[HN Gopher] Show HN: Noctie - A chess AI that predicts your rating
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       Show HN: Noctie - A chess AI that predicts your rating
        
       I built over the last two years a human-like neural network chess
       engine that tries to predict your rating from a single game. It
       automatically adapts to your play and tries to play like a human at
       your level would play, giving you a balanced game.  At the core I'm
       using an AlphaZero / Leela Chess Zero style neural network that I
       have trained on 1 billion human games from the lichess.org open
       database. Around this network I have built a chess engine in Rust
       with algorithms that use the outputs from the NN to produce human-
       like moves at a given rating from beginner to world champion, as
       well as predicting the level of the opponents play.  I want to
       develop this into kind of an AI coach that you can spar certain
       positions against and get feedback suited for your level. Happy for
       any suggestions!
        
       Author : MereGurudev
       Score  : 101 points
       Date   : 2022-11-23 12:56 UTC (10 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (noctie.ai)
 (TXT) w3m dump (noctie.ai)
        
       | rabidbathtap wrote:
       | This is fun. No idea what my actual rating is but I may have
       | found a bug: I won with checkmate playing white and a rating of
       | 828 as anon. 1. d4 d5 2. Nf3 Nf6 3. e3 e6 4. Be2 c5 5. Bd2 cxd4
       | 6. Nxd4 Nc6 7. Nf3 e5 8. Bb5 e4 9. Ne5 Bd7 10. Nxc6 bxc6 11. Be2
       | Rb8 12. Nc3 Rxb2 13. Na4 Rb8 14. Nc5 Qb6 15. Nxd7 Nxd7 16. O-O
       | Nc5 17. Bc3 Na4 18. Be5 Rb7 19. Rb1 Nb2 20. Rxb2 Qxb2 21. Bxb2
       | Rxb2 22. a4 Bc5 23. Bg4 d4 24. exd4 Bxd4 25. Qxd4 Rxc2 26. Qd7+
       | Kf8 27. Qd8#
       | 
       | Played a few games and variation was between 828 and 1251, and in
       | all but the 828 I received a good drubbing.
        
       | zug_zug wrote:
       | This is awesome. I've wanted something like this for a long time
        
       | Komodai wrote:
        
       | robertlagrant wrote:
       | Mine has issues connecting to firestore. I can make as many moves
       | as I like though, which is nice :D
        
       | jdthedisciple wrote:
       | I played a few moves and it seems the AI just stopped playing?
       | 
       | This happened twice now (at move 3 the second time).
       | 
       | I'm not sure it should take that long especially in opening
       | moves.
       | 
       | Is it doing _very_ deep analysis? Am I up against depth 40
       | stockfish calculations here?
        
         | MereGurudev wrote:
         | Hey, sorry to hear that, the moves should usually be played
         | very fast in the opening, and only up to 5-10 seconds in
         | tactical situations, so I think you might have encountered a
         | bug. Noctie does almost no calculation, just like a human, BTW.
         | 
         | Was this in the rate-me page or as a logged in user? You can
         | mail me with the e-mail in my profile if you'd like to help
         | debug!
        
           | FartyMcFarter wrote:
           | I ran into the same bug after doing a pre-move FWIW. Someone
           | else also mentioned that the bug might be related to the
           | speed of making moves:
           | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33719934
        
           | jdthedisciple wrote:
           | This was in the rate me page.
           | 
           | Yea it definitely took way more than 10 seconds.
           | 
           | Nice peoject tho! I'm interested in how it'd rate me.
        
           | T0Bi wrote:
           | Had the same problem as well. Actually, I wasn't able to
           | finish a single game since it always got stuck (took more
           | than a minute to play a move) after a while.
           | 
           | I'm using Chrome on Android and was only using the rate me
           | page.
        
       | register wrote:
       | Ok, I am getting near GM estimation after I played some Scotch
       | game theory that I know. To me it is extremely inaccurate
        
       | xipho wrote:
       | Was exactly correct for me, predicted Lichess within 10 points.
       | Also agree with another poster who said they were waiting to get
       | crushed, but managed a draw. Like it "pushed" just enough.
        
