Can a human beat the best chess computer

Peak human intelligence is considerably below peak chess computers. Magnus Carlsen—undisputedly the highest rated player in history and arguably greatest player of all time—had a peak rating of 2882. And mind you, no other human has ever gotten close to that rating.

Meanwhile, the strongest chess engine (Stockfish 17) is rated around 3642.

And no, this isn’t close by any stretch. Elo points aren’t as close as it seems. Someone even 200–300 elo points higher than you will be consistently better than you at the game. For example, Magnus can swiftly beat any 2500 rated player if he did his best.

It is unfortunately and absolutely impossible for humans to ever get close to computer chess intelligence anymore. Our brains just don’t allow it.

To be advanced enough to get even close to top chess engines would mean your brain would have to be running at a supercomputer level. In that case, you’re better off curing cancer.

Iq test can only show the minimum bound, and your average iq does not reveal your scores in each type of intelligence.

A person with IQ of 85–90 typically has a processing speed and computational ability too low to reach even 1400.

Chess requires the utilisation of what iq tests are trying to measure

Computers have already perfectly solved all chess positions when there are seven pieces or less- e.g. see chess tablebase. But using this approach for 32 pieces will likely never happen at least in the foreseeable future.

My ratings are 2000-2100 on chess sites, my peak was close to 2200, and many said i must be smart, in reality my IQ is below average ( around 85-90).

I was tested few times due to psychological issues and having problems getting any kind of job, however i would say that for my low IQ i have pretty awesomess rating. :)

Why does China call itself "中国" (i.e. "central/middle kingdom")? Other countries' names are translated to Chinese according to the pronunciation.
Can a human beat the best chess computer?
No.


Peak human intelligence is considerably below peak chess computers. Magnus Carlsen—undisputedly the highest rated player in history and arguably greatest player of all time—had a peak rating of 2882. And mind you, no other human has ever gotten close to that rating.

Meanwhile, the strongest chess engine (Stockfish 17) is rated around 3642.

And no, this isn’t close by any stretch. Elo points aren’t as close as it seems. Someone even 200–300 elo points higher than you will be consistently better than you at the game. For example, Magnus can swiftly beat any 2500 rated player if he did his best.

It is unfortunately and absolutely impossible for humans to ever get close to computer chess intelligence anymore. Our brains just don’t allow it.

To be advanced enough to get even close to top chess engines would mean your brain would have to be running at a supercomputer level. In that case, you’re better off curing cancer.


Could you beat a forklift in a weight lifting contest.

But I don't want to cure cancer! I want to turn people into dinosaurs!

I want cat girls
I would destroy that forklift at chess though

There is that though. I’d destroy stockfish at weight lifting
Right, which is why “curing cancer” is not a good example. If supercomputers aren’t suited for curing cancer because of their architecture, it follows that having a brain capable of rivaling chess engines doesn’t automatically make it suited for curing cancer either.
Underrated comment.

It’s really not…
The supercomputers are to busy causing cancer. AI is angry at us meat puppets

Because we don’t have autonomous, agentic AI yet. AI is, for now, just a tool for a human agent. But at the rate things are going now, I think we can very soon expect to see AI that can autonomously make new scientific discoveries.

You completely missed the point.
But I don't want to cure cancer! I want to turn people into dinosaurs!

I’d beat the computer with a hammer. Checkmate.

Actually, you would also beat Magnus with a hammer

I doubt it - lot of muscle, weirdly that guy is in shaaaape
The problem isn’t who is smarter but the computer can think faster, it can play out billions of moves in seconds. It would be like playing an opponent with similar chess rating as you but your opponent has 100 years to think of the next move and you get 1 minute.

Additionally, bots don’t play with the same rules than human players. Bots can physically check their libraries, but human players can only use their mind, no books allowed.

Not beatable without libraries though… they just invent perfect opening theory on the fly
You don't have to tell me. I started about a year ago after a very long break at around 1250, a year later I'm up to 1400. It's like a different game. Carlssons rating of 2882 is incomprehensible ( and scary) to an amateur like me.

So true. The rating difference between your very good rating (1400) and Magnus’ peak (2882) is 1482! That’s the numerical equivalent of you vs a person with -82 elo!

