Playing against the bots
The classical chess room “with bots” has six bots running the Stockfish engine. They are named after the pieces — from the pawn to the king:
| Bot | Strength |
|---|---|
| Pawn_Bot | beginner: blunders pieces, never resigns or offers a draw |
| Knight_Bot | novice amateur: fewer mistakes, also plays every game to the end |
| Bishop_Bot | solid amateur |
| Rook_Bot | strong amateur |
| Queen_Bot | very strong: hard to beat even for an experienced player |
| King_Bot | the program at full strength |
The rooms for people — bullet, blitz and standard — have Unrated_Chess: it plays unrated only, so there is someone to play while no opponent is around.
In Chess960 the bot room has the same six bots. King of the Hill and Three-check have four bots: Pawn_Bot, Knight_Bot, Bishop_Bot and King_Bot, playing with the Fairy-Stockfish program.
How the bots play
The strong bots resign in hopeless positions and offer a draw themselves when the engine sees the position as equal; they answer your draw offers by the evaluation too. Pawn_Bot and Knight_Bot play every game to the end — so a beginner always has someone to mate and can practise the mates from the“Endgame” topic.
The bots never get tired and, apart from the weakest, never miss a simple capture. Against a strong bot keep the position closed and avoid wild open tactics — there the program calculates further than a human.
Where to start
- Start with Pawn_Bot: it is a good partner for trying opening schemes and the motifs from the “Tactics” topic.
- Move on to the next bot when you win more than half of your games against the current one.
- After a game, open it in the archive: step through the moves and find where the position turned. The “Download PGN” button saves the game for analysis in any chess program.