The Preposterous "weaker levels" of some programs

[fern]

Surely you too has played, from time to time, with the so called "weak" levels of some programs, levels characterized or not with a personality that supposedly plays at 1200, 1500,.1700 etc level.
The pity is they are awfully made. They are no what they say. Yesterday I played and won a Chessmaster personality that supposedly played at 2400 something. Preposterous. It played like a 1300, at most. And a supposedly 1500 played at 800, at most.
Same with weak levels in Djeng.
Your experience?

My best
Fernando

[Erik Roggenburg]

What do you think of the UCI function "limit strength" found in Rybka, Hiarcs, and Shredder (among others)? I have found that Hiarcs and Shredder play pretty close to what I would think their weakened levels are.

I usually play around 1200-1400 Elo, though. I suck.

At 1200, Deep Sjeng was hanging queens and stuff. When I moved it up to 1350, its mistakes were less glaring.

[fern]

Deep Jseng is one of the sinners. Each level is lot weaker than it should be. A 1500 elo player does not let his pieces fall to a fourchette of forget that a piece will be captured in the very next move.
A 1500 plays like, say, Chess Challenger Champion, a difficult dedicated unit to defeat.
1550 play perhaps is very weak at the positional level, but does not fall in cheap tactic traps just like that. eep Jseng does.

My best
Fernando

[ozziejoe]

I think the cm personalities are the best handicaped levels i've seen. The human-like play depends on the level.


Under 1800, I find the personalities make unrealistic blunders. However, the 1700 to 1800 personalities are still good at teaching you to convert an advantage. they will drop a pawn or exchange unrealistically, and then you will need to convert it.

I find the josh 9 (the 1800 level personality) to be pretty reasonable. It does not make too many egregious mistakes, and is an aggressive king attacker like my typical human oponents. Still, they don't make human mistakes....