I noticed Maia responds the same (losing) way to vienna gambit line. I feel with time I similarly could figure out consistent winning lines against all its openings. But then would I get in trouble for playing ranked against it? On one hand I think yes, since I'd climb to higher rank than my true skill warrants? But then on the other hand, all individual components seem to be intentional or encouraged? (maia is the endorsed bot, maia (I guess) intentionally plays similarly all the time given specific position to reflect what the typical real player of according skill would play, you're allowed to play ranked against it, you can choose to always play as white if you want). And then on the third hand, if I memorize / study all the lines, maybe then this increased knowledge warrants my increase in elo, and then elo formula would handle this (in that it wouldn't award me elo anymore after certain point), just as it would in any other case of two players with different elo playing ranked?
If you are intentionally inflating your rating using the bot, then yeah that would be against the lichess terms of service. It sounds like you’re mostly asking if this would or could inflate your rating.
Based on your comment in the other thread, your win rate against the same bot is less if you play other openings and lines. So if you play humans that choose the same losing line as the bot, you’ll do great… but if they play any other line or opening your chances of winning would be best estimated by your current rating. So I think the answer to your question is that yes, what you described is likely to inflate your rating. It’s not really accurate to compare the bot to a human player of the same rating if you’re going to play the same lines over and over again… even low-ranked human players are likely to change strategies after the 10th time you beat them on the same line.
If your purpose is to get really good at refuting a specific losing line (so that when a human plays it against you, you can beat them), you can always play the bot unranked. Or set up a board with that specific gambit line and play it against several different bots with different strengths and quirks.
Any attempt to manipulate your rating is probably against the rules.
Why would you want to spend hour after hour getting your rating higher just so you would be matched against people better than you? Unless you can beat the higher rated people your rating is going to head down after you stop playing bots.
If you think you can beat people higher rated than you, create a seek for people rated 150 or 200 points higher than you, and then beat them.
I doubt you want to play bots for the rest of your life just to keep your rating up because you can't beat the players you're matched against who have the same rating you do.
I don't intend coming back to playing against humans. I'll keep playing maia until I can decisively crush its hardest variant everytime, which is long way away.
I was somewhat thinking about playing ranked because it's interesting to watch and see number-representation of your progress over time, but if that's illegal I won't do it.
This sounds like it may be a valid reason to create a second account (according to the previous forum discussions, although it's ultimately up to the mods).
You could have one account where you exclusively play against maia, so your rating is valid in that context, and you can use it as a metric of your progress like you're saying. Then if you want to play humans you switch to your other account, which would maintain a rating that is valid playing against random humans. That seems like a good way to get what you want and avoid accusations of rating inflation, because your ranked game history against humans would all be valid.
On the other hand, you might reconsider what is the motivation to play so much against an intentionally "human-like" AI bot. The only reason why you can "graduate" from the highest level of maia is because the settings are not turned higher... there will always be a maia+1 that plays better than the one you just beat, and if you use more computer power the computers will always(?) beat you. This is just the fact of modern chess, the best players in the world can't consistently win against the best computers. So training against a computer is great, but you should consider playing 1 out of very 10 games against a real human as well. If you don't care about the bot being "human-like", you can use Stockfish or Leela instead... and if you do care about it being human-like, it seems like you have some interest in playing humans (eventually), so why wait?
Just challenge it to casual.
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