Playing a Younger You!

Hi, I am @Noobbatter, a mediocre 1800. I truly love this site, but have a feature request. I know it's gonna be a huge project, but I hope that someday lichess will add it.

So basically: You play against YOU but skilled at a different time period. Lichess analyzes positions and the moves that you would have played back then, and would play that move or a similar one. I am aware that this is harder with less games, easier with more games. I would really think this would be an amazing feature. Please leave any feedback. Thanks :-)

It is similar to the concept of the PlayMagnus app where you can play against a simulation of Magnus Carlsen at various ages in his chess development. However, you are asking for an individualized version for each player. This is definitely interesting and you can empirically test to determine how much progress is being made in your understanding of chess.

Perhaps also, one can repeatedly play against the current version of oneself and maybe improve by self play like Stockfish, AlphaZero and LeelaChess.

While it is intriguing, it is important to note that it probably took an entire team to simulate the levels of play of Magnus Carlsen at each age. If you watch Carlsen's youtube channel where he plays against the app, he points out at several instances that he did not quite play like that and that the simulated Carlsen did not accurately match up with his style.

Perhaps the best way to achieve this is to have a neural network just self play and match up its playing style and strength to a large enough sample of one's games.