games

[acomjean]

one flight I was on had trivia which allowed multiplayer. We ended up with about 10 playing the game. I thought it was a good idea for a networked computer and captive audience.

[FergusArgyll]

Yeah, that's my experience as well. I only did once, and it was against my father...

We should coordinate flights

[bdamm]

Some day we might fly on the same airplane!

[YokoZar]

This reminds me of a bug I reported in 2007 Ubuntu where the default "easy" chess difficulty was too hard. It was eventually fixed in 2014 by using different chess engines. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-chess/+bug/1...

What a world where we have to put significant extra work into making the computer bad enough that a human can compete.

[JALTU]

On the other hand, the poker apps encourage me to consider a career change. I regularly crush the "opposition" with my card-counting skills. World Series of Poker, I am all-in!!! ;-)

[stevage]

Card counting in poker?

[LtdJorge]

Do you mean Blackjack?

[ccamrobertson]

United sadly removed games from its in-flight entertainment so I can no longer trounce 6 year old Magnus.

[jfaat]

I see some chess players so I want to plug the chess coaching app [0] I'm building. I don't know many chess players and could use feedback, but I had been paying for chess.com premium and tried some others and it's always game-level feedback which is insane to me because it's really not that helpful (as evidenced by my abysmal rating.)

I'm running games through stockfish/lc0/Maia and doing some analysis of patterns across multiple games, then feeding that to an agent who can replay through positions and some other fun stuff. Really keen to find out if it's helpful for anyone else!

[0]https://chessfiend.com

[taftster]

I'm going to check this out, as it's legitimately attempting to solve the gap in online chess coaches. As said on the home page, I don't want to know what to play, I want to know why I'm not seeing it or how to think about the move differently. This is the gap and I hope you find success. I'm definitely going to check it out.

[taftster]

But to ask, did you consider "chessfriend" instead of "chessfiend" for branding? "fiend" can carry a negative connotation, which I'm not particularly lining up with in your product.

[guytv]

I wanted to check it out. After login I am immediately redirected to a page asking for $80/year without me even understanding what the service does. Unrealistic expectation. Show me value first, ask for money later

[gip]

I played the bot (probably early 2025) and wasn't that impressed. I won 5-1 or something like it. I did win one or two local chess tournaments in the past but I'm really not an impressive chess player.

[cnlwsu]

Same. I just played it and rocked it and I am a 500 on chess.com. I think this is older version

[muyuu]

I don't think I've played this bot. I guess the few times I flew in America wasn't with Delta as I would definitely try chess if available.

From what I've seen in the video I'd give the bot around 2100 FIDE equivalent. Granted you don't play bots like you play people. This bot essentially plays top engine moves and every now and then it introduces suboptimal moves. This technique can be played against choosing appropriate openings and being patient with calculation.

[runarberg]

Icelandair’s chess engine was equally brutal (well maybe only slightly less brutal). I played a couple of rounds on medium difficulty only to realize I didn’t stand a chance. I played a few more on beginner, and still lost all my game by blundering some tactics to the engine. Just before landing in Iceland I manage to get one game to the endgame, where the bot finally starts feeling like a beginner (well an advanced beginner) and I got one victory in.

[specproc]

I used to fly a lot of Turkish, and their one's laughably bad. If anyone here works for Turkish Airlines, get yourself a better Chess bot.

[tomjakubowski]

Don't be surprised when you learn their so-called "chess bots" are actually people, lying hidden below the floor of the passenger cabin, moving pieces with the help of levers and magnets.

[Terretta]

Turkish Airlines likes their passengers to feel smart.

[hk1337]

I had similar experiences playing the computer in Tzar: Burden of the Crown. It’s not chess but it is a strategy game.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzar%3A_The_Burden_of_the_Crow...

[Hydrus_T]

I don't understand why this post is getting so much attention. What's so special about this specific chess bot? Developing a 2500 chess.com rating level chess bot is by no means a hard task.

[efitz]

Someday a delta engineer will go fix the UI bug where the labels for the difficulty levels were inverted in order compared to the enums used by the chess engine.

[whazor]

Inside entertainment systems it would be nice if you could select an ELO score to play against, with a slider and persona's (like chess.com has?).

[shen]

The Air Canada bot is too easy on medium but hard is unplayable because the computer is too slow at making each move.

[lspears]

This is great