       | lupire wrote:
       | On mobile Firefox the zoom is shaky and halfway through the game
       | it zoomed in and didn't zoom back out so I couldn't see the whole
       | board for the rest of the game.
       | 
       | The promotion menu disappears so I couldn't promote.
       | 
       | It also draws wrong if I preemove a recapture and then change to
       | a new move. More generally, it allows infinite premoves and
       | crashes.
       | 
       | Also, the clock is distracting, especially because the
       | proportional font keeps moving the digits. Besides that, pretty
       | good. And the colors are mushy and low contrast.
        
       | incomingpain wrote:
       | I estimate your FIDE rating to:
       | 
       | 1176
       | 
       | Ouch, I did beat the AI.
       | 
       | I've played probably 10,000 anonymous games. My chess puzzle
       | rating is currently around 2100, peak of 2400. Playing against
       | stockfish 4 I can generally win every game. Stockfish 5 is hard.
       | 
       | When I do rated games, I will crush each person in placements and
       | usually get to 2200 or so before I lose the ?
       | 
       | The last time I did a rating run. I won each game and placed at
       | 1977. Then I went on a losing streak of 20 games down to 1300. I
       | am playing 1300s which play like stockfish 5 or harder. These
       | 1300s are playing ridiculously strong compared to stockfish 4.
       | 
       | I wonder what I'm doing wrong.
        
         | cjonas wrote:
         | On lichess? I been hovering in at 1300+-50 for the last year...
         | I can barely beat stockfish 2. I've found stockfish at these
         | lower levels doesn't play like humans at all. It will play a
         | near perfect game for 25 moves and then all of a sudden make a
         | horrible and senseless move. If your style is slow and
         | defensive I think you probably fair better. My style is hyper
         | aggressive and stockfish crushes me :)
        
           | myaccount9786 wrote:
           | Just want to point out the obvious: if you are staying at
           | 1300 for over 1y, you are not improving and likely not
           | understanding why you are losing. I would recommend you study
           | rather than banging your head against the wall by playing
           | more games.
           | 
           | Opening theory and tactics are a good place to start.
           | 
           | An easy step is make sure you know a few common openings and
           | have at least one response prepared to each. But also a good
           | understanding of principles. Opening principles are more
           | important, you can wing it if you don't know the theory.
           | There are thousands of videos on YouTube about these topics.
           | 
           | And obviously just don't hang pieces and take your opponent's
           | hung pieces. At 1300 on lichess, your opponent will make a
           | bunch of tactical mistakes which you can just take if you see
           | them, after you can just win if you play solidly for the rest
           | of the game. The way to study here is with puzzles.
           | 
           | Sorry to patronize. I have played thousands of 1300's on
           | lichess and improved after I sat down and studied. But I can
           | tell you, if you're actually 1300 you are not strong enough
           | in some of these areas.
           | 
           | P.S. I don't believe the comment above yours. The dude went
           | from 2200 to 1300??
        
             | incomingpain wrote:
             | >P.S. I don't believe the comment above yours. The dude
             | went from 2200 to 1300??
             | 
             | Like I could provide links to my games. I'm not a liar. I
             | estimate I am a 1800-2000 player.
             | 
             | The thing I don't seem to know, it would seem to me when I
             | play against a 1300 who never makes a blunder or mistake.
             | It then happens 20 games straight. They certainly play
             | various inaccuracies, and I hold myself as well as I do
             | compared to stockfish 5.
             | 
             | In 1 game I was up 2 pieces and the computer didnt think
             | they made a mistake nor blunder. >90% accuracy as a 1300...
             | 
             | I guess, I'm missing some fundamental thing.
        
