Your first game against a robot
Which robot to pick, what the robot does and doesn't do, and how to read what happened when you lose.
By Stephen Santiago, who makes StupidChess.
Most people play their first game of StupidChess against a robot, and that's the right call: nobody is watching, the clock can be off, and the robot is patient. Here it is in the order you'll meet it.
Pick the robot
A robot is one difficulty paired with one personality. The difficulty sets how far ahead it looks and how often it passes up the best move it found; the personality sets what kind of worse move it plays instead. Seven difficulties, eight personalities, fifty-six robots. The first eight are free; the rest come with a membership, and every new account has them all for its first seven days.
Start with StupidFish, the house robot: a Beginner that looks one move ahead and, nine times in ten, passes over the best move it found for a worse one. You'll still lose to it sometimes, usually because of a card.
The free ladder after it runs PAWNBOT (another Beginner), BLUNDR-1 and LOOT.EXE at Novice, COINFLIP and GL1TCH at Casual, SACBOT at Intermediate, and OVERCLOCK at Advanced, which plays its best move and is a goal, not a first opponent. A field guide to the robots covers all fifty-six.
Start the game
- On the new-game page choose Built Deck and a robot. You play White; the robot is always Black.
- Pick a deck, which for a first game means one of the five starter decks. First Blood is the most direct: cheap removal like Assassinate and freezes.
- Turn the clock off. Against a person each side has ten minutes for the whole game; against a robot you can play with no clock, and at first you should.
- Look at your opening hand. You can keep the seven cards or shuffle them back and draw seven more; each redraw costs one card from the hand you finally keep, put on the bottom of your pile. Keep anything with two or three Braincell cards. If there are none, redraw once.
The first few turns
Your turn begins with a card dealt from your pile while your hand is under seven. Then:
- Make a move on the board. Every turn needs one.
- Play one card, if you want to: pick it from the fan at the bottom of the screen and, if it needs one, a target square.
- Press End turn.
You don't have to play a card every turn. Early on the most useful one is a Braincell, because everything else costs Braincells and you start with none banked. Bank one or two and develop your pieces.
The robot's turn plays out in front of you: its move, and if it plays a card, the effect landing on the board, a piece of yours frozen or a trap revealed. Read those marks. They stay after the card is gone, and they're why you lose the next piece.
The robot plays a random 52-card deck, 32 cards from the catalog plus 20 Braincells, so you can't learn its deck, only its habits. At Beginner it bothers to play a card on about four turns in ten, and it judges a card the way it judges a move, so it sometimes freezes a pawn when your queen was right there.
Two things it does that catch new players: it plays Instants on your turn, so a Flash Shield can appear the moment you line up a capture, and it lays traps you can't see, a face-down Spike Pit sitting in its actives as an unknown. Two things it never does: resign, or offer or accept a draw. A robot game ends by checkmate, stalemate, the clock if there is one, your resignation, or a card that ends a game.
After the game
The game keeps a record of every move and card played. Three questions sort out most losses.
Did you lose a piece to a plain chess move? The fix is chess, not cards, and the basics article covers the habits that stop it.
Did a card do something you didn't see coming? Find the turn. If the effect was readable from the board, like a known trap you walked into, that's a habit to fix. If it wasn't, like a Lightning Strike from the hand, keep a defender near anything you can't afford to lose.
Did you sit on cards you never played? A final hand of three-cost cards beside a single banked Braincell means the deck wanted more Braincells, or you spent the early turns on the wrong cards. The fix is in the deck editor.
With a membership, or inside the seven-day trial, the Sideline Coach offers a word on each move after you make it. It isn't required; the free robots, the starter decks and the tutorial are the whole beginner's course.
Play StupidFish until you've beaten it twice. Then swap one card you never wanted to see for one you wished you'd had, and play PAWNBOT, the same difficulty with a different personality, to see how much of what beat you was the robot and how much was the cards. It's usually the cards.