Play against an engine

Playing against an engine in Lucas Chess is a very good way to practice your game. First of all, you can pick an engine like Maia (included) which mimics human play at certain levels (based on neural network technology):

Playing against an engine like Maia is helpful for your practice

Tutor

Lucas Chess has the concept of a Tutor: you make your moves, but if they are not good enough, the tutor will warn you and guide you to better moves. This is a really helpful feature to see when you are going wrong in your games.

Playing with a tutor is a great help

By clicking on Tutor change, you can configure your Tutor.

• Which engine to use
• How long the tutor should think (0 means until the Depth is reached) - it might be good to set a time limit here so you do not end up having to wait for too long
• Depth: how many half-moves (plies) should the engine think ahead
• MultiPV: how many lines (best moves) do you want to see - more lines of course take longer
• Sensitivity: how many centipawns of error will the engine allow for you

You can configure the tutor for best performance and learning

When you play a game against an engine, the tutor keeps monitoring your moves in the background. If you make a mistake that loses more points than the threshold you set, the tutor pops up and offers you help:

You can now either a) try again, b) play your move or c) open the tutor window to see the engine's suggestion:

Help to move

When you are playing and get stuck, use the help to move function which will show you the best engine moves.