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Stockfish 19

stockfishchess.org

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Re: Stockfish 19

#41

Post by fileeditview »

tweakimp wrote: post #13

Whenever I see another Stockfish update I dream of the day that I sit down and code my own chess bot that is good enough to beat me. I would be so happy if I manage to do that.

I did so and roughly twenty years later, my 4th attempt is "finished" in a sense and playing on lichess bots from time to time.

The process is very rewarding and there are great resources (chessprogramming wiki). To get an initial bot play random moves is not that much work but it is a good starting point because you can hook it into a gui and watch.

From there you do the move generator and the search and then optimization possibilities are endless :)

Re: Stockfish 19

#42

Post by jan_m_savage »

I am a fairly good player but after playing 22000 games, I came to the conclusion that ideas and strategies from chess are context-dependent and don't much transfer to real life.

I'd rather spend all that time reading up on game theory and play some fun video games, like Red Dead Redemption.

Re: Stockfish 19

#43

Post by VulgarExigency »

gwd wrote: post #5
piker wrote: post #2

Question: does Stockfish beat more generic systems like AlphaZero?

My understanding is that AlphaZero only really existed for a year or two; there's no objective way to compare it at the moment. Leela Zero tried to open-source that work, but Stockfish incorporated a number of improvements from AlphaZero, including a neural network and a different search method, and consistently beats Leela Zero. I have a book, "Game Changer", in which a chess expert calls out several instances where…

Leela Chess Zero did surpass Stockfish for a while, until Stockfish switched its eval to NNUE. Modern Stockfish would annihilate AlphaZero.

Re: Stockfish 19

#44

Post by thomasmg »

nevi-me wrote: post #18

To show you how strong Stockfish 19 is compared to 18, I used to lose 100% against 18, and I now lose 100% against 19, probably faster. Time to fire up En Croissant and see :)

For me (having written my own tiny 400 line chess engine, that now I'm not able to beat - sure I'm not a good player, but still), the reason to have Stockfish is not really to play against it, and then inevitably lose, but to use it to show which moves are best. I assume that's how most (hobby and professional) chess players use Stockfish nowadays.

Re: Stockfish 19

#45

Post by VulgarExigency »

Sopel wrote: post #29
piker wrote: post #2

Question: does Stockfish beat more generic systems like AlphaZero?

AlphaZero does not exist, as far as modern computer chess is concerned

Leela proved that the ideas worked, regardless of the conditions that the AlphaZero vs Stockfish matches were run in.

What's funny is that if computer chess had paid more attention to computer shogi, Stockfish could have already been using NNUE by that time, and not lost to AlphaZero. But perhaps that would have stifled Leela's development, and would have led to worse training data for Stockfish in that parallel universe's present day, making it weaker overall.

Re: Stockfish 19

#47

Post by FartyMcFarter »

jan_m_savage wrote: post #42

I am a fairly good player but after playing 22000 games, I came to the conclusion that ideas and strategies from chess are context-dependent and don't much transfer to real life. I'd rather spend all that time reading up on game theory and play some fun video games, like Red Dead Redemption.

I think there are some valuable lessons that chess can teach, if you approach it the right way:

- it teaches resiliency in bad situations.

- it teaches you to not be too harsh on yourself as a person. If you watch GMs playing online, they make bad mistakes all the time too - they're not godlike creatures who make no mistakes, far from it.

The flipside is that if you approach it the wrong way (I know I have at many points), it can have the opposite effects too.

To approach chess in a mentally healthy way was a long process for me. You need to get rid of your ego and be objective as much as possible when playing, or it will just make you sour - this in itself is a valuable lesson.

Re: Stockfish 19

#48

Post by Sopel »

FartyMcFarter wrote: post #27
nevi-me wrote: post #18

To show you how strong Stockfish 19 is compared to 18, I used to lose 100% against 18, and I now lose 100% against 19, probably faster. Time to fire up En Croissant and see :)

Probably not faster if I have to guess. The nuances of why 19 is better than 18 are likely indistinguishable from noise when they play against someone at a much lower level (i.e. any human).

also in chess a better line is not required to be shorter

Re: Stockfish 19

#49

Post by monster_truck »

tweakimp wrote: post #13

Whenever I see another Stockfish update I dream of the day that I sit down and code my own chess bot that is good enough to beat me. I would be so happy if I manage to do that.

Naive monte carlo on a phone from 10 years ago is likely enough unless you're quite good at chess
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