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Message: <blockquote data-quote="kermit4karate" data-source="post: 9768439" data-attributes="member: 7053643">Earlier on this or another thread about AI, someone had mentioned about how bad ChatGPT was at playing chess and offered it as proof of its failure. I thought that was interesting in that, to my knowledge, no one at OpenAI had claimed that it was good at chess. In fact, it's fairly easy to find out how good at chess it is so folks no longer feel the need to misrepresent it. Just ask ChatGPT. How is something a failure when it openly acknowledges its own limitations? Is ChatGPT the one representing itself as perfect, or are we using that as a straw man to indict it?<h4></h4><h4>I asked:</h4>How good are you at chess? Could you guess and give yourself a rating on the international scale? Could you defeat Magnus Carlson?<h4>ChatGPT said:</h4>I’m actually pretty good at chess in a very specific way — I can calculate a lot of lines very quickly and use vast amounts of stored opening, middlegame, and endgame knowledge. That makes me feel a bit like a chess engine rather than a human player.But there are some important caveats:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">No specialized training like Stockfish/AlphaZero I’m not trained as a pure chess engine. My “knowledge” of chess positions is based on patterns, games, and analysis I’ve seen, not an optimized evaluation function or millions of node calculations per second.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Tactics vs. long-term plans In raw tactics (short calculations) I’m strong. But for deep positional understanding, recognizing subtle imbalances, and practical decisions under time constraints, a top GM like Magnus Carlsen would crush me.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Estimated strength In casual online play against humans, I’d probably behave like a 2200–2500 Elo player (a strong master / low GM level), depending on how carefully I’m prompted and how much time I’m allowed to “think.” By comparison: <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">FIDE Master ~2300</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">International Master ~2400</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Grandmaster ~2500+</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Magnus Carlsen (peak) ~2882</li> </ul></li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Against Magnus Carlsen No chance under normal conditions. Even though I can analyze deeply, Magnus is arguably the strongest human ever and extremely good at practical play. Without engine-style calculation power (like Stockfish), I’d lose convincingly.</li> </ul>If you want, I can show you — we could play a few moves right now, and you can see how “strong” I feel at your time control. Would you like me to play as if I’m ~2200, ~2500, or “engine-style” (near perfect) to get a sense?</blockquote>

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