A chess AI that plays
like a human
Chess engines became superhuman decades ago. Noctie goes the other way: it's trained on over a billion human games to play like a person at your level.
Seventy years of chess AI, briefly
Hard-coded rules and simple checklists. They could play legal chess - barely.
Brute force wins: millions of positions per second defeat the world champion.
Neural networks learn chess by playing themselves. Stronger than ever - and still chasing the perfect move.
A neural network trained on human games instead of self-play. The goal isn't the best move - it's the move a human at your level would play.
Why perfect play makes a bad sparring partner
Turn a normal engine down to "beginner" and it doesn't play like a beginner. It mixes flawless moves with random blunders no human would make. You end up practicing against something that doesn't exist.
A regular engine
- Strength from calculating millions of positions per second
- Always hunts for the objectively best move
- Weakened by sprinkling in random blunders
- Snaps out book moves instantly
Noctie
- Strength from intuition, learned from a billion human games
- Plays the moves people at your rating actually choose
- Makes the mistakes a human at your level would make
- Thinks in a human rhythm, even in the opening
It knows how a 1200 human player thinks
Set Noctie to 1200 and it falls for the tricks a 1200 falls for, misses the tactics a 1200 misses, and struggles with the same endgames.
Beginner to GM
Neural networks and thinking processes covering the whole human range. At GM strength it plays with the judgment of a strong human, not the cold precision of an engine.
Plays openings you'll actually meet online
Pick an opening to practice and Noctie responds with the lines real people play online - traps included.
Built for training
Every game comes with instant feedback, hints when you want them, and puzzles made from your own mistakes.
