6 ms·
Do the engines have a similar edge in Fischer Random and regular chess?
by throwpoaster 8mo ago
Do the engines have a similar edge in Fischer Random and regular chess?
- Marsymars 8mo agoI'd expect them to have a larger edge in chess960 because humans can't prep openings like in regular chess.
- josephg 8mo agoDo modern chess AIs do any form of opening prep? Like, do they bake any opening analysis into their engines? Or is it all pure search?
- Taek 8mo agoYes modern AIs have an entire opening database and generally have cached the first 20+ moves of the game (for most common openings) from a database of very deep searches identifying the best move. This is absolutely a form of opening prep for AIs. That said, even without that database a modern AI will completely topple the best human at every common chess variant. Humans cannot defeat modern AIs in chess like games.
- nilslindemann 8mo agoLike my answer below, that's wrong. Even I have achieved a few draws or even wins against Stockfish in training games, and I am FM strength. From time to time you are happy to reach a simple rook endgame which happens to be won and the engine doesn't anticipate that (horizon effect). You still draw or lose 90% of those but you win 10%.
- nilslindemann 8mo agoFurther, if the engine does not use an opening database and the thinking time per game is the same, then the engine will usually make the same moves, so you can learn from your errors. There are just a few chess engines which "learn" per default and therefore change their moves, like BrainLearn.
- galkk 8mo agoEither the engine was misconfigured, the hardware you were playing on was glitching or you are omitting something. There is no chance in the world that you can beat stockfish in standard time control.
- nilslindemann 8mo agoJust because you can not do it it does not mean that others can not do it. If you search for Lichess games where strong players play against (edit: strongest!) Stockfish (which, admittedly is not the full throttle Stockfish) you will find that Stockfish by far does not win all the time. Such is a claim which only inexperienced chess beginners and Stockfish fanboys make. Stronger players know that Stockfish is relatively better, and by a far margin, but – obviously – does not win all the time due to the huge drawing range in chess. Admittedly, winning a game gets more and more difficult with every year. And, to make you happy, I have never beaten Lc0.
- josephg 8mo ago> If you search for Lichess games where strong players play against Stockfish ([..]) you will find that Stockfish by far does not win all the time. I'm sure some of those games are actually stockfish v stockfish or something similar. Its pretty easy to run stockfish or lichess locally and copy the moves from each engine back and forth.
- nilslindemann 8mo ago@josephg (for reasons I do not know there is no reply link below your post) Sure, some people are cheaters. Some are not. There is no personal win in cheating against Stockfish. Usually strong players do it for training purposes, or to entertain their watchers when they stream. I actually remember having seen one who did that, and he drew. That was a party.
- josephg 8mo agoYes. I hear this claim from above: "Some humans can beat stockfish." Evidence given: "There exist some small number of games on lichess.org played against stockfish where the user won." My counter argument is that games on lichess against stockfish don't imply a human beat stockfish. It could just be that stockfish (or other bots) can sometimes beat stockfish. And some humans surely use bots to play on their behalf in order to cheat in online games. I don't know if any humans can beat stockfish. But I don't consider that to be strong evidence.
- LogicalRisk 8mo agoThat's an extraordinary claim. What level was Stockfish and what were the settings for these training games?
- nilslindemann 8mo agoI do not know the time controls anymore, but I always use the latest Stockfish with all available threads. No opening book, but I do not repeat lines to take advantage of that, because I play to train calculation. I guess hash was the (for my setup) normal 4096 MB.
- LogicalRisk 8mo agoLatest Stockfish with all available threads and no opening book is still well beyond any human. Elo ratings get a bit silly with computers, but we're talking an Elo of well north of 3000.
- Sesse__ 8mo agoFor reference: The last serious match between the top human player and an engine was Brains in Bahrain, Kramnik–Fritz 7, in 2002 (already that should tell you something). Well, actually a broken and buggy version of Fritz 7, but that's another story. It was a 4–4 tie. On the latest CCRL list, Stockfish 18 outranks Fritz 8 (the oldest Fritz version on the list) by 947 Elo points _on the same hardware_. (For comparison, Magnus Carlsen's peak rating is 65 points higher than Kramnik's peak rating.) Add to that 24 years of hardware development, and you can imagine why no human player is particularly interested in playing full-strength engines in a non-odds match anymore. Even more so in FRC/Chess960 where you have absolutely zero chance of leading the game into some sort of super-drawish opening to try to hold on to half a point now and then.
