Lucas Chess engine settings are very weak

I just pitted Lucas Chess engines from elo 2100 all the way to Stockfish 8 (supposedly 3300) against Vanessa personality (elo 2307 on my system) of Chessmaster....and Vanessa beat them all flat. I used a blitz time of 6/2 if that matters.

The default Lucas engine settings was depth 3, but all the engines move instantly. Against humans, maybe they will find it tough regardless of the engines moving instantly. But against Vanessa, they were all beaten to pulp (including Stockfish).

On another note, the engine on Chess.com moves instantly too. But on the hardest level, it is stronger than even the Chessmaster engine (the King engine).....despite the instant moves.

Yet, the 2100 Lucas Chess engines managed to beat the Roxy (2018) personality easily. Why such a big difference between Vanessa and Roxy, I don't understand, but I know the Vanessa personality of Chessmaster is pretty strong.... It/she will give away a pawn or two in many games, but tactically, very strong and will play very strong after that.

I wonder if anyone here has ever tested the Lucas engine "ratings" to see if they were accurate or not. I did test, and looks like they are way, way off.....at least on the default settings that come when you first install Lucas Chess.

Lucas Chess is well aclaimed by many novice and intermediate chess players, but what's up with the weak engine behavior? I pose the question, because many developing chess players use Lucas Chess as a trainer and sparring partner, etc. But if the performance is so way off, that leaves a lot of question marks.

The methods that Lucas Chess uses to handicap engines has always baffled me, which is the reason why I never fully embraced the program. It does have a lot of nice features, though. The analysis features are pretty cool.

Regarding the engines moving instantly, how did you run the engine-engine tournaments? Did you use two separate computers and manually key the moves into both computers (doubtful that it's possible at that time control) , or did you import engines?

From what I remember, Lucas Chess uses only UCI engines, and Chessmaster uses only Winboard engines, so importing engines wouldn't work unless you use some tricks with UCI/Winboard adapters. This may be the reason some of your engines are moving instantly.

As an update, I'm running a 20-game tournament right now in Lucas Chess as a test. I don't have the Vanessa personality worked up, so I used the Chessmaster Laura personality instead. I had to use a Winboard-to-UCI adapter with the Laura personality, and I also had to use an OPK patch on the Laura engine. I pitted Laura against Lime 66 with a 6/2 time control.

It's still in the middle of the first game. Neither engine is moving instantly; They're both playing a reasonable game.

The tournament seems to be going about as I'd expect. Laura has won 1 out of 5 games so far. Lime is rated in the 2100s; Laura supposedly is rated 2095, but my testing says it's more around the 1700s. So the results are at least in the ballpark.

I opened both programs at the same time and then have them play separate colors while, I key in their moves into their respective GUIs :)

I don't think that affects their performance in any major way.

Vanessa personality is "only" about 300 points higher than Roxy. Roxy gets beaten by the 2100 engines on Lucas Chess, but after that, none can handle Vanessa....(including Stockfish 8).

This is what I'm baffled about. And also I think instant moving should not really matter if the engine is really strong (like the Chess.com engine which moves instantly in the Play vs Computer mode).

Even if Vanessa was playing with the full strength of Chessmaster, Stockfish should be smashing Vanessa. So something is definitely wrong with your Stockfish settings in Lucas Chess. I'd go through the LC settings for Stockfish to see if I could find some weakened setting.

What version of Lucas Chess are you using? I'm using an old version, but I could download the same version that you have.

I just downloaded and installed Lucas Chess 10.13 today. I did install Lucas Chess about two years ago on another old computer but forgot all about it.

The latest version has 40 engines inbuilt in, but I don't see the point if they are not performing according to their stated rating strengths.

Everything was "out of the box".

The LC web site is giving me a 404 error message. I'll have to try later.

Well, the LC web site is still down, but I discovered that it's also on GitHub. I downloaded the portable version of LC 10.13 and installed the full strength Chessmaster 10 engine into LC. Currently, Stockfish 8 32-bit is handily stomping CM10 (The King) 7.5 games out of 8. I don't see anything wrong with how Stockfish is playing.

At least the portable version seems to be working. (I really don't want to go to the trouble of installing the installer version if I can help it.)

Oh, I don't know why I didn't notice this earlier. In your first post, you said that the default engine setting was depth 3. That's actually a weak setting for novices to play against, and of course, Stockfish will move almost instantly. Change the engine depth to "--" (the choice at the very top of the pick list), and Stockfish should play at maximum strength.

What confused me was that I was in the engine tournament mode where the engines are set to max strength by default, but you were playing in the "play against an engine" mode where the engines are set to weak levels by default.

Actually Lucas Chess makers should be setting the default Depth to much higher than 3, otherwise this is what happens - the top strength engine cannot even beat Vannesa personality from Chessmaster (rated 2307 on my PC).

But then again, why would the Lucas Chess engines (anyone) easily beat Roxy (rated 2018 on my PC)? 2100 --> 3300 vs 2018 ---> 2307

Does not compute.

First of all, the LC "developers", as far as I know, is really just one person - Lucas Monge. Anyone who can create a full-featured Chess GUI by himself (and even give it away for free!) gets my total respect. And, he's accessible. He has an account here, and a few times he's even made comments or answered questions. I'm sure that if you sent him an e-mail, he'd at least read it and maybe even respond.

