New answers tagged engines
1
The accepted answer does currently (2021) not work with the latest Scid versions. Bug? But it works with Scid vs PC:
In Scid vs PC, open the PGN database which you want to sort (File → Open).
Open the game list, if it is not visible already (Windows → Game List).
Create an empty Scid database via File → New (make sure it is a *.si4 database, not a *.pgn ...
2
No. The computer-vs-computer tournaments are usually several seconds per move.
Humans can't even watch games that are any faster than that anyway.
And if you want to watch very strong matches (why not, right?) then computers need at least that much time.
You could have something decent with 1E-2 moves, but again, no interest.
Speed matches are interesting ...
1
Stockfish supports the UCI protocol, Winboard supports the Xboard (or CECP) protocol. What you're looking for is a Winboard to UCI adapter, that sits between Winboard and Stockfish and does the translations between the two protocols.
The other alternative is using a chess GUI that supports UCI, e.g. Arena, ChessX, scid. even give Tarrasch a try.
0
An additional reason to what is already mentioned, from the eyes of a spectator/enjoyer of the game, is that computers play chess in a way that is either hard to understand for humans or very dry and boring. Computers tend to slowly grind for a slight advantage, preferring to not take "risks". A risk in chess is in essence not having calculated all ...
1
Man is a competitive person by nature. The computer is a machine that is manufactured to perform one or more specific activities, but the number of tasks it can perform is limited. But who made them was man, there is a mind beyond that makes algorithms, and sequences so that it can do its assigned tasks in specific environments. The man can self-develop the ...
5
Sport is about human excellence, humans competing against one another and fun.
The fact that a computer can do something much better than a human might take a bit away from human achievement, but ultimately:
It's still impressive to see someone else doing something you can't do, or few others can do.
Getting better still gives a sense of achievement (which ...
9
Arguably, chess is more exciting today because of computers rather than despite computers.
Chess engines have had the side effect of eliminating adjournment from tournament play and generally led to faster time controls. Rapid (or even faster) games tend to be fairly exciting games, which has increased interest in the game.
Also, the same rise in computer ...
6
Now that we have "accepted" that we are worse, why do we still want to see who's better?
Computers aren't human beings. They can't compete with us for any of the important things of life as outlined in Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Only other living beings can do that and, as we've ably demonstrated our dominance against other species, our main ...
68
For the same reason the Tour de France is still a thing even if you could perform much better on a motorbike. Most chess enthusiasts didn't stop playing chess after noticing there's some other person whose rating is 1000 points higher than theirs, and won't stop because there's a machine 1000 stronger than that person.
A good amount of chess players don't ...
28
An analogy often used here is to compare people to cars. Sure, cars can travel far faster than people like Usain Bolt, but that doesn't mean it's not entertaining to watch. When people watch players like Carlsen play chess, they're still watching the best humans in the world compete. Sure, being the best human no longer means much since there are stronger ...
19
As much as people fear losing their jobs to machines that can do them better, Chess has seen the exact opposite take shape.
That's because chess is a game. People enjoy playing it, and they enjoy watching other people play it. You can't really compare it to something like tilling the fields on a farm, where most people only care about the result and not the ...
0
We now have human chess and computer chess. Anybody who wishes for the strongest chess playing possible, head to the TCEC chess championship. Human chess is headed by Carlsen. There are two champions playing very different chess under very different playing conditions.
4
Not directly an answer to your question, but I suspect you'd be interested.
If Nakamura were trying, he'd probably get a draw (at least as White). That's because AlphaZero does not have contempt and will happily enter drawing lines if it believes it has the worse position.
Check out what happened when a few other humans tried it. The humans had White, played ...
2
AlphaZero is Google owned. There is no way anybody but Google can run it. It's not designed for standard PCs.
AlphaZero will beat Nakamura easily. It's like running a match between myself and Magnus Carlsen for the world title. Nobody wants to see it.
4
If you'd be willing to sponsor such an event, I'm sure Nakamura will do it.
3
A fair match without any handicap is just pretty pointless. You wouldn't ask Usain Bolt to race against a car, simply because "What is the point?".
The reason handicap matches are done is because there the result is in doubt. Will Nakamura beat Leela when starting up two pawns? Maybe, we don't know. That makes it interesting. Will he beat Leela or ...
8
I'm afraid SmallChess's answer and comments above are more a matter of wishful thinking than actual fact. If you manage to catch a few small-time cheaters every now and then, it becomes easy to convince yourself that you can detect most or all cheaters; by definition, successful cheaters don't get caught, so you can pretend they don't exist. But they do, and ...
4
I'm the Technical Lead of Chessable and the exact person who integrated SF on Chessable.
There are no license issues here because web app is not the same work as a Universal Chess Interface (UCI) chess engine.
Technically you do have the code because the whole UI in JavaScript is being sent to your web browser. Check your Google Chrome network tab, you will ...
3
The minimum number of knight moves required to be able to reach every square on the board, is 4 to 6, depending on which square you start from. Below is an overview; the number in each square indicates the minimum number of moves when starting from that square:
[6,5,5,5,5,5,5,6]
[5,5,5,4,4,5,5,5]
[5,5,4,4,4,4,5,5]
[5,4,4,4,4,4,4,5]
[5,4,4,4,4,4,4,5]
[5,5,4,...