- nilslindemann 8mo agoIt is also not extraordinary to do that. I have achieved these results around 2015, sitting at home, relaxed. I was not in a match situation observed by millions. Such a situation can knowingly lead to blunders like Kramniks overlook of mate in 2. I also sometimes "cheated" by aborting the game when I was tired and continuing it the next day (if at all). That's what the player in a match can not do. I also sometimes restarted a game at a specific position. Can also not be done in a match. Finally, they used better hardware in these matches. I had eight threads on my old Laptop and I used four of them. The Laptop itself was bought around 2005. Between 2000 and approximately 2020 I trained every day and I was on my peak. I am still around 2400 on Lichess today, without training. So, I hope it does not sound that extraordinary any more. It isn't. Maybe it is now, but not then.
- baumy 8mo agoWould you be willing to bet money that you can beat a properly setup stockfish, no piece odds and even time controls? I'll give you literally any odds you name and let you try an unlimited number of times until you give up. 100% serious. P.S: You should not take this bet. You will lose. You are mistaken if you think you beat stockfish.
- nilslindemann 8mo agoThe only bet I would take is that I can draw against Stockfish. But I am in general not betting. I also don't have the time currently.
- copper4eva 8mo agoIf you're betting against modern stockfish, respectively, that's a terrible bet. There are some games of knight odds Leela playing superGM's. For example, Hikaru Nakamura went 1 win, 2 draws, and 13 losses against LeelaKnightOdds at 3 minutes + 2 sec increment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYO9w3tQU4Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYO9w3tQU4Q So that's a score of 2 out of 16. Which is apparently actually very good. I know Fabi played a lot of games too, and also lost almost all of them. And that is with knight odds lol. And stockfish is ever better than Leela, but generally less aggressive and more methodical. You clarified in another post that you had won back in 2015. I have no clue the strength of engines back then (I imagine still very strong of course), but a decade of growth is a lot. They're completely insane nowadays.
- NickC25 8mo agoI doubt that. Stockfish 11 years ago as you claim (which around then was rated approximately 2800), maybe. Stockfish today? Stockfish on Lichess is 3000 and that's not even running at full capacity. A fully supported Stockfish running on top hardware is currently 3650ish. It can avoid known draw lines and stalemate lines, and could absolutely crush the likes of Magnus. You would lose every time, not even close.
- School-Cotton 8mo agoBut machines also can’t use opening prep like they do in normal chess.
- Marsymars 8mo agoI expect this would hurt humans more than machines... but I'd love if someone with better knowledge than me of the current state of chess engines could chime in.
- LogicalRisk 8mo agoYour intuition is correct.
- Sesse__ 8mo agoPeople have already built Chess960 opening books.
- School-Cotton 8mo agoThat's hard to answer because the advantage is essentially infinitely large. Engines never lose or draw against unassisted humans. Any modern chess engine, if it plays 100 games against any human (even magnus), will have a record of 100 wins, 0 draws, and 0 losses. This is true both in standard chess and Chess960.
- nilslindemann 8mo agoThis is most definitely wrong. There will be some draws and even a few wins, though that's very rare indeed.
- School-Cotton 8mo agoWhen is the last time a human has beaten a computer in a fair chess game?
- nilslindemann 8mo agoA fair match has never been played between humans and computers. Let's say we have a fair match: * 100 games, to have some statistical relevance. * One move per day, so that being tired is no disadvantage (engine can ponder all day). * Human has access to endgame tablebases and opening databases, like the engine. * Human can make notes and has a software like Chess Position Trainer, which can min max, like the engine. If the human is a GM with Elo 2700+ I predict 25 draws and 5 wins for the human. The engine wins 70 games.
- Bootvis 8mo agoFrom the Stockfish docs at https://official-stockfish.github.io/docs/stockfish-wiki/Stockfish-FAQ.html#the-elo-rating-of-stockfish https://official-stockfish.github.io/docs/stockfish-wiki/Sto.... > Rating Stockfish against a human scale, such as FIDE Elo, has become virtually impossible. The gap in strength is so large that a human player cannot secure the necessary draws or wins for an accurate Elo measurement. [1]: https://computerchess.org.uk/ccrl/4040/ https://computerchess.org.uk/ccrl/4040/
- adgjlsfhk1 8mo agoEngines have a significantly bigger edge in frc. Humans generally know enough about openings to minimize mistakes for the first 10 or so moves (such that computers playing humans generally are trained to make a couple highly dubious moves to get far away from theory in the opening). engines on the other hand don't go based on theory and are just as capable in 960 as they are in regular chess.