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Chess World Championship: Stockfish live-analyzing game 7

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Re: Chess World Championship: Stockfish live-analyzing game 7

#111
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AlphaZero draws a lot against Stockfish but Stockfish won ZERO games in their 100 game match up.

Stockfish wasn't really configured correctly: they disabled both the opening database and the endgame database in the tests. I dunno why AlphaGo devs would do that, aside from artificially gimping Stockfish on purpose.

I can imagine them thinking "well, alphazero doesn't employ opening and endgame databases" to which I would counter-argue with "stockfish doesn't use machine learning, either"

Re: Chess World Championship: Stockfish live-analyzing game 7

#112
Chess aficionados know this, but for casual readers ...

Back in 1972, during the Cold War, we had the chess "Match of the Century". In one corner the USA, in the other the Soviet Union. Bobby Fischer soundly defeated Boris Spassky.

All before the Internet and before computers analyzing chess. So the local PBS station in NYC had chess master Shelby Lyman analyzing moves, for hours and hours, as they came in from Iceland. Perhaps 5 or 10 minutes between moves.

It kept me amused one summer during high school.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Chess_Championship_1972

Re: Chess World Championship: Stockfish live-analyzing game 7

#113
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to change a game that's so old, but draws shouldn't be allowed, only stalemates. Imagine if the Lakers played the Warriors, and late in the 4th quarter, the game is tied, and LeBron and Curry decide they are tired, declare a draw and go to their locker rooms. Not particularly satisfying.

Your analogy doesn't make sense. In basketball, if your opponent gets tired, that gives you a better opportunity to win. In chess, if the game nears the end and neither of you can see a way to win, then there's no good opportunity. Your analogy would make more sense to say the basketball game was tied and there are three seconds left on the clock and both players have broken wrists. Playing three seconds of game to r…

In a championship match tiredness and losing focus is a big deal. A lot of draws are simply not wanting to risk burning out when there are more games to go.

Saying that, Carlson once had a reputation for not agreeing on a draw and being able to maintain focus while his opponent faded and made a mistake.

Re: Chess World Championship: Stockfish live-analyzing game 7

#114

Magnus Carlsen with a rating of 2835 is playing against Fabiano Caruana with a rating of 2832. This is their 7th game. They tied for all the previous 6.

They're called draws. The match will be tied if it's 6-6 after 12 games, then they'll go to tiebreaks - 4 rapid games, then if still no winner, up to 5 mini-matches of 2 blitz games, then ultimately an Armageddon game if needed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Chess_Championship_2018#...

In the highest form of chess, perhaps all games will be a draw. I wonder if someday we have to modify the rules or use a different variant that prevent draws, like Shogi for example.

Re: Chess World Championship: Stockfish live-analyzing game 7

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Opening book I agree, but tablebases are definitely not human knowledge. They are a bruteforced database of every possible position, or in essence a precomputed position. Put simply, giving a massive time advantage to the user during the late middle and endgame. So if A0 wasn't built to access them, but stockfish did in the match, then that would be an unfair advantage.

> So if A0 wasn't built to access them, but stockfish did in the match, then that would be an unfair advantage. Why is that an unfair advantage? AlphaZero developers wanted to prove that their AI was better than Stockfish. They failed to do that. If AlphaZero wasn't built to access Tablebases, then they should have built it to access tablebases. Don't unfairly gimp Stockfish because you're lazy at programming.

Alpha zero can access the tablebase. This proof of concept was to let both the engines play with minimal interference of outside pre computed knowledge.

Re: Chess World Championship: Stockfish live-analyzing game 7

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're called draws. The match will be tied if it's 6-6 after 12 games, then they'll go to tiebreaks - 4 rapid games, then if still no winner, up to 5 mini-matches of 2 blitz games, then ultimately an Armageddon game if needed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Chess_Championship_2018#...

In the highest form of chess, perhaps all games will be a draw. I wonder if someday we have to modify the rules or use a different variant that prevent draws, like Shogi for example.