               | myaccount9786 wrote:
               | I don't believe anyone could be 2200 and fall to 1300
               | because I am 1800 and I crush 1300s 99% of the time. And
               | 2200s will crush me 99% of the time. How that decline
               | happens?
               | 
               | So you're saying that you could crush me but are getting
               | beat by 1300s who anyone at 1800 could crush easily? F to
               | doubt.
               | 
               | Edit: for example https://www.318chess.com/elo.html.
               | there is a statistical analysis of lichess data as well
               | but it went down a few years ago.
        
             | cjonas wrote:
             | I think your just trying to be helpful, but ya it did come
             | off as pretty patronizing. You've also assumed incorrectly
             | that "getting better" is the most important thing when
             | playing chess...
             | 
             | I play chess because I find it fun, relaxing and a great
             | way to blow off stress. Studying opening and caring too
             | much about rating ruins that. Rated play is awesome because
             | I always get paired with someone of similar skill. I do
             | feel I'm improving slowly, even if my rating does change
             | much. I like to mix things up and often play strategies I
             | know are bad because it leads to fun and novel positions.
             | 
             | And yes, I understand that I'm not a "strong" player. It's
             | pretty obvious when lichess tells me directly I'm in the
             | bottom ~30% lol.
        
               | myaccount9786 wrote:
               | Why complain about not getting better than 1300 then? My
               | point is there are a lot of different levers to pull to
               | get better and imo it's interesting to learn more
               | tactics.
               | 
               | The game does become more interesting as you get better.
               | At least up to 1850 in my personal experience. At <=1400
               | level the game is more like gambling imo, hoping opponent
               | will fall into trap or miss a move.
        
           | incomingpain wrote:
           | >On lichess? I been hovering in at 1300+-50 for the last
           | year... I can barely beat stockfish 2.
           | 
           | Yes.
           | 
           | Stockfish 2 is pretty easy, play solid and it eventually does
           | something ridiculous to earn its lower rating. The trick, you
           | have to see the mistake. Basically punches itself in the
           | face, you have to survive until it does this. Make sure
           | everything is defended.
           | 
           | Stockfish 3 is when it starts playing reasonably and only
           | makes a mistake when you've put enough pressure on it.
           | 
           | Stockfish 4 you have to play against it. You need to see
           | depth of about 3-4 moves for both of you and you should beat
           | it every time.
           | 
           | Stockfish 5 is hard, it's seemingly giving you tricks, but if
           | you look at the trick its a crazy computer line where they
           | manage to barely hold on or in most cases you shouldn't have
           | taken what it was giving.
           | 
           | >I've found stockfish at these lower levels doesn't play like
           | humans at all. It will play a near perfect game for 25 moves
           | and then all of a sudden make a horrible and senseless move.
           | If your style is slow and defensive I think you probably fair
           | better. My style is hyper aggressive and stockfish crushes me
           | :)
           | 
           | From my experience stockfish never plays like a human. I do
           | recall there are some bots on lichess which were machine
           | learning to play like a human.
           | 
           | Alas I'm 1100 rated according to op.
        
       | jkaptur wrote:
       | Really cool! As a novice, it definitely felt approachable and fun
       | to play against.
        
       | lairv wrote:
       | Wow I played a single game but the prediction was very good, it
       | predicted 1636 on lichess while my best elo was ~1600 (though I
       | haven't played for about a year)
       | 
       | But what's even more impressive is that the game felt great to
       | play, I didn't get this feeling that the AI would pick on every
       | of my smallest mistakes like you have with Stockfish. I know
       | there has been several research work [0,1] recently to improve
       | the human-ness of chess AIs, but it's even more impressive that
       | you are able to do it "online", in the course of a single game,
       | bravo. I'd be interested in a blog post with details on the
       | underlying algorithm
       | 
       | [0] https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.01855
       | 
       | [1] https://openreview.net/forum?id=fJY2iCssvIs
        
       | c22 wrote:
       | I played e4 then Noctie ran out its clock. After that I used my
       | queen to gobble up all of my opponent's pieces, then I used the
       | queen to take all of my own pieces.
        