I will admit that my biggest gripe with LC is that there are too many ways to tweak an engine's strength, and sometimes I can't tell which tweaking method overrides another tweaking method. But the longer I think about all of these tweaking methods, the more they start to make a little sense.

In the engine tournament mode, it makes sense to me that the engines would normally play at maximum strength. Typically, that's what you want when you're pitting one engine against another engine.

However, when you're in the LC mode "Play against an engine of your choice", it's typically a novice player trying to beat an engine. For that scenario, the engine would have to be set to a weak level for the player to have any chance at beating the engine. In this case, the developer has decided that the default level of 3-ply is appropriate. (Of course, if you're a strong player, you can simply increase the depth (ply) setting.)

Don't forget, in your case, you''re using the "Play against an engine of your choice" mode in a manner contrary to its intent. The developer is assuming that mostly it will be a novice player trying to beat an engine, whereas you are using two computers in a manual game between two engines.

Now, here's where it can get a bit confusing. When you're in this "Play against an engine of your choice" mode, selecting an internal engine will cause the "depth" setting to be active (in your case, depth = 3 ply). However, if you select one of the "Engines with fixed elo", I think the engine will be set to the depth necessary to make it play at the stated elo level. In this case, I'm guessing that the engine's "fixed elo" setting is active, and the "depth" setting is inactive. That is, the "fixed elo" setting overrides the "depth" setting. (It would be a nice touch if the developer would "grey out" any inactive setting so that we could easily tell which settings are active and which settings are inactive.)

So, your experience starts to make sense to me. When you were using the LC internal engines, they were playing at the default depth =3, and of course Vanessa was crushing them. And when you were using the LC "fixed elo" engines at levels of 2100 elo and higher, they were playing at much higher ply depths, and of course they were crushing Roxy. (By the way, Chessmaster claims that Roxy is over 2000 elo, but my personal testing shows that Roxy is closer to 1650 elo. See Post #97 on Page 5 of the link below.)

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/chess-equipment/chessmaster-biggest-load-of-crap-ever?page=5

Stockfish 8 and Komodo 8 aren't exactly chopped liver!

Except that, I also tested at the "fixed elo" level, of 2800 max vs Vanessa and she still won....

Today I did more testing, and put the depth at 15, and this time, Stockfish won (I did not test the lower rated engines yet) handily against Vanessa (rated 2311 today on my PC) in two games. Stockfish was still moving instantly, though.

By the way, Vanessa is tough to beat at blitz time (without any take backs). I think her level is a good level to tackle, 2300+ on a decent machine, and she plays balanced. She should be around that level in "real world" too. At least around a master level I think, and being a computer, very tough in blitz time. She will often sac and open up a position to seek counterplay + tactical possibilities.

PS: I should state that I have installed CM Grandmaster edition in place of CM9000 or CM10000, and I *think* the Vanessa personality is in fact, stronger now than in previous versions.

I must confess, I thought I had these handicap options figured out, but it's clear that I don't. I went back and did the same thing that you did - I used both the Chessmaster GUI and the Lucas Chess GUI, and I manually entered the moves for both sides. In the Lucas Chess GUI, I used the "Play against an engine of your choice" option, I chose the "Engines with fixed elo" McBrain 2.1a (2800 elo), AND I left the depth at the default value of 3. Vanessa demolished McBrain. So, it's clear that using an engine via "Engines with fixed elo" DOES NOT override the depth setting.

So at this point, I'm completely confused. Like I said, this is my main complaint about Lucas Chess - too many ways to handicap an engine, and it's unclear about which method overrides other methods.

I don't know if I'm going to spend any more time trying the figure out these Lucas Chess handicap options. I've already spent waaay too much time on it.

I appreciate you putting time to investigate this intriguing issue. But I guess we both like computer chess/software to a certain degree and like to tinker about with them, although you are more advanced than me in this respect

PS: I also own many of the Chessmaster versions, so it's kinda like a venerable chess software to me.

The main issue with the CM personalities is they spend too much time in the first half of the game to make simple moves, but then when their backs are to the wall, they start playing like the silicon monsters that they are.

So the latest version of Lucas Chess with many of the bundled custom weakened engines seemed great and that's why I downloaded it again to install, except that.....their elos are rather suspect now.

Even I tested and beat their 2100 engines without too much difficulty on the depth 3 level (I didn't test the "stronger" ones yet). If that is the case, how should they be tweaked to make them play according to what is stated there on the tin?

Engines with 2100 of fixed elo have a handicap set by the author of the engine, normally the number of positions analyzed per second is limited.
Lucas Chess only sends the command setoption name UCIElo value 2100 to the engine.
When depth 3 is set, another limitation is added, the engine is instructed to analyze only to depth 3 in each movement.
There are two limitations, and only the most restrictive has effect.

To play against a 2100, it is preferable to remove the depth option (-- as indicated by EscherehcsE), and play for time (there is a tab to indicate it).

And the biggest problem with engines is finding out with less than 2000 of it and running properly, almost all engines have an elo superior to 2100, of course it is playing without limitations.
In the next version 11, there will be 33 engines with an elo greater than 2500, and 9 with an elo greater than 3000. I don't think it's necessary any more, perhaps they are more interesting those that have a minor elo, for the majority of the users of the program.

And thank you for your interest in the program.