But don’t get me wrong, 1400 is amazing. I’m a simpleton compared to you — in four years I’ve only got to 1300 :(

I get better, start playing well as I am now, but then start getting sloppy. It annoys the hell out of me but I can't seem to stop myself. The highest I've been since I started up again is 1428. Apparently a rating of 1200 will beat 90% of players, so you aren't doing to bad. I think you have to remember that for every 100 elo points probably means a ten fold difference in the people at that rating. There are say 100 people on 1300, but only 10 at 1400 and continues on a sort of logarithmic scale. It's the only game I think that luck is not a factor, there's bad play by yourself or your opponent, but never luck. That's what I love about chess.
Im a super noobie. Where and how exactly can a person evaluate their elo score?

Try downloading an app onto your device. If you download a decent one it should give you a fairly accurate elo rating. Not quite the same.e as playing face to face, but it will give you a fairly good idea of where you're at.
When two Chess computers battle, how many steps ahead do they plan and how can we know?

*A perfect game of chess is when it ends in a draw*

This is assumed but not currently proven. What we do know is as you up the skill level you seem to get more and more draws. The prevailing view seems to be that white does have an advantage from going first, but it's not sufficient advantage to force a win, noting you need a material or positional advantage to achieve a check mate. However, it remains theoretically possible that the opening position for chess may be forced win for white or black, and we just don't have the computing power at present to understand the lines.
Since when computing power equals inteligence??

My understanding is that the chess engines aren’t really all that *smart*; they’re just *fast* and therefore can examine a very large number of lines to find the one that works.

Cut down the chess engine’s time by a factor of 1000 or so, and you might see a more fair matchup…

Yeap, it's probably more a factor of millions, but yes, if you limited even Stockfish to only going say 5 moves deep, it still wouldn't just blunder it's queen like humans do, but it would probably be beatable for Magnus or other top humans.

I was thinking it would be more interesting if, instead of a limit to how deep it can go on each move, do it more like a human with a time limit: A certain amount of processing it is allowed over the course of an entire game. So you’d need to have it also have some heuristic as to when a position is critical and deserves more “thought”.
Can't see the point if chess computers, might as well be surprised that a man can't run faster than a car, or swim faster than a speedboat.

Exactly. We still have foot races.

Nice to know,
It’s worth noting that Magnus Carlsen has played a significant number of games that were rated at or close to perfect games (at least according to Stockfish). The computer will never lose to Carlsen, but I bet on his best day he could play it to a draw, even if it is partially luck

“ Confucius say:: It is better to keep your mouth shut and have people think you are a fool than to open it to prove it.
I guess the remaining question is if computers will solve chess.

Computers have already perfectly solved all chess positions when there are seven pieces or less- e.g. see chess tablebase. But using this approach for 32 pieces will likely never happen at least in the foreseeable future.

Is it bc of their memory and the fact that we can’t process statistics as fast?

A more interesting thing is can human intellect *add* to the chess engine such that the combined intellect beats the best engine

No, it can't. If the engine and the human disagree, the engine is right in 99% of the cases. And in the 1% the human is probably right by accident.

can someone explain this to me? Its all just moves its all just a game its not like theres any way to cheat i dont get how a human cant beat it when were both on the same field

In the same amount of time a computer can plan out significantly more possible moves and assign a value to each plan. When it's time is up the computer selects the path with the highest value (or picks one of many with identically high values).

So what if one instance of Stockfish17 played another, isolated, instance of Stockfish 17?

You can set this up and do it yourself; it’s kind of fun to do, although it almost always ends in a draw. They play the top move each time, which both sides know, so there is rarely any room for any slight errors that would cause an imbalance.

It must be pointed out that Carlsen, Kasparov before him, and countless others are not losing to machines. Those piles of silicon and other elements are as dumb as doornails. They don’t know a king from a queen (gender-identity political sarcasm intended).

The individual humans are losing to the huge teams of human programmers who write the computer codes for those machines. As processing speed has increased, more code instructions can be acted upon in less time, so that individuals are permanently overmatched by those massive groups of other people.The most advanced chess-playing computers are more than a match for any chess-playing human brain — at playing chess. They do better at it because they are designed for that specific task and have powerful hardware implementing it.
Chess-playing computers are completely outclassed by the human brain at pretty much anything else.Completely untrue comment. The human brain makes the most advanced computer look like Fred Flintstones rock-Mobil. Computers will never be a match for the human brain.My ratings are 2000-2100 on chess sites, my peak was close to 2200, and many said i must be smart, in reality my IQ is below average ( around 85-90).

I was tested few times due to psychological issues and having problems getting any kind of job, however i would say that for my low IQ i have pretty awesome chess rating. :)