No.
In theory, you could get a lot better playing bots. But, it is extremely difficult to program engines to play poorly. Hence, when they play below full strength, they make egregious and transparent blunders. If you play them at full strength, you will always get crushed. The frustration will not aid improvement.
However, if you study books and set-up positions from books to play against full strength bots, you can develop some technique. This exercise could make you stronger.
No, bots are not good, they make stupid mistakes to compensate their extreme tactical abilities. If you want to play human players don’t play with bots, but learn from engines.
Playing bots will make you better at playing bots, not humans. And generally official ratings only care about the latter.
With the possible exception of Maia (which is supposed to play in a more human-style, but isn't currently available to the public AFAIK), chess bots don't play like humans. e.g. A supposed "1600" chess bot may play a flawless endgame and opening, and even a great middlegame, apart from just randomly hanging material at a couple of points in an unprovoked way. The best way to beat such an opponent would be to play conservatively and hesitantly, never leaving any piece undefended, and wait for your opponent to blunder -- which is a terrible strategy for playing chess in general.
Playing custom positions from books sounds like a really good thing and will probably do that. Reason I thought of bots, specially engine 25, is that they punish your mistakes, a player might not see them, but a bot will always do so, which can help me improve my position. I dont want a bot that would blunder to feel human like, but to make me see my mistake then try to not repeat it.
Play against humans if you want to get better
I've said this before, the bots are great for practicing opening theory against, and practicing your endgame skills. Most bots play various lines of theory against you up until move 5 or 6, and they play the endgames very well. I will often play an opening I'm learning up to the end of theory, quit, restart, and play again. It's every effective.
The middle games? They don't really much play those like humans, so they aren't much help.
Here's an example of what I find useful. Middle game exercises, such as those found in tactics books. Engine full strength.
http://chessskill.blogspot.com/2008/06/ninety-minutes.html
Here's an example of what I find useful. Middle game exercises, such as those found in tactics books. Engine full strength.
http://chessskill.blogspot.com/2008/06/ninety-minutes.html
Thanks for sharing this
Playing against bots can help you learn some things, but not everything.
Likewise, playing against humans can help you learn some things, but not everything.
If you want to cast the widest learning net, play against both.
Not much of a difference since many online chess players use bots to cheat. So you might as well play against top bots. That's what I've started doing. Sick of all the cheaters and the sandbaggers who intentionally keep their rating low—apparently because they get an ego boost out of punishing inexperienced players.
Every bot is programmed to occasionally do something completely idiotic. The higher the elo, the lower the chance of that game-changing blunder occurring.
You can't rely on a person to do something completely idiotic and swing the game in your favor. They're good for learning how to play against certain attacks (like Nelson's Wayward Queen and Sven's being too defensive for his own good) but that's about it.
Imo
First of all playing against an opponent who is too strong whether it's a human like Ding Liren or a bot like Komodo doesn't help to get better at chess just we understand we are big noobs compared to them, it destroys our self-confidence and in the end we'll end up stopping playing chess because we would not have a knack for chess, would be too stup*d etc.
Then the problem of bots, they are not performing by playing with the plausible abilities of a human but with abilities of a bot that allows its to be tireless, to have a very good memory and "move the pieces in his head easily", an indestructible mind, and to calculate a completely hallucinating number of positions per second which creates a different reality of the game than against humans.
In conclusion I would say no but of course if we are talking about humans who are too weak or too strong compared to us, a bot programmed to our strength of play will be probably more inclined to help us improve because there will be a challenge with the bot.
I am wondering if it's better to just play best bots than play other players online to improve, I am intermediate in chess, I only play with some friends occasionally. I have played a couple online games, but my entire win was dependent on enemy mistake, and some of my mistakes weren't punished. So isn't it better to always play the top bots which will punish you and make you learn?
I have been playing chess since i was 7, but never took it seriously, i play 4-5 openings comfortably and good middle - end game. But recently I decided to focus on chess and try to improve to 2000+ ratings. I did a lot of puzzles but i feel they aren't helping at all. So would playing the lvl25 engine and analyzing mistakes improve my skills or is it better to play players that can do a mistake. Thoughts on what to do?