chess on S Anand

ChatGPT is about FIDE 1600

Thu, 28 May 2026 16:04:51 +0800

I asked ChatGPT to play chess with Stockfish. Stockfish is a “strong open-source chess engine”. It has 8 levels of difficulty, which roughly maps to these FIDE levels:

Stockfish	FIDE	Player Level & Description
Level 1	~1000	Beginner: Constantly blunders, hangs pieces deliberately.
Level 2	~1100	Advanced Beginner: Fewer obvious tactical mistakes, plays completely aimlessly.
Level 3	~1200	Early Intermediate: Punishes very basic errors but regularly drops pieces.
Level 4	~1350	Intermediate: Plays standard opening moves; requires solid, blunder-free play to beat.
Level 5	~1450	Advanced Intermediate: Rarely hangs single pieces; you need positional advantages.
Level 6	~1650	Strong Club Player: Highly tactical. Aggressively exploits your mistakes.
Level 7	~1950	Expert: Exceptionally strong. Requires precise positional mastery and deep calculation.
Level 8	~2400	Grandmaster: Invincible for most humans. Plays with ruthless perfection.
Full Engine	~3600	Our of human reach completely, “like a smart ant trying to debate physics with a human.”

In the first iteration, here were the results:

Stockfish	Result
Level 0	Win
Level 1	Win
Level 2	Stalemate
Level 3	Stalemate
Level 4	Win
Level 5	Loss
Level 6	Loss
… etc.	Loss

When I asked ChatGPT how it played, it said something like “I wrote a Python program that plays chess using a fixed policy.”

That’s crazy! So I told it:

Rather than use a fixed policy, get the move that Stockfish made, analyze it, and return your next move. See if you can win at level 6.

After a few attempts, it won!

Here’s the game:

ChatGPT vs Stockfish Level 6

[White "ChatGPT"]
[Black "Stockfish Skill Level 6"]
[Termination "White won by checkmate"]
[FinalFEN "4Q3/2qrkp2/4pN2/1pp1P3/7P/p1P3P1/P5K1/4R3 b - - 5 39"]

1. d4 e6 2. c4 Nf6 3. Nf3 Be7 4. g3 O-O 5. Bg2 a5
6. O-O c6 7. Qc2 d5 8. Rd1 Ne4 9. Nc3 Nxc3 10. bxc3 a4
11. e4 h6 12. Bf4 Re8 13. e5 b6 14. Nd2 Ba6 15. h4 Qc7
16. Be3 Bb7 17. f4 Na6 18. Rf1 Rad8 19. f5 Bf8 20. f6 Nb8
21. fxg7 Bxg7 22. Qd1 Nd7 23. Qg4 Nxe5 24. dxe5 c5
25. Bf4 Re7 26. Re1 Kf8 27. Qh5 a3 28. Bh6 dxc4 29. Nxc4 Bxg2
30. Kxg2 Rd3 31. Bxg7+ Kxg7 32. Rf4 Rd2+ 33. Nxd2 Rd7
34. Ne4 b5 35. Rg4+ Kf8 36. Rg8+ Kxg8 37. Nf6+ Kf8
38. Qh8+ Ke7 39. Qe8# 1-0

So, guess ChatGPT (GPT-5.5, extended thinking) is at around 1600 FIDE level right now.

What’s impressive is that it wasn’t specifically trained on Chess. It’s just something it picked up on the way.

If it starts beating level 8 (grandmaster), will we finally acknowledge AGI? (Me? I think we achieved AGI on 16 Apr 2025.)

Kasparov draws Deep Junior

Sun, 09 Feb 2003 12:00:00 +0000

Kasparov draws Deep Junior.

FBI hounded Bobby Fischer

Tue, 19 Nov 2002 12:00:00 +0000

How the FBI hounded Bobby Fischer via Pathologically Polymathic

Bobby Fischer playing chess on the Internet

Mon, 10 Sep 2001 12:00:00 +0000

Is Bobby Fischer playing Chess on the Internet?

What people read on trains

Fri, 03 Nov 2000 12:00:00 +0000

I’m leaving for Scotland tonight, and will be back on Monday morning. Await interesting stories…

While academics has prevented any outdoor adventures over the last few weeks, the underground has been an unending source of intrigue. This morning, for example, I decided to take a survey of what people in the underground were reading. People on the trains would either read something, talk on their mobiles, or listening to a walkman. The last category are uninteresting. The only mobile phone conversation I overheard is too embarrassing to be be printed here. So I’ll stick to what people were reading.

Most, of course, would read the newspaper. There’s a free paper called The Metro which is available in most railway stations. Some would read books, but till date, I haven’t been able to recognize a single author other than Colin Forbes and Arthur Clarke. Quite a few used to do their office work. For instance, there was a black lady who was reviewing the HR policies of her company. The tourists were easily spotted, since they would be clinging on to the railway map and poring over it. Several would be reading books on how to speak English. But these were the normal ones.

The more interesting ones were, for a start, a Professor who was doing his quiz paper corrections on the train. It was a quiz on financial markets, rather like Prof. Srinivasan’s – a few questions, with blank spaces for answers. He seemed to be going at the rate of 1 per minute.

Another one was reading a book on chess problems. Endgames, particularly. I couldn’t tell what language it was in, though, but I did find time to copy a few phrases down. “en zwart gaf”, “verliest”, “weerlegging van de tekstzet”. Sounds Scandinavian to me. This man was so engrossed in his problems that he didn’t even notice me looking over his shoulder.

But the most interesting one was a man I shall call “Piccard”, because he looked quite like Patrick Stewart (who plays Captain Jean Luc Piccard in Star Trek: The Next Generation). Piccard was bald (almost), with blue-green eyes, wearing a jeans, striped T-shirt, and an orange-black jacket (the kind that policemen wear). Which is all fine. What’s interesting is that he was memorizing something from a notebook. It looked like a diary with handwritten notations. It isn’t easy for me to read upside down, but after 15 minutes, I realized that they were names of streets!

For example, one page was titled “Wondsworth Town Hall to Harrods”, and was followed by a whole page of street names. Nothing else. Now, who on earth would memorize street names? One possibility that struck me was: pizza delivery men. Piccard didn’t look like one. Another possibility: terrorists. Quite possible. Piccard was bald and was chewing gum. Very likely. Piccard went on with this right though the journey, even memorizing maps, when they came up. Now I’m absolutely sure. Maybe someday he’ll hit the papers, and I’ll say “I travelled on a train with this guy.”

My memory being terrible, I was writing all this down, lest I forget it. This made the person to my right (whom I’ll call Demi, reasons will be obvious later) extremely curious. I mean Demi sees this person who’s got a tiny Post-it pad, in which he’s writing down stuff in a tiny handwriting, while suspiciously staring at a bald-head in front of him. I didn’t want Demi to know what I was writing, partly because I was writing about Demi too. So we’d play hide and seek. I’d wait till Demi turned around, then quickly scribble a word or two, just when Demi’s head would turn back, and I’d put my pad back into my pocket. There would be a stalemate for a few minutes, and then Demi’s head would turn back again.

The reason I call Demi Demi is: I couldn’t tell if Demi was a guy or a girl. I mean, he/she had a crew-cut hair. His/her face looked slightly feminine, but his/her build was masculine. No ear-rings, no sign of facial hair, nothing. The first image that struck me was: Demi Moore in GI Jane. I would’ve tried to find out more, but something else at the station stopped me. I’ll write about that later.