I think your best bet to get a human-like opponent is to use one of the neural network engines. 

You may think that leela would be too strong, but you can download any of her 'brains' - neural network weight files.  If you get one that was in the early stages of training it won't be as strong as the more well-trained nets.  You can experiment with different leela networks, some of them vary widely in style. 

  Another option is the neural network engine that came out before leela - giraffe.  It is more on the level of a strong IM I think.

Hi! IMHO you should think on what OS you’re planning to use as well as the features of your PC/Laptop. That’ll be your starting point. 

Komodo 11 doesn't have those settings.  Only Komodo 13.2 or greater does.

You should be able to modify the settings from any GUI using the engine settings.  With Fritz it is probably best to create a new UCI engine, choose "parameter" button when making it and set the personality to Human when you create it and save the engine with a new name so you can easily just load that version again.

The Personalities feature in the newer version (13.2) of Komodo is very interesting - this is from the readme file:

Personality

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Komodo 13.2 introduces engine Personalties. These modify how Komodo plays to reflect the styles in each Personality name. The Default Personality is regular Komodo.  Note that Personalities other than Default will internally set Contempt and other parameters to reflect that playing style. The Personalities are:


Default: This is the default and strongest personality. You have full control over Contempt settings. Most of the other personalities will play roughly one skill level weaker than Default.

Aggressive: The Aggressive personality will attack relentlessly with no concern for their own safety. They prefer active pieces, and are biased toward playing with the Queen.

Defensive: The Defensive personality emphasizes king safety and a solid position above all else.

Active: The Active personality tends toward open positions and well-placed pieces. 

Positional: The Positional personality tends toward solid play, maneuvering, and more closed positions.

Endgame: The Endgame personality prefers playing through to the end to win by promoting a pawn.

Beginner: The Beginner personality doesn't understand the fundamentals of chess, especially endgame principles, and is mostly looking to check and capture. But please note that it will drop in strength between one and two levels, so you still have to set the skill level appropriately if you hope to win!

Human: The Human personality is optimized to play like and to beat strong human players, playing aggressively, avoiding pointless simplification and repetition, aiming for open positions, and emphasizing static advantages. If you are a fairly strong player and want the experience of playing against a simulation of an even stronger human player than yourself, we suggest using this mode and finding a skill level at which you can score 25% or so at your preferred rate of play.


Note that the Personalities are intended to be used together with the skill levels below 25, or with MCTS mode, but not with both. Note also that if you want to set Contempt to a different value than that specified by the non-default Personality, you need to select the White Contempt UCI option and set the value with the proper sign (flipping the sign if the engine is Black).   

Nickajack wrote on 11/07/19 at 06:01:35:


Looks really promising. Thanks a lot!

I am looking for a good computer sparring partner.

My experience with chess engines when you handicap them is that they don't often make very human mistakes, but that is the sort of behaviour I'd like to see from my silicon sparring partner.

My ideal would be a chess engine with a human style of play in the 2100-2300 range (and a wide opening book, but I suppose I could sort that out myself). I'm not so fussed about whether it's an app or a UCI engine.

Does such an engine exist?