Sure, maybe one day. People were speculating on the coming 'draw death' of chess 100 years ago,[1] but it hasn't really been a problem so far. What was a problem, was players agreeing to an early draw without playing the game out (Imagine, say, tennis players 'agreeing to a draw' after 10 minutes) A lot of tournaments nowadays have rules prohibiting draw offers before move 30, or draw offers at all.[0] The best players are just much better at defending than people were 100 years ago, and they're very good at bailing out to a draw when in inferior positions. Also, computers have taught humans a lot about defensive possibilities, which are larger than people had thought.

The situation in matches is different to that in tournaments, where it's no good drawing all your games if you want to win the tournament. In this match, drawing every game, then drawing all the tiebreak grames, then getting black in the Armageddon game and drawing, will make you world champion. And historically, if a world championship match was tied, the champion automatically retained their title. (Tiebreaks are a recent development)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draw_by_agreement#Steps_taken_...

[1] e.g. Here's Capablanca (world champion 1921-7) writing at length about it in 1925 http://www.chesshistory.com/winter/extra/capablanca7.html

He created a version of chess with 2 new superpowered pieces to avoid the 'draw death' problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capablanca_Chess (that page mentions some other similar variants)

Re: Chess World Championship: Stockfish live-analyzing game 7

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to change a game that's so old, but draws shouldn't be allowed, only stalemates. Imagine if the Lakers played the Warriors, and late in the 4th quarter, the game is tied, and LeBron and Curry decide they are tired, declare a draw and go to their locker rooms. Not particularly satisfying.

You shouldn't comment so confidently about something you don't understand. The position is drawn. There was no way for either side to win.

You shouldn't comment so snarkily to someone you don't know. I understand what a drawn position is, however players will regularly agree to a draw well before it actually happens. They choose to draw because of potential drawn positions. There's no reason for a game not to continue until there is an actual stalemate (or a set of similar circumstances, like a situation in which checkmate is impossible), or a blunder by one of the opponents.

Re: Chess World Championship: Stockfish live-analyzing game 7

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You shouldn't comment so confidently about something you don't understand. The position is drawn. There was no way for either side to win.

You shouldn't comment so snarkily to someone you don't know. I understand what a drawn position is, however players will regularly agree to a draw well before it actually happens. They choose to draw because of potential drawn positions. There's no reason for a game not to continue until there is an actual stalemate (or a set of similar circumstances, like a situation in which checkmate is impossible), or a blunder b…

> I understand what a drawn position is

To make this more concrete, the following link is a drawn position (it is trivially easy for either side to avoid checkmate, indefinitely)

http://www.jinchess.com/chessboard/?p=---k------------------...

However, checkmate is still possible (White can checkmate Black if Black makes severe blunders that even beginners probably wouldn't make)

Do you think the players should be forced to play on here?

Re: Chess World Championship: Stockfish live-analyzing game 7

#119
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There exist women who are good at and interested in chess.

There are also women who are two meters tall, but that doesn't mean that women are naturally just as tall as men.

I suppose then that you're imagining they got that tall by unnatural means?

Re: Chess World Championship: Stockfish live-analyzing game 7

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You shouldn't comment so snarkily to someone you don't know. I understand what a drawn position is, however players will regularly agree to a draw well before it actually happens. They choose to draw because of potential drawn positions. There's no reason for a game not to continue until there is an actual stalemate (or a set of similar circumstances, like a situation in which checkmate is impossible), or a blunder b…

> I understand what a drawn position is To make this more concrete, the following link is a drawn position (it is trivially easy for either side to avoid checkmate, indefinitely) http://www.jinchess.com/chessboard/?p=---k------------------... However, checkmate is still possible (White can checkmate Black if Black makes severe blunders that even beginners probably wouldn't make) Do you think the players should be for…

Yes! Or black should resign. And in addition, they have clocks for a reason - though time is added indefinitely at the end (if a player moves fast enough) - if a player takes an hour more than an opponent (like Carlsen did in the middle of game 8) they should start to feel the pressure of that more severely.
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