- Last time I flew Delta they no longer had this bot, which made me sad. One of my favorite parts of flying was getting absolutely crushed into a tiny cube by the airplane seat's easy chess bot, and then again by the airplane seat itself when the person in front of me reclines their seat.
- There's a bug in the Delta Air Lines chess program. After cxd6 en passant, the captured pawn isn't removed [0]. White's bishop is then able to check the black king through the pawn (the pawn that should have been removed) [1].
[0] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Nyov4F7eWbT8uNoeclPY8uXVG6f...
[1] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eEPBHqE5rpefE9gWflgS_hUwYGS...
by AnotherGoodName
4 subcomments
- I wonder if they gave the chess bot X seconds of thinking time in an era when computers were slower?
The way you set difficulty for turn based game ai is that you limit how far ahead the algorithm searches. If you set the lookahead based on compute time your difficulties will be way out of line if someone upgrades the CPU.
by owenversteeg
4 subcomments
- In short: it plays far too well (~2500 ELO.) People think it originally played at a reasonable level and accidentally got more powerful as the seatback computers got more powerful; the same thing happened to the Mac chess app with the release of the M1.
- Is this really true? I played a few games with it in August. It's not very good.
It's one of those old programs where 95% of the moves are pretty strong. But if you just do nothing and sit back it will occasionally make a random blunder and then you grind it out. I figured it's how they were able to weaken a chess engine back in the day; can't adjust the overall strength, so add random blunders.
I'm only about 2000 on lichess but I beat it pretty much every time, especially once I realized there is no reason to try anything sharp.
by tmathmeyer
4 subcomments
- Not only is the delta chessbot bad (My low 1600s lichess-elo self can win handily every single time against any difficulty, white or black), but there's also a sequence of moves I found which deterministically causes the game to crash. I should probably record it next time I'm on a flight.
by conartist6
0 subcomment
- There used to be a chess program in windows 3.1 that would destroy me every time. Not that I was very good, of course! But I think if you just code the known opening books it's not too hard to make a bot that requires a skilled player to beat.
- I am so glad this made first page news on HN!!
Years ago I remember flying with Delta and wondering why the delta bot could beat me in a handful of moves on EASY. Absolutely insane.
- Sometimes the airlines chess app gives you the option to play another passenger, but even after waiting for half an hour I've never been hooked up with another player. Has anyone else been able to?
- I don't understand why this post is getting so much attention. What's so special about this specific chess bot? Developing a 2500 chess.com rating level chess bot is by no means a hard task.
- This reminds me of a bug I reported in 2007 Ubuntu where the default "easy" chess difficulty was too hard. It was eventually fixed in 2014 by using different chess engines. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-chess/+bug/1...
What a world where we have to put significant extra work into making the computer bad enough that a human can compete.
by ccamrobertson
0 subcomment
- United sadly removed games from its in-flight entertainment so I can no longer trounce 6 year old Magnus.
- On the other hand, the poker apps encourage me to consider a career change. I regularly crush the "opposition" with my card-counting skills. World Series of Poker, I am all-in!!! ;-)
- I see some chess players so I want to plug the chess coaching app [0] I'm building. I don't know many chess players and could use feedback, but I had been paying for chess.com premium and tried some others and it's always game-level feedback which is insane to me because it's really not that helpful (as evidenced by my abysmal rating.)
I'm running games through stockfish/lc0/Maia and doing some analysis of patterns across multiple games, then feeding that to an agent who can replay through positions and some other fun stuff. Really keen to find out if it's helpful for anyone else!
[0]https://chessfiend.com
- I played the bot (probably early 2025) and wasn't that impressed. I won 5-1 or something like it. I did win one or two local chess tournaments in the past but I'm really not an impressive chess player.
- I don't think I've played this bot. I guess the few times I flew in America wasn't with Delta as I would definitely try chess if available.
From what I've seen in the video I'd give the bot around 2100 FIDE equivalent. Granted you don't play bots like you play people. This bot essentially plays top engine moves and every now and then it introduces suboptimal moves. This technique can be played against choosing appropriate openings and being patient with calculation.
- Icelandair’s chess engine was equally brutal (well maybe only slightly less brutal). I played a couple of rounds on medium difficulty only to realize I didn’t stand a chance. I played a few more on beginner, and still lost all my game by blundering some tactics to the engine. Just before landing in Iceland I manage to get one game to the endgame, where the bot finally starts feeling like a beginner (well an advanced beginner) and I got one victory in.
- I used to fly a lot of Turkish, and their one's laughably bad. If anyone here works for Turkish Airlines, get yourself a better Chess bot.
- I had similar experiences playing the computer in Tzar: Burden of the Crown. It’s not chess but it is a strategy game.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzar%3A_The_Burden_of_the_Crow...
- Inside entertainment systems it would be nice if you could select an ELO score to play against, with a slider and persona's (like chess.com has?).
- Someday a delta engineer will go fix the UI bug where the labels for the difficulty levels were inverted in order compared to the enums used by the chess engine.
- The Air Canada bot is too easy on medium but hard is unplayable because the computer is too slow at making each move.
- This is great
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