I thought about something the other day... Modern chess sites run proprietary algorithms to detect cheating by modern engines. But would it be possible for an old engine, let's say from the 70s or 80s, running on modern hardware to deceive these algorithms?

They wouldn't win every tournament but still have a respectable performance.

I had a Pentium Pro 200 back in the day, to run 3DSMax 1.0 on Windows NT 3.5.

Unfortunately, most humans see big|new|expensive hardware as great status signifiers, barriers to lesser folks joining the Cool Club, and optimal sources of sales commissions.

I don't buy this. I've seen GMs playing online while verbalizing their thought process (on twitch / youtube videos where they livestream their play), and they consider way more branches than I do, while also going deeper than I ever would on some branches. My top rating in lichess blitz is about 1900, not bad but way lower than a GM.

It's not so easy, a lot of that better programming can be attributed to better hardware, it wouldn't have been possible to implement NNUE or Fishtest without modern hardware.

https://github.com/zellyn/8fish