[maaaats]

> Still, even an amateur player probably makes near-optimal moves for most time.

This is far from true. An AI that only looks one-two moves ahead to make sure it doesn't hang a piece or allow mate in one would beat many amateur players (at least with ~5min time control). That's essentially what Sunfish, what he's comparing against, does. Note that Sunfish isn't a particular "good" AI, it would be more interesting comparing it to a "proper" chess AI.

[maaaats]

But with that said, I think the concept here is cool. The fact that it doesn't really know the rules of chess but still can play is interesting. I just think that it maybe should have selected a different database for its games; a master-database instead of one filled with amateur games. Of course, there are far many more amateur games, so such a masterbase is much smaller which may be a problem.