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Adjustable Random Difficulty Computer

The computer has 8 difficulty settings you can play against it on here.

If you are playing against always stock 8, you are going to have a bad time. You are gonna lose, and lose, and lose... Learn some good moves, but you get stomped. Your confidence goes down.

If you are playing against always stock 1, you are going to have a good time. Your are going to win, and win, and win... You won't learn very much as it is a pushover, however your confidence will go up.

I think this would/could benefit most players.

Here is how it would work. Ideally it would not show the difficulty until after the game, and only if you click something to reveal it.

You can set it up to have various difficulty settings randomly, and the key part is you can't see the difficulty of the computer until after the game.

So, you could set it up like randomly maybe stockfish 1 through 8 so it could be any of the engines coming at you, and you have no clue if it's going to be easy or hard.

Weaker players may want it set on say 1 through 4 stockfish random level.

Stronger players may want it random between stockfish 7 or 8.

This randomization I think would help players grow stronger because it would be more fun to play this way, and it will get players out of their comfort zone on difficulty.

Much like when you play a random 1500 player on a new account... is that a 2200 player goofing off? Is it some 1700 club player, or is this a person who just learned chess last week?

The random factor is fun because that mystery / surprise element adds to the play. It's for the psychology as well. A lot of players will go at a 1200 player differently than if it were a GM. This surprise element makes it so you gotta treat it as an unknown.
Also come to think of it. On a side note it would be interesting to be able to hide opponents ratings who are human players as well.

Rating is not important to me a lot of the time.

Realistically speaking when you are playing a player a few hundred points lower than you, you are going to play differently than if you are playing a player a few hundred points higher than you.

This is even true of top player. For example Magnus Carlsen did not come at Bill Gates in the same way he would have played if Anand or Nakamura or another strong GM were playing.

I'd like the ability to remove that element without putting a stickynote on my screen.
@lurarose pretty sure that there's a "zen mode" that does just that. Don't know where it is, but I think it's there somewhere in the preferences/settings. Try the Q&A.
Oh, yeah, it's there. Go click on "lurarose" on the top right of your page (scroll up if you need to) then click "preferences" and then scroll down until you see "zen mode" near the bottom. Click "ON" and you're good to go.

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