22 ms·

AFAIK chess is has been "solved" for a few years in the sense that Stockfish running on modern laptop with 1 minute per move is unbeatable from the starting pos

AFAIK chess is has been "solved" for a few years in the sense that Stockfish running on modern laptop with 1 minute per move is unbeatable from the starting position.

altruios 8mo ago
Even by a stockfish running on a modern laptop with 2 minutes per move (provided they are going second)?!
- RivieraKid 8mo ago
  Yes, that's what "unbeatable from the starting position" means.
  - altruios 8mo ago
    Can you like to the proof? It seems so implausible that chess has been 'solved'... How do we know an even higher time searching will not work?
    - RivieraKid 8mo ago
      There's no proof, only strong evidence.
helloplanets 8mo ago
This is not true. Stockfish is not unbeatable by another engine, or another copy of Stockfish. Chess engines have been impossible for humans to beat for well over a decade. But a position in chess being solved is a specific thing, which is still very far from having happened for the starting position. Chess has been solved up to 7 pieces. Solving basically amounts to some absolutely massive tables that have every variation accounted for, so that you know whether a given position will end in a draw, black win or white win. (https://syzygy-tables.info https://syzygy-tables.info)
- RivieraKid 8mo ago
  Do you have a source? I remember asking on the Stockfish Discord and being told that Stockfish on a modern laptop with 1 min per move will never lose against Stockfish with 1000 min per move from the starting position. But I'm not sure whether that guy was guessing or confident about that claim.
  - MengerSponge 8mo ago
    That just means that Stockfish doesn't get stronger with more than 1 minute per move on a modern computer. It doesn't say anything about other engines.
    - RivieraKid 8mo ago
      Stockfish with 1000 minutes per move is an approximation of a perfect chess player. So if Stockfish with 1 minute per move will never lose against a perfect player, it is unbeatable by any chess engine.
      - MengerSponge 8mo ago
        > a perfect chess player How could we possibly know this? > it is unbeatable by any chess engine So its engine is finished? There's no further development? No new algorithms?
        RivieraKid 8mo ago
        > How could we possibly know this? Isn't it obvious that increasing time per move will make the engine better and at some point perfect? > So its engine is finished? There's no further development? No new algorithms? No.
  - helloplanets 8mo ago
    There's the TCEC [0] which is a big thing in some circles. Stockfish does lose every now and then against top engines. [1] Usually it's two different engines playing against one another, though. Like Leela Chess Zero [2] vs. Stockfish. In that hypothetical of running 2 instances of Stockfish against one another on a modern laptop, with the key difference being minutes of compute time, it'd probably be very close to 100% of draws. Depending on how many games you run. So, if you run a million games, there's probably some outliers. If you run a hundred, maybe not. When it comes to actually solved positions, the 7-piece tables take around 1TB of RAM to even run. These tablebases are used by Stockfish when you actually want to run it at peak strength. [3] [0]: https://tcec-chess.com https://tcec-chess.com [1]: https://lichess.org/broadcast/tcec-s28-leagues--superfinal/match/KeswEzV5 https://lichess.org/broadcast/tcec-s28-leagues--superfinal/m... [2]: https://lczero.org https://lczero.org [3]: https://github.com/syzygy1/tb https://github.com/syzygy1/tb
bee_rider 8mo ago
“Solved” is a term of art. Defining it in some other way is not really wrong (since it is a definition) but it seems… unnecessary.
sscg13 8mo ago
You can run Stockfish single threaded in a deterministic manner by specifying nodes searched instead of time, so in principle it is possible to set some kind of bounty for beating Stockfish X at Y nodes per move from the start position, but I haven't seen anyone willing to actually do so.

AFAIK chess is has been "solved" for a few years in the sense that Stockfish running on modern laptop with 1 minute per move is unbeatable from the starting position.

altruios 8mo ago

Even by a stockfish running on a modern laptop with 2 minutes per move (provided they are going second)?!

RivieraKid 8mo ago
Yes, that's what "unbeatable from the starting position" means.
- altruios 8mo ago
  Can you like to the proof? It seems so implausible that chess has been 'solved'... How do we know an even higher time searching will not work?
  - RivieraKid 8mo ago
    There's no proof, only strong evidence.

helloplanets 8mo ago

This is not true. Stockfish is not unbeatable by another engine, or another copy of Stockfish. Chess engines have been impossible for humans to beat for well over a decade. But a position in chess being solved is a specific thing, which is still very far from having happened for the starting position. Chess has been solved up to 7 pieces. Solving basically amounts to some absolutely massive tables that have every variation accounted for, so that you know whether a given position will end in a draw, black win or white win. (https://syzygy-tables.info https://syzygy-tables.info)

RivieraKid 8mo ago
Do you have a source? I remember asking on the Stockfish Discord and being told that Stockfish on a modern laptop with 1 min per move will never lose against Stockfish with 1000 min per move from the starting position. But I'm not sure whether that guy was guessing or confident about that claim.
- MengerSponge 8mo ago
  That just means that Stockfish doesn't get stronger with more than 1 minute per move on a modern computer. It doesn't say anything about other engines.
  - RivieraKid 8mo ago
    Stockfish with 1000 minutes per move is an approximation of a perfect chess player. So if Stockfish with 1 minute per move will never lose against a perfect player, it is unbeatable by any chess engine.
    - MengerSponge 8mo ago
      > a perfect chess player How could we possibly know this? > it is unbeatable by any chess engine So its engine is finished? There's no further development? No new algorithms?
      - RivieraKid 8mo ago
        > How could we possibly know this? Isn't it obvious that increasing time per move will make the engine better and at some point perfect? > So its engine is finished? There's no further development? No new algorithms? No.
- helloplanets 8mo ago
  There's the TCEC [0] which is a big thing in some circles. Stockfish does lose every now and then against top engines. [1] Usually it's two different engines playing against one another, though. Like Leela Chess Zero [2] vs. Stockfish. In that hypothetical of running 2 instances of Stockfish against one another on a modern laptop, with the key difference being minutes of compute time, it'd probably be very close to 100% of draws. Depending on how many games you run. So, if you run a million games, there's probably some outliers. If you run a hundred, maybe not. When it comes to actually solved positions, the 7-piece tables take around 1TB of RAM to even run. These tablebases are used by Stockfish when you actually want to run it at peak strength. [3] [0]: https://tcec-chess.com https://tcec-chess.com [1]: https://lichess.org/broadcast/tcec-s28-leagues--superfinal/match/KeswEzV5 https://lichess.org/broadcast/tcec-s28-leagues--superfinal/m... [2]: https://lczero.org https://lczero.org [3]: https://github.com/syzygy1/tb https://github.com/syzygy1/tb

bee_rider 8mo ago

“Solved” is a term of art. Defining it in some other way is not really wrong (since it is a definition) but it seems… unnecessary.

sscg13 8mo ago

You can run Stockfish single threaded in a deterministic manner by specifying nodes searched instead of time, so in principle it is possible to set some kind of bounty for beating Stockfish X at Y nodes per move from the start position, but I haven't seen anyone willing to actually do so.