         | MereGurudev wrote:
         | Perfect break entertainment
        
       | register wrote:
       | How does the prediction work? My estimation is probably 20%
       | higher than my real rating
        
         | FartyMcFarter wrote:
         | Same here, it also overestimated my rating by about 300 points.
         | To be fair it was just one game, so that's already pretty
         | impressive.
         | 
         | Nitpick: "20% higher" doesn't work when talking about Elo
         | ratings, since it's a system based on rating differences
         | between players (i.e. subtraction).
         | 
         | In particular, if two players are ranked _x_ and _y_
         | respectively, that 's equivalent to them being ranked _x+k_ and
         | _y+k_ for any value of _k_. On the other hand, multiplying
         | ratings by a constant has no meaning.
        
       | lepapillon wrote:
       | I like the board UI and it's a cool project idea. Did you find
       | any good resources on programming the board representation and
       | identifying legal moves? There doesn't seem to be a standard
       | library or algo reference that I've seen for such a common
       | problem.
        
         | MereGurudev wrote:
         | Thanks! For board representation and legal move generation I
         | use chess.js in the frontend, and shakmaty in the Rust engine.
        
       | MereGurudev wrote:
       | It seems to be working again. It looks like something wasn't
       | working out with my cloud autoscaling setup..
        
       | myaccount9786 wrote:
       | I wish against 1.e4 it wouldn't always play 1...c5. Right now,
       | it's less of a test of "what is your chess rating" and more of
       | "how much sicilian theory do you know".
       | 
       | Its prediction was about 300 points low compared to actual
       | lichess rating (1800). But online chess is very different; you
       | see a lot of unsound openings that an engine wouldn't ever play.
        
         | MereGurudev wrote:
         | I think you were just unlucky with the opening! When I'm
         | testing it's about 60/40 1...e5 vs 1...c5. The first opening
         | moves should be quite close to what a 1600 FIDE player plays in
         | online blitz.
        
           | myaccount9786 wrote:
           | Oh haha N=2 here, so you are probably right. Survivorship
           | bias on my part.
           | 
           | I posted these stats in another thread:
           | 
           | According to https://lichess.org/analysis#1, for blitz and
           | rapid games played on lichess with 1.e4, 1...e5 is 33%,
           | 1...c5 is 25% and 1...e6 is 10%. And 35% is some other
           | nonsense.
        
             | myaccount9786 wrote:
             | Does it use the frequencies from the lichess database? That
             | would be pretty cool if it did!
        
               | [deleted]
        
         | garyrob wrote:
         | An 1800 Lichess rating maps to 1420 FIDE or 1270 USCF. Not sure
         | what standard is used by Noctie.
         | (https://chessgoals.com/rating-comparison/)
        
           | myaccount9786 wrote:
           | Sure maybe the translation is wrong, but I'm saying there's
           | bias in the test due to the fact it only plays sicilian to
           | 1.e4. What about 1.e6 or 1.e5? Hard to estimate fide or
           | lichess rating if you don't test those.
           | 
           | According to https://lichess.org/analysis#1, for blitz and
           | rapid games played on lichess with 1.e4, 1...e5 is 33%,
           | 1...c5 is 25% and 1...e6 is 10%. And 35% is some other
           | nonsense.
           | 
           | Computer chess tournaments solve this problem by requiring
           | the computers to play specific openings.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | entropie wrote:
       | > 638
       | 
       | > Equivalent lichess.org rating: 965
       | 
       | I like chess, I know i'am not good but it was nice to beat a AI
       | once ;)
        
       | sirfreedom wrote:
       | Wow, my predicted Lichess rating (playing just one game where I
       | made a stupid blunder) was eerily accurate (~50 pt difference)
        
       | sireat wrote:
       | Superb effort!
       | 
       | It was a bit unsettling to play because as a human you were
       | expecting to get crushed any moment but somehow I salvaged a draw
       | on move 116. I've played thousands of games versus computer
       | opponents (and tens of thousands versus humans).
       | 
       | Rating estimates were off by 200 points, probably because I was
       | too cautious. Real FIDE 2300 - estimate 2100. Maybe I am getting
       | too old :)
       | 
       | If the engine really becomes more human like it will be a big
       | step forward.
       | 
       | EDIT: 2nd game (after registering) was broken UI wise - could not
       | move pawns 2 spots and many legal moves were not allowed, so I
       | had to resign
        
       | fizzynut wrote:
       | I had to click the "back" and "forward" buttons 10+ times during
       | the game for the ai to "play" a move while my clock got
       | significantly lower. Highly frustrating. Seemed related to how
       | fast I played a move.
        
