how strong is Kasparov Chessmate

I just played a few games against the Kasparov Chessmate engine on a the entertainment center of an Aerlingus International flight. I was surprised I was able to beat the highest 2300(?) rated level fairly easily, not all the time, sometimes I made mistakes and was crushed, but playing fairly quickly, without more calculation then I use in Blitz I did win some of the games as White in the King's Gambit and by playing black as white transposing via 1. e3 2. e4 occasionally into a From Gambit (believe it or not sometimes the engine played 1... f5) (I was attempting use the double pawn move as two single moves to get the computer out of the book in the opening. I don't think it actually worked since it ended up playing a lot of the same stuff it played with White move for move, but I was able to get the From Gambit that way.) I also won as Black in the Czech Benoni on a very high setting but I don't think it was the highest. In that setting I only remember the engine playing 1. e4 and the Scotch Game as White.

It can't really have been anywhere near 2300. I'm not rated but there's no way I'm that good. Does anyone have any idea?

Here's a link to a brief review. The guy also thinks it's not near 2300 and thought the book had holes in it. More like 1700-1800 at best. Supposedly based on the Ruffian 1.0.5 engine, which is odd because the real Ruffian 1.0.5 is around 2500. It must have been a really poor porting operation, or the OS it was running on in the airplane was really terrible compared to a real PC.

http://www.stmintz.com/ccc/index.php?id=306057

Thank you for the link (which for some reason wouldn't load for me in Spain so I waited till now to respond.) I didn't notice much of the problems complained about re: crashing, etc... though I think I did crash it once near the end of the first flight as as the screen became stuck on the logo, and even the announcements that were supposed to override the entertainment center on my monitor upon exiting the flight didn't load, also the monitor didn't turn itself off the like the others. I wasn't particularly thinking it was the game that crashed it, just that stometimes machines crash. Perhaps I was lucky. The ratings suggested in the review seem plausible, though I can't say I usually have such an easy time against humans rated 1700 or 1800; it's different with software which is so predictable, once you find a line where it plays badly this game always plays the same so it's easy to beat. At least I thought it did, and then on the return flight set to 2300 it always played the Scandinavian as Black which bugged me to no end and I never got my good King's Gambit positions again. All in all I can't complain. This software made two transatlantic flights much more enjoyable than they otherwise would have been.

strong enough to beat me but its still poorly designed in my opinion.

tmkroll how come you are lower rated, i couldnt beat it

oh god im far far weaker than i thought. if its 1700 to 1800 i must be rated like 800

I don't really use this site except for the forums. I've only ever played one game on it which I won. The opponent wasn't very high rated so I guess it didn't rate me very high. That's why we have provisional ratings... except on this site for some reason we don't.

also, if I read the other review right the PC version of the software is possibly quite a bit stronger maybe closer to actually 2300, so it's possible we were playing against very different "kasparov"s depening what platform you're using.

i missed that, i was talking about the pc version actually

Yes; I didn't know about the difference when I wrote the OP and all of that information is in a link so it's a natural oversight. I should revise this title to "how strong is the version of Kasparov Chessmate that runs on an airline flight entertainment system?" or something. Thank you for your comments.