[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.

[s1gsegv]

You can code review it for yourself, it’s open source: https://github.com/apple-oss-distributions/Chess/tree/Chess-...

IIRC it does just set a time limit on thinking

[Ajedi32]

> 4 core Skylake (Mac 2016) would be well beyond human capabilities

Not if the computer's time limit is set at 15 microseconds. It's not a question of whether the computers have "enough power"; just whether they are more powerful now than they were previously.

And yes, obviously that's a very sloppy and error-prone way to implement a difficulty control.

[dominicrose]

I'm guessing the app got better precisely because there was a time limit.

[epolanski]

Even a computer from 20+ years ago will comfortably crush Carlsen, it really goes down to the specific engine used, chess engines have evolved a lot during the years.

Carlsen knows how to play anti-bot chess where some engines may struggle, but that only applies to amateurish engines.

[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.

[_diyar]

The idea is that there is a time limit for each move, and that the faster processors can do more work in the same time and thus have higher elo.

[kimixa]

I think the issue is that people limited compute time as a proxy for difficulty.

In that case you'll hit issues on any device that performs significantly differently from that which it was tuned in.

Though I am slightly amused by people using the apple chip as an example of "high performance" in a problem that scales very well with threading.