         | MereGurudev wrote:
         | OK, sorry for that, the part with back/forward is very useful
         | info for debugging though. Do you mind sharing what browser /
         | setup you're using?
        
           | fizzynut wrote:
           | Win/Chrome, the clocks for both sides would be frozen if the
           | bug happened then I had to press back, I often had to "redo"
           | my move manually.
        
       | alexmolas wrote:
       | Super interesting! It would be nice to be able to warmup the
       | initial score by importing your lichess games.
        
       | fabiospampinato wrote:
       | fwiw I got kind of different results, first time around 1800
       | fide, second time around 1900 fide, third time, the only time I
       | managed to win, around 1500 fide.
        
         | danem wrote:
         | Yeah, I've noticed that resigning earlier in the game results
         | in higher ratings for me. Perhaps it's because I stop playing
         | as accurately once I have a crushing position?
        
       | thorncorona wrote:
       | Very cool!
       | 
       | FYI this sequence of moves leads to the AI timing out:
       | 
       | 1. e4 c5 2. c3 d6 3. d4 cxd4 4. cxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 g6 6. Bd3 Bg7 7.
       | Nf3 O-O 8. O-O Nc6 9. d5 Ne5 10. Nxe5 dxe5 11. b4 a6 12. a4 Qb6
       | 13. Rb1 Ng4 14. h3 Nf6 15. a5 Qc7 16. Bb2 Bd7 17. Na4 Bxa4 18.
       | Qxa4
        
       | MarvinYork wrote:
       | 1670 FIDE :D I wish...
        
         | mda wrote:
         | 2050 Fide, I wish.. It tends to over estimate maybe. Or needs
         | more data.
        
       | earthscienceman wrote:
       | Another very positive comment here with a few grips. I love the
       | way you used shadowing and color to create a board with a lot of
       | depth. Interacting with the board is very very nice.
       | 
       | My only major grip with it is the color scheme. As is often the
       | case, you seem to want to add your own 'flavor' to the UI by
       | having this almost post-apocalyptic color vibe... and as usually
       | happens, it makes it more difficult to distinguish for people
       | accustomed to the standard high contrast board.
       | 
       | Another grip, the click to move that is standard would be very
       | nice to implement. Dragging to move as the only option is an
       | oversight.
        
         | MereGurudev wrote:
         | Thanks for the valuable feedback!
        
       | hellcow wrote:
       | This estimated my lichess rating very closely. Really impressive!
        
         | carl_dr wrote:
         | Yep, same here. And the game seemed well balanced to my skill
         | level until I blundered, at which point it beat me in short
         | order - just as happens on Lichess!
        
       | kennyfrc wrote:
       | This looks great! I've played a couple of games in the Open
       | Sicilian and the French Tarrasch and there wasn't a moment that I
       | felt like I was playing against a computer. It plays some cheezy
       | lines which I would expect from a lichess player.
       | 
       | On the user side - I think the review area would benefit from
       | principle-based analysis similar to what is seen in chess.com. I
       | am guessing that for it to happen, there needs to be a separate
       | analysis engine that can detect positional motifs. I think
       | chess.com did a decent job with that (better and more actionable
       | than decodechess in my opinion).
       | 
       | On the tech side - I'm curious how this project differs from
       | existing neural nets trained for lc0 such as bad gyal and maia?
        
