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66 votes
Accepted

Is Stockfish 11 (level 20) beatable?

The answer is that they either played it on some very handicapped mode, they took back A LOT of moves, or they are probably lying. Stockfish 11 is currently rated about 3607, and that is in standard ...
PhishMaster's user avatar
  • 32.7k
43 votes

Is Stockfish 11 (level 20) beatable?

It's absolutely beatable, but not by an unassisted human. Anyone who claims to have done so is either lying or stacked the deck super heavily in their favor (e.g., by having Stockfish search only to ...
Allure's user avatar
  • 28.4k
26 votes

Creating chess engine, machine learning vs. traditional engine?

If you're trying to make the strongest engine possible, absolutely go for NN engines. Traditional engines are great - Stockfish is arguably still the strongest engine on the planet on consensus equal ...
Allure's user avatar
  • 28.4k
26 votes
Accepted

When moves are randomized, is there an inherent advantage to the player who goes first, or the player who goes second?

I once wrote a program to make random moves, had it play 1000 games, and these were my results: Outcome Count Avg. #moves ----------------------------- ----- ----------- Draw ...
itub's user avatar
  • 10.6k
25 votes
Accepted

How computers have changed the way humans play chess

Computers allowed the creation of endgame tables, which allow the user to know with 100% certainty if a position can be won, and how to do it. Currently all positions containing 7 or fewer pieces are ...
Tony Ennis's user avatar
  • 20.1k
25 votes
Accepted

Hardware used in AlphaZero vs Stockfish match

That's why I wonder whether there have been any attempts made to provide comparable hardware to both. This is Google you're talking about! So the answer is obviously "No". From the original paper ...
Brian Towers's user avatar
  • 100k
24 votes

Is a Finite State Machine a good way to model chess?

Yes, I think so. You'd have all possible board positions as states (so lots of states, but finite). The starting position as an initial state. Legal moves as links between the states (so the "...
RemcoGerlich's user avatar
  • 28.4k
23 votes
Accepted

Carlsen-Caruana Game 12

Is the tournament leading to some consensus on how good/bad Carlsen's decision was? Not quite. As others have pointed out, Carlsen's decision was based on factors outside that one game. With a ...
Lord Farquaad's user avatar
22 votes

When moves are randomized, is there an inherent advantage to the player who goes first, or the player who goes second?

When moves are randomized, is there an inherent advantage to the player who goes first, or the player who goes second? The first player has a slight advantage. When black has made n moves, then white ...
MaxW's user avatar
  • 337
21 votes

Is a Finite State Machine a good way to model chess?

Finite state machines can be described as the recognizers of regular languages. You could perhaps identify chess with the set of all possible game records. For example f3e5g4Qh4# (the fool's mate) is ...
John Coleman's user avatar
  • 2,521
20 votes

Carlsen-Caruana Game 12

Is the tournament leading to some consensus on how good/bad Carlsen's decision was? No. Consensus on Carlsen's play and decision has already been reached, I would suggest. Psychologically Carlsen ...
Brian Towers's user avatar
  • 100k
20 votes

Is it possible that a radically different but equally effective playstyle exists?

It's definitely possible there are strategies we don't know about. However, training your engine to specifically play contrary to all we know isn't the way to get there. For example, what would you do ...
Inertial Ignorance's user avatar
19 votes

Where did ChatGPT get this game from?

If you've attempted to play chess against ChatGPT, you quickly learn it doesn't know how to play, and constantly makes illegal moves. So I'm puzzled how it came up with a plausible game of chess. I ...
Polytropos's user avatar
19 votes

Why not use computers to evaluate strength of players?

Elo is a system to summarize past results into a meaningful number that informs about the (relative) strength of a player. Since the only objectives a player has during a game of chess are getting a ...
David's user avatar
  • 16.9k
17 votes

How computers have changed the way humans play chess

Anand is absolutely right. Computers have revolutionized the way we play chess, think about chess and prepare. Tony Ennis mentions tablebases. That is just the tip of the iceberg. Computers have ...
Brian Towers's user avatar
  • 100k
17 votes

How to play computer from a particular position on chess.com app

You can also do this on chess.com. Go to the "Learn" Tab Click on "Analysis" Setup your position via FEN or just by placing pieces Click "Finish vs Computer"
Rushabh Mehta's user avatar
17 votes

Where did ChatGPT get this game from?

