3 ms·

I'm around the same rating as the OP. I've also experimented with playing Stockfish with queen odds, etc. One thing I noticed early on is that it's much much ha

by shric 3y ago

I'm around the same rating as the OP. I've also experimented with playing Stockfish with queen odds, etc. One thing I noticed early on is that it's much much harder to beat a much higher rated human when they give me queen odds. Stockfish literally plays itself when finding the next move and because it's down a queen it just seeks further loss minimization and it won't assume the opponent will fall for tricky but unsound tactics. A high rated human on the other hand will easily exploit my lower tactical ability and be tricky to get the advantage back. This applies especially on fast time control games.

measured_step 3y ago
For chess engines such as Stockfish to beat weaker opponents, you would want to turn up the contempt parameter.[1] To be able to do this, you would want to use a UCI-compliant chess GUI such as Cute Chess.[2] It lets you change the command line arguments you use for your engine, and you can play Human-vs-Human, Engine-vs-Engine, Engine-vs-Human, etc. [1] https://www.chessprogramming.org/Contempt_Factor https://www.chessprogramming.org/Contempt_Factor [2] https://cutechess.com/ https://cutechess.com/
- faeriechangling 3y ago
  Contempt was removed from stockfish 12 due to NNUE being patched in. You’ll have to use stockfish 11 or another engine to use contempt.
billforsternz 3y ago
This is a very good and much overlooked point. Engines don't look for tricks and traps that "might" work, they assume good play from the opponent. It's literally MiniMax (minimise the maximum the opponent can achieve), the foundational algorithm of chess AI. Consequently playing out superior positions against engines isn't as interesting as you might hope, it often feels they just give up. Grandmasters (and masters) on the other hand are absolutely awesome at tricking you out of your rightful reward on those odd occasions when you get a decent advantage against them (source: bitter experience:).
- dibyadarshan 3y ago
  Hikaru Nakamura's YouTube channel has plenty of videos dedicated to the "Botez Gambit" wherein he has bested 2300+ rated players after sacrificing queen for a bishop/knight
faeriechangling 3y ago
I’d use Leela Chess Zero over Stockfish for an odds game. Leela can output win/draw/loss probability instead of centipawns so you can pick whatever move wins most often instead of the move that best delays losing. They also just implemented a contempt function which the latest stockfish doesn’t support: https://lczero.org/blog/2023/07/the-lc0-v0.30.0-wdl-rescale/contempt-implementation/ https://lczero.org/blog/2023/07/the-lc0-v0.30.0-wdl-rescale/... They setup a lichess bot to allow you to play Leela at knight odds: https://lczero.org/blog/2023/11/play-with-knight-odds-against-lc0-on-lichess/ https://lczero.org/blog/2023/11/play-with-knight-odds-agains...

by shric 3y ago

measured_step 3y ago

For chess engines such as Stockfish to beat weaker opponents, you would want to turn up the contempt parameter.[1] To be able to do this, you would want to use a UCI-compliant chess GUI such as Cute Chess.[2] It lets you change the command line arguments you use for your engine, and you can play Human-vs-Human, Engine-vs-Engine, Engine-vs-Human, etc. [1] https://www.chessprogramming.org/Contempt_Factor https://www.chessprogramming.org/Contempt_Factor [2] https://cutechess.com/ https://cutechess.com/

faeriechangling 3y ago
Contempt was removed from stockfish 12 due to NNUE being patched in. You’ll have to use stockfish 11 or another engine to use contempt.

billforsternz 3y ago

This is a very good and much overlooked point. Engines don't look for tricks and traps that "might" work, they assume good play from the opponent. It's literally MiniMax (minimise the maximum the opponent can achieve), the foundational algorithm of chess AI. Consequently playing out superior positions against engines isn't as interesting as you might hope, it often feels they just give up. Grandmasters (and masters) on the other hand are absolutely awesome at tricking you out of your rightful reward on those odd occasions when you get a decent advantage against them (source: bitter experience:).

dibyadarshan 3y ago
Hikaru Nakamura's YouTube channel has plenty of videos dedicated to the "Botez Gambit" wherein he has bested 2300+ rated players after sacrificing queen for a bishop/knight

faeriechangling 3y ago

I’d use Leela Chess Zero over Stockfish for an odds game. Leela can output win/draw/loss probability instead of centipawns so you can pick whatever move wins most often instead of the move that best delays losing. They also just implemented a contempt function which the latest stockfish doesn’t support: https://lczero.org/blog/2023/07/the-lc0-v0.30.0-wdl-rescale/contempt-implementation/ https://lczero.org/blog/2023/07/the-lc0-v0.30.0-wdl-rescale/... They setup a lichess bot to allow you to play Leela at knight odds: https://lczero.org/blog/2023/11/play-with-knight-odds-against-lc0-on-lichess/ https://lczero.org/blog/2023/11/play-with-knight-odds-agains...