user4475: Could Stockfish beat Magnus Carlsen if its moves were calculated with the UCI command "go depth 16"?
If not, how can I find the depth "d" at which Stockfish's strength surpasses top GMs?
We assume Magnus has standard time controls, and Stockfish limited only by search depth.
I would love to see a graph of Stockfish ELO (against an opponent with standard time controls) vs search depth. Does anything similar exist?
Context: I'm analyzing GM games to see when humans make mistakes, like this.
I want to set my search depth "d" so that when the engine and human moves disagree, I can be confident that the human has made a mistake.

user20972: Yes, Brainfish 221119 Depth 16 can beat Carlsen even if it only runs at 2000 Kn/s in the starting position. Brainfish 221119 depth 16 has an 2820 ELO rating.
This 2820 ELO Rating is Standard Rating, not Rapid or Blitz Rating.

user12540: Deep Blue will have a higher rating as it was a supercomputer. Do note that all chess engines have a higher rating of 3000+, which no human has been able to achieve so far.
I give Deep Blue as an example because there is something called as adaptability. Adaptability is what chess programmers use to make a chess engine preform better. In 1996 when Garry Kasparov beat Deep Blue, IBM enhanced Deep Blue to hide the computer’s weaknesses that Kasparov unfolded during his play. They covered their actions up, strengthened Deep Blue, and then it went on to defeat Kasparov in th 1997 rematch.
Chess engines derive their strength based upon the play/ELo from the best players. If you are just seeing a higher number and make your decision, then that would not be the best way to judge. I would say that Magnus Carlsen’s best play will defeat Stockfish’s best play any day.

user4362: There actually is an ambitiously worked out answer out there:
http://web.ist.utl.pt/diogo.ferreira/papers/ferreira13impact.pdf
On page 77 you get the relevant table:
depth: elo:

20    2894

19    2828

18    2761

17    2695

16    2629

15    2563

…

So my comment was slightly off, depth 20 is already very strong. Still the point remains, that it is hard to compare search depth between different engines, because it is never brute force and selectively they go much deeper than the given depth. (In the paper they used Houdini 1.5, maybe some engine expert can relate Houdini-search depth to Stockfish search depth.)

4475: <p>Could Stockfish beat Magnus Carlsen if its moves were calculated with the UCI command "go depth 16"?
If not, how can I find the depth "d" at which Stockfish's strength surpasses top GMs?</p>

<p>We assume Magnus has <a href="http://www.fide.com/fide/handbook.html?id=39&amp;view=category" rel="noreferrer">standard time controls</a>, and Stockfish limited only by search depth.</p>

<p>I would love to see a graph of Stockfish ELO (against an opponent with standard time controls) vs search depth. Does anything similar exist?</p>

<p>Context: I'm analyzing GM games to see when humans make mistakes, like <a href="http://en.chessbase.com/post/using-che-engines-to-estimate-human-skill" rel="noreferrer">this</a>.
I want to set my search depth "d" so that when the engine and human moves disagree, I can be confident that the human has made a mistake.</p>
 20972: <p>Yes, Brainfish 221119 Depth 16 can beat Carlsen even if it only runs at 2000 Kn/s in the starting position. Brainfish 221119 depth 16 has an 2820 ELO rating.</p>

<p>This 2820 ELO Rating is Standard Rating, not Rapid or Blitz Rating.</p>
 12540: <p>Deep Blue will have a higher rating as it was a supercomputer. Do note that all chess engines have a higher rating of 3000+, which no human has been able to achieve so far.</p>

<p>I give Deep Blue as an example because there is something called as adaptability. Adaptability is what chess programmers use to make a chess engine preform better. In 1996 when Garry Kasparov beat Deep Blue, IBM enhanced Deep Blue to hide the computer’s weaknesses that Kasparov unfolded during his play. They covered their actions up, strengthened Deep Blue, and then it went on to defeat Kasparov in th 1997 rematch.</p>

<p>Chess engines derive their strength based upon the play/ELo from the best players. If you are just seeing a higher number and make your decision, then that would not be the best way to judge. I would say that Magnus Carlsen’s best play will defeat Stockfish’s best play any day.</p>
 4362: <p>There actually is an ambitiously worked out answer out there:</p>

<p><a href="http://web.ist.utl.pt/diogo.ferreira/papers/ferreira13impact.pdf" rel="noreferrer">http://web.ist.utl.pt/diogo.ferreira/papers/ferreira13impact.pdf</a></p>

<p>On page 77 you get the relevant table:</p>

<pre><code>depth: elo:

20    2894

19    2828

18    2761

17    2695

16    2629

15    2563

…
</code></pre>

<p>So my comment was slightly off, depth 20 is already very strong. Still the point remains, that it is hard to compare search depth between different engines, because it is never brute force and selectively they go much deeper than the given depth. (In the paper they used Houdini 1.5, maybe some engine expert can relate Houdini-search depth to Stockfish search depth.)</p>