As this interesting video which explains how ChatGPT (and similar AIs) works, says about ChatGPT's problems when generating "answers": Hallucinations: model might make up wrong facts And ...
Brian Towers's user avatar
  • 100k
16 votes
Accepted

Alternative approaches to chess engine programming

In the beginning years of computer chess, people have actually tried to teach computers chess in the same way as they do with humans, explaining strategic concepts like a healthy pawn structure or the ...
Glorfindel's user avatar
  • 25k
15 votes
Accepted

Is computer chess exhibiting the predicted "draw death"?

For what it's worth, here are the rates of decisive games of the TCEC seasons 4 'til 8 superfinals. Season 4 is a bit of an outlier (maybe a rule change?), but after that the percentage of decisive ...
BlindKungFuMaster's user avatar
15 votes
Accepted

What happens if a strong chess engine plays with itself many times?

http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests has information on exactly what you want. They are self-playing tests for improving the Stockfish code base. The draw rate is roughly about 60% - 70%. There're ...
SmallChess's user avatar
  • 22.6k
15 votes

Hardware used in AlphaZero vs Stockfish match

I think it's best if I elaborate on your second point with an example move in the game 1 between AlphaZero and Stockfish which also served to satisfy my curiosity today. the time limit of 1 min/...
ReZzT's user avatar
  • 151
15 votes
Accepted

Is Deep Blue outdated?

IBM claimed the machine could search for 200 million moves per second, while Stockfish in the recent AlphaZero match could "only" search for 80 million per seconds on a modern multi-core machines. But....
SmallChess's user avatar
  • 22.6k
15 votes

Why is Leela so good at beating Stockfish in the French/Slav?

Well, it is a small sample, but assuming that there are a lot more games like these, I think it could be the following things. First, I am not sure when we first humans first decided that space was ...
PhishMaster's user avatar
  • 32.7k
14 votes

I have a 400 elo rating and have lost over 900 games in chess.com. Should I give up

The underlying question, which only you can answer, is do you enjoy playing chess? If you don't actually enjoy playing the game but only get pleasure if your rating goes up then you are wasting your ...
Brian Towers's user avatar
  • 100k
14 votes

Is the French defense at a 3700 Elo level "completely refuted"?

No I follow computer chess avidly and so have seen lots of such French games where both engines get massacred as Black.* However, this doesn't mean the French is refuted. With engines as strong as ...
Allure's user avatar
  • 28.4k
13 votes

Is the dead position problem solvable?

Computer detection of dead positions is much trickier than people think. It is unlikely that an algorithm exists that runs in reasonable time and is 100% accurate. It is easy to check for a simple ...
Remellion's user avatar
  • 5,040
13 votes

Is a Finite State Machine a good way to model chess?

may the game of chess be considered a finite state machine? Yes; this is a good insight. A FSM is an abstract model of computation with the following characteristics: The machine begins in a known ...
Eric Lippert's user avatar
13 votes
Accepted

Why didn't the Black rook capture the White bishop?

When a "total newbie" achieves such an overwhelming position against a computer, it most probably means that the computer was forced to make a "sub-optimal" move from time to time -...
Durtal's user avatar
  • 452
13 votes

Is it normal for a chess engine to blunder material if its evaluation is only based on naive material evaluation?

This exact bot has already been created. On lichess, it is simpleEval. You could potentially use it to debug a lot of your issues by seeing what this engine does against you in a given position. ...
NoseKnowsAll's user avatar
  • 5,838
12 votes
Accepted

Creating chess engine, machine learning vs. traditional engine?

First step: Define your goals/reasons I think this is the predominant factor. Which of these best fits you? (Choose only one) You want to enjoy a fun, challenging coding task You want to create an ...
Artelius's user avatar
  • 296

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