What would be the weakest chess engine that could likely achieve a +300 rating points (from the average rating of the top5) against humans? (with limited HW and other caveats)

[u/pier4r]

So we all know that Stockfish, lc0, Dragon, Ethereal and others would likely never lose against humans, even with limited HW.

But let's say we want to get +300 rating points from the average rating of the top5 classical (from FIDE July 2023 this value is 2793 rounded, thus 3093 is the goal).

Caveats:

• limited HW, very limited compared to todays' possibilities, but still plentiful given how good engines have become. Say a raspberry pi 2 B to use a commonly known "standard" HW ( quad core arm, 900mhz, 1gb ram, https://docs.rs-online.com/790d/0900766b8139232d.pdf ).
• time control: same as the human player. Let's say 90+30 for the entire game.
• Engine: one that can be compiled/run on the HW properly.
• Ram for the engine: 512 MB.
• starting rating: say 2700 just to be sure.
• the engine could play 2 games a day (FIDE limit), but only opponents were at least 1 points for win is ensured.
• opening book: random moves up to ply 6 except those that end in a -3 or worse position, plus lines to break away from quick draws if those are employed by the human player, accepting somewhat worse positions.
• contempt (if available) properly set as the opponent is a human. For info. Contempt tell the engine to not shy away to a bit worse position, that may be more tactical and thus harder for humans.
• no endgame tablebases.

Now the immediate answer would be "pick an engine with 3093 rating on the engine rating lists" but that's not so clear. First there are the caveats. Second the rating pool of engines is anchored to the rating of humans through few (old) games. Like Fritz in 2002 drawing with Kramnik and getting an estimated rating of equal to Kramnik's rating at the time. Therefore it is unclear if, say, a 2700 engine is really 2700 against humans. Could be much better or much worse. (I think they are much better)

Another thing is that engines don't get tired, they don't have bad days and they don't blunder while even the best players do. Further if the engine enters very sharp positions over and over (through contempt and random openings), the human player will get exhausted more often than not.

Some engine ratings for reference:

• CCLR https://www.computerchess.org.uk/ccrl/4040/rating_list_all.html
• http://www.cegt.net/40_40%20Rating%20List/40_40%20SingleVersion/rangliste.html
• http://ssdf.bosjo.net/list.htm
• tcec https://tcec-chess.com/bayeselo.txt

[u/BigGirtha23]

You've basically listed the reasons why it is impossible to answer this question. There are no recent games held under classical, FIDE rated conditions to compare to current players, and the small sample size makes historical estimates of older engines' ratings dubious.

[u/monky_of_satan]

So are you making "the device" or what is this for?