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30 Weird Chess Algorithms: Elo World

suckerpinch · explainer · Watch on YouTube

Chess, board games & puzzlesSatire & parodyAlgorithms & data structures

What it is

Tom Scott-style absurdist tour by Tom7 of SIGBOVIK chess projects: a tournament of 30 weird chess algorithms used to rate a color- and piece-blind chess program. Topics include mirrors, arithmetic encoding, perverted game tree search and a diluted Stockfish.

Why Hacker News recommends it

HN commenters call it a must-watch for its deadpan, absurdly elaborate engineering and cite it for ideas like diluting strong engines with random moves.

  • 8 people recommended it
  • 6 different months
  • 1 strong recommendations
  • first 2019, last 2026

What HN commenters said

  1. “are a must watch.”

    Deadpan, absurdly elaborate weird chess algorithms.

    GuestHNUser, 2022-04 · Strong recommendation · in “Harder Drive: Hard drives we didn't want or need [video]”

  2. “If you haven’t seen them his other videos are well worth watching as well.”

    Tom7's chess video; his other videos are worth watching.

    symmetricsaurus, 2019-07 · Recommendation · in “Survival in chessland [pdf]”

  3. “Great video anyway.”

    Tom7 predicts hidden opponent pieces with a neural net, then uses Stockfish.

    onnodigcomplex, 2019-07 · Recommendation · in “Kriegspiel”

  4. “you'd probably enjoy watching tom7's video on unusual chess engine strategies”

    Amusing video on unusual chess engine strategies.

    rictic, 2019-12 · Recommendation · in “Immortal Game”

  5. “if you like this kind of thing, you'll love Elo World.”

    Fun related chess-algorithm video.

    sillysaurusx, 2020-01 · Recommendation · in “Training GPT-2 to Play Chess”

  6. “my favorites are: 30 Weird Chess Algorithms: ELO World”

    Commenter lists it among favorite Tom7 videos.

    iamevn, 2023-07 · Recommendation · in “GradIEEEnt half decent: The hidden power of imprecise lines [video]”

  7. “Mine are "Harder Drives"[1], "ELO World"[2], and "Printable x86"[3]”

    Listed among commenter's favorite Tom7 videos.

    nick-of-time, 2023-07 · Recommendation · in “GradIEEEnt half decent: The hidden power of imprecise lines [video]”

  8. “Tom7's video where he made a bunch of ridiculous engines and pitted them against each other”

    Ridiculous chess engines pitted against each other and diluted Stockfish.

    Rendello, 2026-05 · Recommendation · in “Regex Chess: A 2-ply minimax chess engine in 84,688 regular expressions”

Excerpts from Hacker News comments, linked to the originals. Summaries and labels were written by a language model from those comments.

Topics: tom7, chess engines, sigbovik, stockfish, elo rating, comedy

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