5 ms·

It's not a solved problem but our best players and best computers perform better with white. The edge isn't tiny either.

by Tenoke 4y ago

bluecalm 4y ago
They don't anymore, at least not the computers. When you let them start from normal starting position and provide decent hardware and some time it's always a draw and has been for a few years now.
- sgjohnson 4y ago
  > always Not always. Almost always.
  - Scarblac 4y ago
    When have you last seen a decisive game from the starting position by two modern engines on normal hardware? I haven't seen one for many years.
  - bluecalm 4y ago
    No one is going to waste the CPU time running Stockfish (or GPU with Leela) against each other at classical time controls long enough to see a decisive game which might never happen anyway so we will likely never know. I think current Stockfish on a modern ThreadRipper with classical time control will never be beaten. I am not 100% sure I am right but I don't expect (but would love to!) to be proven wrong.
    - sgjohnson 4y ago
      Stockfish won't solve it. We need a full game tree. Stockfish is not designed to build a full game tree. Generating a full game tree would be a truly daunting undertaking, and I can't even fathom how much memory would it take.
      - tromp 4y ago
        Due to alpha-beta cutoffs, you don't need a full game tree. But if you did build a tree with all legal chess positions, it would have approximately 4.8x10^44 of them [1]. [1] https://github.com/tromp/ChessPositionRanking https://github.com/tromp/ChessPositionRanking
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - bluecalm 4y ago
        I am not saying Stockfish is going to solve it. I am saying it will not lose from the initial position. In other words my hypothesis is that we already have a soft solution to chess available. I can't prove it but I can proceed accordingly in practice (in opening preparation or correspondence games for example) and no one will prove me wrong or exploit it.
        lmm 4y ago
        Stockfish lost a handful of games against Leela from starting positions that were a couple of moves into mainstream openings. I don't think it's at at all unlikely that there's a route that beats it.
        bluecalm 4y ago
        Can you provide an example of such a game? I am following computer chess pretty closely and it's just all draws if we start from mainstream openings. By mainstream I mean things that are considered solid by today top players and engines. Some of the traditional mainstream openings turned out to be problematic (King's Indian for example). I am talking about recent Stockfish (the one with NNs) as the traditional version had pretty serious problems in certain positions and needed an extensive opening book to steer it out of trouble.

It's not a solved problem but our best players and best computers perform better with white. The edge isn't tiny either.

by Tenoke 4y ago

It's not a solved problem but our best players and best computers perform better with white. The edge isn't tiny either.

bluecalm 4y ago

They don't anymore, at least not the computers. When you let them start from normal starting position and provide decent hardware and some time it's always a draw and has been for a few years now.

sgjohnson 4y ago
> always Not always. Almost always.
- Scarblac 4y ago
  When have you last seen a decisive game from the starting position by two modern engines on normal hardware? I haven't seen one for many years.
- bluecalm 4y ago
  No one is going to waste the CPU time running Stockfish (or GPU with Leela) against each other at classical time controls long enough to see a decisive game which might never happen anyway so we will likely never know. I think current Stockfish on a modern ThreadRipper with classical time control will never be beaten. I am not 100% sure I am right but I don't expect (but would love to!) to be proven wrong.
  - sgjohnson 4y ago
    Stockfish won't solve it. We need a full game tree. Stockfish is not designed to build a full game tree. Generating a full game tree would be a truly daunting undertaking, and I can't even fathom how much memory would it take.
    - tromp 4y ago
      Due to alpha-beta cutoffs, you don't need a full game tree. But if you did build a tree with all legal chess positions, it would have approximately 4.8x10^44 of them [1]. [1] https://github.com/tromp/ChessPositionRanking https://github.com/tromp/ChessPositionRanking
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    - bluecalm 4y ago
      I am not saying Stockfish is going to solve it. I am saying it will not lose from the initial position. In other words my hypothesis is that we already have a soft solution to chess available. I can't prove it but I can proceed accordingly in practice (in opening preparation or correspondence games for example) and no one will prove me wrong or exploit it.
      - lmm 4y ago
        Stockfish lost a handful of games against Leela from starting positions that were a couple of moves into mainstream openings. I don't think it's at at all unlikely that there's a route that beats it.
        bluecalm 4y ago
        Can you provide an example of such a game? I am following computer chess pretty closely and it's just all draws if we start from mainstream openings. By mainstream I mean things that are considered solid by today top players and engines. Some of the traditional mainstream openings turned out to be problematic (King's Indian for example). I am talking about recent Stockfish (the one with NNs) as the traditional version had pretty serious problems in certain positions and needed an extensive opening book to steer it out of trouble.