         | MereGurudev wrote:
         | Thanks a lot, and happy to hear about your experience! Yes, the
         | review mode is quite basic at this point but I hope to add more
         | features soon, including some that are unique when compared to
         | chess.com.
         | 
         | On the tech side, what Maia is doing I think is similar to our
         | NN component. It turns out to get realistic play (include
         | randomness, avoid too many one-move blunders, same level of
         | tactical play as positional play, realistic endgame play, etc.)
         | you have to do quite a lot on top of that - much more than I
         | initially thought. I have tested the AI over the last year with
         | friends of different strengths to try to make the gameplay more
         | realistic and engaging. I also think the automatic adaptation
         | to your level of play, and predicting the rating, is unique.
         | Bad gyal AFAIK uses a different training method where Stockfish
         | evaluations is involved, but I haven't really tested it enough
         | to know how it stands vs. Maia.
        
       | thornewolf wrote:
       | The AI seemed to have gotten stuck during my game with it. After
       | waiting a few minutes I opted to resign.
        
         | MereGurudev wrote:
         | Sorry for the bad experience, Noctie got stuck for a while due
         | to a bottleneck in my cloud setup
        
       | saberience wrote:
       | Noctie never made a single move in my game.
        
         | MereGurudev wrote:
         | Sorry for the bad experience, I had a service outage for a
         | while
        
       | dreamer7 wrote:
       | I had a fun game. Was disappointed that the AI blundered a piece
       | fairly early in the game. Overall, I felt I was not being pushed
       | at all.
        
       | tacitusarc wrote:
       | It's very flatteringly, said I was about 1950 FIDE, 2200 lichess.
       | I'm closer to maybe 1300-1400.
        
       | EZ-Cheeze wrote:
       | https://noctie.ai/walkthrough/public_55e0d2f7-d18e-42aa-a969...
       | 
       | both the machine and i played with elan (reckless abandon),
       | rarely thinking more than a few seconds per move
       | 
       | crazy game that convinced me to sign up
       | 
       | i love that it ostensibly tried to stalemate me at the end,
       | that's what i'd do too and often draw back when i played chess
       | 
       | i stopped because F** zero-sum games
       | 
       | but against noctie i'm not releasing stress hormones into
       | someone's brain so i can like chess again
        
         | EZ-Cheeze wrote:
         | https://www.chess.com/analysis/game/pgn/eCxDBoc6S?tab=review
         | 
         | chess.com analysis
         | 
         | accuracy 75.4 vs 70.6 so it did a measurably good job matching
         | performance
         | 
         | there is something very lifelike and appealing about an AI that
         | blunders at the same rate as you
         | 
         | best chess engine, good job
        
       | coolness wrote:
       | The computer seems to move very slowly, and gets much more time
       | for each move than me. Is this intended, or is it because
       | everyone on HN is trying it out? Might be some sort of client -
       | backend synch issue.
       | 
       | edit: the computer now flagged on my screen, but I did not get
       | any message of a result
        
         | blux wrote:
         | Same here, computer flagged, nothing happens.
        
         | underyx wrote:
         | It was fine for me until I had forced mate in two. It took 3
         | minutes to make the penultimate move and I'm still waiting for
         | it to make the last move. In some way, this delivers perfectly
         | on the promise of an AI emulating human players at my level.
        
         | MereGurudev wrote:
         | It seems one of my services has hit a quota, trying to find out
         | which..
        
         | mirzap wrote:
         | Same happened to me. It seems quite buggy.
        
       | FartyMcFarter wrote:
       | The AI makes plenty of blunders (confirmed with Stockfish
       | analysis), which makes sense in order to get a better estimate of
       | the opponent's rating.
       | 
       | As I was playing I felt like I had a definite advantage, which I
       | did as it turns out. But because I was playing a computer I kept
       | second-guessing myself as I didn't yet know it was programmed to
       | blunder. I then managed to resign in a drawn pawn endgame - I
       | wonder if this was used as signal to estimate my rating.
       | 
       | It got my lichess rating right within 300 points after just one
       | game.
        
