Comment by owenversteeg 9 hours ago
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.
I'm guessing the app got better precisely because there was a time limit.
Even a computer from 20+ years ago will comfortably crush Carlsen, it really goes down to the specific engine used, chess engines have evolved a lot during the years.
Carlsen knows how to play anti-bot chess where some engines may struggle, but that only applies to amateurish engines.
I think the issue is that people limited compute time as a proxy for difficulty.
In that case you'll hit issues on any device that performs significantly differently from that which it was tuned in.
Though I am slightly amused by people using the apple chip as an example of "high performance" in a problem that scales very well with threading.
>Mac chess app with the release of the M1.
That would be exceptionally sloppy development. Phones have had more than enough power for long enough. 4 core Skylake (Mac 2016) would be well beyond human capabilities, if it's just raw power.
The "thinking" (difficult) limit should be considered moves ahead, both depth and count. With a possible limit to time, if there is any time control.