Why do chess engines cause immediate draws rather than …

Engines are usually coded with the assumption that their opponent will play the best moves that they can imagine, as pointed out by Pat Barron above. This is called a minimax decision rule.

Just to explain why this rule is used - it is a simplifying assumption. If you code or train the engine any other way, you will need two models - one for the opponent, and one for the engine. Using minimax, you only need one model - the engine effectively assumes it is playing itself and acts accordingly.

The idea of exploiting opponents based on a reading of their ability is a very interesting one, but it would be a wholly different challenge to just learning to play chess as well as you can. The problem with an engine that assumes its opponent is weak, is that (for example) you can hustle it by pretending to be weak, and springing a trap. AI algorithms tend to be extremely fragile to exploitative attacks like this, and have limited ability to learn between games to prevent it happening over and over again.

Follow this link:

Why do chess engines cause immediate draws rather than ...