         | MereGurudev wrote:
         | Thanks for sharing your experience! It's a very interesting
         | point about how you adapt your play based on the preconception
         | about how computers play. The AI isn't programmed to blunder
         | per se, it's more that I have tried to emulate a human
         | intuition & thinking process - which is prone to blunders. So
         | it never intentionally makes a mistake to test you, or to even
         | the game out, it just tries to emulate your level of play.
        
           | FartyMcFarter wrote:
           | Thanks for the info, this is a great project!
        
       | FartyMcFarter wrote:
       | I pitted Stockfish 14 NNUE against it (only giving stockfish a
       | few seconds per move), it reported a FIDE rating of 2661 (lichess
       | 2891).
        
       | Quarrelsome wrote:
       | Any idea why it thinks I'm so bad?
       | 
       | https://imgur.com/a/d0WES5H
       | 
       | Its way off (I range around 1200-1700 ELO depending on sober I
       | wanna be when I play). I do play relatively eccentrically with a
       | penchant for sacrifices and a insatiable desire for tempo and
       | exploration of lines I am unfamiliar with but its still way off
       | with its initial assessment.
        
         | MereGurudev wrote:
         | If the opening is rated as sufficiently bad, it would adjust
         | its play accordingly and perhaps not challenge you sufficiently
         | to be able to change its rating estimate. I.e. if you get a
         | very easy, tactical game after that, the game might not be
         | testing your abilities enough to revise the estimate from one
         | game.
        
       | hexwab wrote:
       | I played a game, got my estimated rating (pretty accurate!), and
       | a modal dialog box offering me the choice of "enter my email to
       | create a account" or "forget me and play again". Immediately my
       | heart sank. It's 2022, I have enough accounts on enough websites
       | to last a lifetime and am super-sick of the whole "we've sent you
       | an email, be sure to click the link to verify" dance.
       | 
       | Most importantly, what I _actually_ wanted to do was get the game
       | out and analyse it. But now the text was no longer selectable so
       | I had to go grubbing around in devtools.
       | 
       | Turns out the "forget me and play again" button just dismissed
       | the popup and didn't actually start a new game but _I had no way
       | of knowing this_ short of playing another test game in another
       | tab.
       | 
       | Suggestions: (a) don't use modal dialog boxes! Let me create an
       | account in the middle of a game if I want. Let me copy and paste
       | the moves at any time, including after the game is over. Don't
       | have a button to "play again" if it's not actually going to play
       | again.
       | 
       | (b) asking for email addresses annoys the hell out of people. Let
       | me play again without forgetting who I am. If I want my identity
       | to persist across browser sessions then sure, let me create a
       | username and password. If I want to be sure I don't forget the
       | password, sure, let me tie it to an email address. But it should
       | be step three, not step one. Otherwise people will just never
       | come back.
       | 
       | (c) " _excited_ ", "Thanks for the game", the eyebrows? It's a
       | bot, it's not capable of excitement or gratitude or facial
       | expressions. Pretending it is seems, well, patronizing. It's
       | reminiscent of chess.com with its cutesy bots (and persistent
       | nagging).
        
         | catchmeifyoucan wrote:
         | + 1 to this, I dropped my email, but I really don't want to go
         | and verify it. I'm curious to know what I get after I login,
         | because it's not immediately clear.
         | 
         | Another option is to consider 3rd party OAuth like Google.
        
           | MereGurudev wrote:
           | Good suggestions, thanks.
        
       | porkbrain wrote:
       | Well, that's flattering, got estimated 2173 FIDE.
       | 
       | Unfortunately, wildly off, I was ~1800 FIDE even when I used to
       | play. Will try a few more games to see whether that was a fluke
       | or whether I should consider getting into chess again.
       | 
       | All in all, great submission, thank you
        
       | darepublic wrote:
       | Good idea, was gonna share it with my friends but it's not
       | working.
        
         | MereGurudev wrote:
         | Sorry, it seems to be very slow right now due to some quota
         | issue :( I'm debugging right now.
        