18
tl; dr: the stronger you are, the more likely it is that you can cheat in this way and not get caught.
Check out this position:
[FEN "r2q1rk1/5p1p/p2p1bp1/4pn2/2B5/7R/1PPQ1PPP/2B2R1K w - - 0 1"]
This position is from Kasparov-Anand, Las Palmas, 1996. It's White's turn to move, and Kasparov went into a deep think. You might want to think about the ...
22
Yes. You will still be detected just that the site is going to need more games. You are more likely to stay under the radar, but that doesn't mean you won't be caught. Cheat detection has never been just comparing your moves against the computer.
To understand, online cheat detection is an application of anomaly detection in data science (google "...
8
The other answers already explain what's going on, but there's standard terminology for it:
This is not actually a sacrifice, merely a queen trade, because the knight is pinned against the black queen.
-3
Then you can take f7 with bishop and you are one pawn up
13
You are asking for the diameter of the knight's graph. I suppose you only want it for the ordinary 8x8 chessboard. (See OEIS sequence A232007 for diameters of knight's graphs on square boards of size nxn, in particular confirming my answer 6 for the case n = 8. The answer is alleged to be ceiling(2n/3) for n > 4.)
The answer is 6. It takes 6 moves to get ...
-4
Material superiority does not always equate with winning. A myriad of games have been won by players with less point values on the board.
For the reason above, running an analysis may not show the advantage of a particular move until a dozen or so moves later.
37
As @Ibrahim explains, you'll win the queen back, but after that White can even take the pawn on f7:
[FEN ""]
[StartPly "10"]
1. e4 e5 2. Qf3 c6 3. Bxc4 Nf6 4. d3 d6 5. Bg5 Bg4 6. Qxg4 Nxg4 7. Bxd8 Kxd8 8. Bxf7
and White is a pawn up.
41
It's basically a trade. After you take the bishop, if the opponent takes your queen with the knight, then your bishop is no longer blocked by the knight and you can take their queen too. The advantage here is that after the trade, the opponent's king will have to take your bishop, and thus can no longer castle.
4
It does what it was programmed to do. During any Alpha-Beta pruning, the computer would stop searching and just do nothing.
In another game, like an RTS, the computer would constantly go through a todo list.
What should/can I build?
What should/can I produce?
How do I defend/attack?
...
Since a chess AI has only one objective, find the best move, there's no ...
2
I am not sure I understand your exact code but my guess here is that you return a transposition table result, no matter the depth of the entry. So if you encounter a position and calculate it one ply deep, store it in the transposition table, and then the next iteration you want to search two plies deep but instead retrieve a one ply deep evaluation from the ...
3
There were three main issues - I was foolishly using unsigned long as a variable to store the hash instead of unsigned long long. I wrote a functionto detect hash collisions, and there were plenty. Lastly, there were two bugs with the hash generation that I have now fixed.
2
If you look at the position after move 8, Black is up material but has a relatively uglier position. It is in Black's interests to improve his position and if it involves giving back an adequate amount of material, then so be it. d5 forces White to waste time taking back the pawn, allowing Black to start developing his pieces.
4
10+ moves later is enough! Note that material-wise, Black is already winning. The sacrifice Nc3 is far too speculative. What is the worst thing that could happen to Black? Nd6+, walling him in, or even followed by some Re1+ after exchange on d6. Thus, rather sacrifice a pawn while White hasn't even castled, than allow any swindles.
1
There's no setting to get Stockfish to display the next X moves. This is for technical reasons: when a search fails high or fails low (see also aspiration window), Stockfish doesn't know what the next X moves are going to be either, it just knows what the current best move it has found is.
That said if you wait longer, Stockfish will eventually display a ...
1
You can't. That's how Stockfish internally works. You are going to need to check your previous line with the current line. If the current line has fewer moves, discard it.
2
This has definitely happened in endgames, e.g.:
Queen and a minor piece versus two rooks: this is usually a draw for a knight and a win for a bishop, although the win takes up to eighty-five moves. The best method of defense is to double the rooks on the third rank with the opposing king on the other side and keep the king behind the rooks. This case with a ...
17
Is there any established system for evaluating positions taking into account time for both players?
No, there isn't. This is for two main reasons:
There is no objective measure for how time affects a player's ability to play any given position.
Such evaluations would be useless. They would literally tell you nothing useful
Let me give an example from a ...
2
According to chess.com an average score of 76.86 would be expected for a person with an OTB rating around 1200. A 2400 player (which is about IM level) would have an average score of 96.20. So, no, your score is not one that is typical of a GM. It's actually similar to what you'd expect for your rating.
That's not to say that a GM can't have a score below ...
2
73 is not a high score. I have had several 100% scores by luck when I played games that were 'pianolas'. EG the opponent kept making moves that left me with only one good move.
Not sure if they weigh your rating when determining the accuracy but I do not think so. So for your rating 73 might be good but as I noted with my results above it is mostly ...
3
Without seeing the game it is difficult to say exactly why you obtained such moderately high score. But I can give some general you comments based on how accuracy is calculated by chess.com.
Chess.com use a statistical model (not revealed) to calculate accuracy. However, it is more complex than calculating the proportion of best moves. By what they say, ...
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