What's your favorite bot?

Hi all,

I was just wondering what some people’s favorite bots are (or engines other than Stockfish). You needn’t pick just one, but if you could tell me something about each bot, and why you like it — rather than merely dropping names — that would be helpful. 🙂 (And obviously, please don’t use this merely as an opportunity to advertise your own work.)

For example, my personal favorite so far is Boris-Trapsky. This study gives some examples of how he’s special: lichess.org/study/qDFa6puH So, whereas most engines essentially play defensively — making the safest moves they can find, assuming you’ll play perfectly — Boris-Trapsky deliberately takes risks, when he deems the potential payoff to be great enough, given the imperfect ways you are likely to respond. So he’s like the Tal of chess engines, rather than just another “Iron Tigran” Petrosian clone 😉 (as it were). Not that there’s anything wrong with the latter approach; I just think it’s so cool for an engine to calculate “centipawn win” instead of centipawn loss for a change. 😄 More engines should do that, since it’s a more fun way to play chess, IMHO.

Anyway, so that’s my favorite bot and why I love it. Now tell me about yours! 😎

I can’t edit the original post for some reason, but it occurs to me a profile link would be entirely appropriate: @Boris-Trapsky

Cheers

 
EDIT: Hmm, that URL was transformed into a ping. Oh, well. Cheers to you too, Mʳ Trapsky! 😁

I like the maia bots because of the idea and how they were implemented (@maia1, @maia5 and @maia9).

It's the closest you can get to playing an honest (ie. no engine assist, as contradictory as it is) "You against the mob" game, the mob being lichess players in a certain rating range.

Kinda like "twitch plays chess" against you, democracy mode.