       | bazillion wrote:
       | I asked GM Minh Le (twitch.tv/gmminhle) to try it out, and he got
       | a 2046 FIDE rating with 2306 lichess rating, after beating the
       | bot. His actual FIDE rating is 2542 standard
       | (https://ratings.fide.com/profile/12401153). His feedback was:
       | 
       | -Why does the bot get +20 seconds every move and you get +5
       | seconds?
       | 
       | -It seems like you have to wait a few seconds before making a
       | move before the bot gets stuck
       | 
       | You can check out the VOD of him playing noctie on his channel if
       | you want to see the full thing.
        
         | porphyra wrote:
         | I think these tools, much like IQ tests, are not that useful
         | when you are super good and get almost every move perfect. It
         | was fairly accurate for me who is around 1900 lichess.
        
         | MereGurudev wrote:
         | Hey, that's really cool, will check it out! The backend was
         | experiencing some issues leading to laggy play by Noctie, I
         | hope it's working better now.
        
       | desmosxxx wrote:
       | Very cool but noctie seems to be timing out now - worked fine for
       | me the first two times.
       | 
       | Does noctie treat the opening any differently when factoring in
       | ratings. I had two very different estimes - higher one (2100) was
       | from an opening line i knew and lower one (1500) I left the
       | opening more quickly but I don't think I played a much worse
       | middle game. I'm closer to 1500. [edit: from your other comment
       | it does look like it takes the opening into account - I'm
       | guessing as some sort of calibration - if you create an account
       | does it use the results from previous games instead?]
       | 
       | Also curios if this could theoretically be applied to historical
       | games as well or does it require noctie to be a participant. I'd
       | love to see an analysis of how player strength has increased over
       | time. [edit: from your other comment it looks like it does
       | require play]
        
         | MereGurudev wrote:
         | Thanks! Yes, the traffic from here exposed a few issues &
         | bottlenecks in the backend infrastructure. I have resolved most
         | of them and it seems to be running OK now (?).
         | 
         | To answer your questions: Noctie takes every move into account.
         | Especially in short games or very one-sided games, a lot of the
         | rating estimate will come from your opening play. If you play a
         | bad opening, Noctie adapts and you will get an easier game,
         | which may lead to simpler positions where you have less risk of
         | making a mistake that would lower your rating. So what opening
         | you play definitely has a big impact when trying to judge the
         | rating from one game only.
         | 
         | If you create an account and log in, Noctie will accumulate
         | information from several games to give a more balanced
         | difficulty and more accurate rating estimate (and show how it
         | changes over time).
         | 
         | Noctie's involvement isn't strictly required for the rating
         | estimate although it creates good conditions for it by making
         | the game balanced, not dominated by time trouble or trying to
         | flag the opponent, etc.
        
       | yqsk wrote:
       | It guessed my lichess almost rating exactly. Impressive!
        
         | MereGurudev wrote:
         | Thanks!
        
       | segmondy wrote:
       | Started timing out or not moving, once it was definite I would
       | win. Not sure if logic search bug or scaling issues.
        
       | lovehashbrowns wrote:
       | Reaaaaaaally fun implementation! I enjoyed this much more than
       | usual AIs I tend to play against as an extreme casual of the
       | game. It put my lichess at 900, which is likely 100-200 points
       | above what I'd really be. I'm gonna keep using this because it
       | seems the difficulty is at the right spot for what I wanna do
       | with chess.
        
       | jhsinger27 wrote:
       | cant be better than chess.com ratings!
        
       | parspo wrote:
       | I had fun. The AI stopped responding and I was able to capture
       | all of its pieces in the confusion:
       | 
       | https://i.imgur.com/g6R1FM5.png
       | 
       | I didn't even know the rules of chess allowed for that, so I've
       | actually learned quite a bit!
        
         | jpalomaki wrote:
         | Same problem, but I did enjoy the game.
         | 
         | This feels like a great thing for beginners.
        
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