For a layman, engines are the AI softwares which tells the best moves on a chess board. The modernization of chess saw computers being laughed off by humans in the late 80s.
It was a fine morning in Hamburg on the fourth of May 1987, when the chess gods couldn’t save the humans anymore and Garry Kasparov bow down to his knees against the infamous Deep Blue. It was a Ruy Lopez opening in which the machine just outplayed Garry Kasparov, even though after analysing that game in the modern era, it felt like a premature resignation from Garry Kasparov which you will see later in the blog.
This was the start of humans learning and improving their chess talent with the help of engines. It was during this time that Chessbase was introduced in 1986, a German company that to this day sells chess software and revolutionized chess like never before. All the openings can be analysed and novelties can be created with the help of a ChessBase, all professional players have their ChessBase where they analyse and study chess.
As ChessBase comes at a cost, a lot of organizations have started making their own free source chess software like lichess.org, SCID etc.
SO WHAT’S BAD ABOUT ENGINES?
With every good thing, there are always its side effects, even though engines helped people improve, it was used as a cheating mechanism when two humans played the game of chess. With engines at their very best, it is difficult for humans to reach the level at which engines are. When playing an online chess game on various websites, people started using engines in between the games, it was a direct disrespect to the players who wanted to have fun while playing chess. The value of chess was demeaned, with the giants of online chess like chess.com and lichess.org developing anti-cheating software to prevent this, it is still used in tournaments to ruin the chances of other people. Experienced this myself, it lowers your confidence to play online chess anymore and as someone who respects this game like a religion, there is an urgent need of stopping such things.
Chess.com has nearly reported 400,000 accounts due to cheating reports in 2020. There have been several blogs and forums on every platform there exists. I will share some of them below.
CONCLUSION
The only conclusion I found is making engines like stockfish, not free sources. This will stop a lot of people able to cheat as these engines are for free. If people had to buy these engines, the use of machines for unfair means would decrease. And those who want to learn chess would buy them just like they buy fat fritz(from ChessBase) and chess.com membership, chessable courses etc.
Some articles and forums regarding cheating in online chess:
About Online Chess Cheating – Chess.com
Cheating • page 1/1 • General Chess Discussion • lichess.org
Very well articulated👏. If used to understand chess deeply, engines are a blessing for beginners like me but their misuse during actual matches just dampens the sportsmanship. It was a great analytical read!
Thanks Pragya! Hopefully anti-cheating measures strengthen.