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Stockfish 19

stockfishchess.org

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Re: Stockfish 19

#71

Post by rigrassm »

k2xl wrote: post #52
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.

(Disclaimer, I’m the founder of chess67.com) There is a very tangible benefit to people playing in chess that has nothing to do with the game itself. One example is for kids - I think kids playing chess (particularly over the board) learn quite a lot from the game. For example, etiquette (being respectful to your opponent), patience, logic, etc… but one of the best things they learn is how to lose. In chess you lose…

> (Disclaimer, I’m the founder of chess67.com)

You're so evil lol.

Re: Stockfish 19

#72

Post by segmondy »

thomasmg wrote: post #44
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.

What does it matter if you can see which moves are best if you can't understand it?

Re: Stockfish 19

#73

Post by kadoban »

thinkingtoilet wrote: post #54

This may be a dumb question, but how do these engines get better when they're already amazing? Is it simply that they look further down the tree of possibilities?

Yes. The ways to improve are: faster search (which lets you search more deeply) or better evaluation of a position or better heuristics.

Re: Stockfish 19

#74

Post by speedgoose »

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.

> play some fun video games, like Red Dead Redemption

To each their own.

If you like the competitive aspect of chess, you may enjoy physical sports too. I started to find video games pretty boring compared to pushing myself physically.

Re: Stockfish 19

#75

Post by dainank »

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 agree. I think in general, any game that is 'turn-based' (in this case chess), with a limited set of options, quickly boils down to pure theory and in my opinion 'dumb intelligence' of just remembering many things and patterns (the AI of now). As soon as a game is in 'real-time' with many-many options, it reaches a level of complexity where you cannot ONLY remember theory and outsmart your opponent. It is far more about applying logic on the fly with the limited time and overwhelming set of options you are supplied. This skillset applies to almost everything in life and serves me personally very well thus far in life. Yes, I understand that chess has different modes that severely limit time per turns which transform it more into the 'real-time' games and value, but it is still turn-based and still has a limited set of options when compared to true 'real-time' games.

Re: Stockfish 19

#76

Post by gnufied »

toasty228 wrote: post #62
k2xl wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Disclaimer, I’m the founder of chess67.com) There is a very tangible benefit to people playing in chess that has nothing to do with the game itself. One example is for kids - I think kids playing chess (particularly over the board) learn quite a lot from the game. For example, etiquette (being respectful to your opponent), patience, logic, etc… but one of the best things they learn is how to lose. In chess you lose…

> For example, etiquette (being respectful to your opponent), patience, logic, etc… but one of the best things they learn is how to lose. That's valid for pretty much every kids sports/games though

So a lot of games/sports kids could cry out - "that is not fair". There is an element of luck in most board games.

Chess is the first board game you can introduce to your kid that has no element of luck whatsoever. It could be brutal. I have seen 7-9 year olds coming out crying after a game in a tournament. But it also may be requires very good parenting to handle all the emotional distress. Chess also is obviously accessible.

It is an emotional rollercoaster to engage kids in Chess tbh. We are ready to sometimes throw the towel every other week. :-)

Re: Stockfish 19

#77

Post by Isofarro »

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…

> My understanding is that AlphaZero only really existed for a year or two;

It still exists, but it's private / internal, and sometimes used for a few different things.

It was used by Kramnik to test the hypothesis whether no-castling chess was viable (basically chess, but disallowing castling). That was a year after DeepMind published the match they ran of AlphaZero versus Stockfish.

It was still in use last year, I remember seeing some Grandmasters with interests in chess studies were invited by DeepMind to judge the beauty of chess problems composed by AlphaZero (or whatever form the thing that used to be AlphaZero is now).

So it's still kicking around in the background.

Re: Stockfish 19

#78

Post by noir_lord »

gus_massa wrote: post #46
timbaboon wrote: post #37

But does it use AI?

As a joke project, it would be nice to add a LLM module that adds a commentary bullshiting an explanation of why it is destroying the human player.

It's been tried, they feed the evaluation into the LLM and get it to commentate.

The results are absolute garbage (as you would expect) since the LLM's really don't understand chess or how to play it, someone posted a benchmark of the current SOTA ones playing Chess and the best was estimated at 1480.

Re: Stockfish 19

#79

Post by kadoban »

alex1138 wrote: post #24

People perhaps won't remember the long history of computer chess at least how it played out in the 90s There was a succession of interesting engines (I think The King used to win a number of computer tournaments, this is the one Chessmaster used, that wonderful audio-visual program, like Encarta but chess related) and then the big three of Fritz (match against Kramnik), Junior (match against Kasparov) and Shredder. A…

> AlphaZero (which later became Leela? I'm not sure)

Pretty much. DeepMind never released their code or models, just the main ideas of their techniques and training.

Leela, which came out of the go-ai world, implemented the paper(s) and became the de-facto version everyone used for a while until other projects improved over it on both go (mainly katago) and chess (mainly stockfish).

Re: Stockfish 19

#80

Post by gpm »

segmondy wrote: post #72
thomasmg wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What does it matter if you can see which moves are best if you can't understand it?

99.5% of the time you can understand it (percentage varies with rating).
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