If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.
Policy / Politique
The fee for tournament organizers advertising on ChessTalk is $20/event or $100/yearly unlimited for the year.
Les frais d'inscription des organisateurs de tournoi sur ChessTalk sont de 20 $/événement ou de 100 $/année illimitée.
You can etransfer to Henry Lam at chesstalkforum at gmail dot com
Transfér à Henry Lam à chesstalkforum@gmail.com
Dark Knight / Le Chevalier Noir
General Guidelines
---- Nous avons besoin d'un traduction français!
Some Basics
1. Under Board "Frequently Asked Questions" (FAQs) there are 3 sections dealing with General Forum Usage, User Profile Features, and Reading and Posting Messages. These deal with everything from Avatars to Your Notifications. Most general technical questions are covered there. Here is a link to the FAQs. https://forum.chesstalk.com/help
2. Consider using the SEARCH button if you are looking for information. You may find your question has already been answered in a previous thread.
3. If you've looked for an answer to a question, and not found one, then you should consider asking your question in a new thread. For example, there have already been questions and discussion regarding: how to do chess diagrams (FENs); crosstables that line up properly; and the numerous little “glitches” that every new site will have.
4. Read pinned or sticky threads, like this one, if they look important. This applies especially to newcomers.
5. Read the thread you're posting in before you post. There are a variety of ways to look at a thread. These are covered under “Display Modes”.
6. Thread titles: please provide some details in your thread title. This is useful for a number of reasons. It helps ChessTalk members to quickly skim the threads. It prevents duplication of threads. And so on.
7. Unnecessary thread proliferation (e.g., deliberately creating a new thread that duplicates existing discussion) is discouraged. Look to see if a thread on your topic may have already been started and, if so, consider adding your contribution to the pre-existing thread. However, starting new threads to explore side-issues that are not relevant to the original subject is strongly encouraged. A single thread on the Canadian Open, with hundreds of posts on multiple sub-topics, is no better than a dozen threads on the Open covering only a few topics. Use your good judgment when starting a new thread.
8. If and/or when sub-forums are created, please make sure to create threads in the proper place.
Debate
9. Give an opinion and back it up with a reason. Throwaway comments such as "Game X pwnz because my friend and I think so!" could be considered pointless at best, and inflammatory at worst.
10. Try to give your own opinions, not simply those copied and pasted from reviews or opinions of your friends.
Unacceptable behavior and warnings
11. In registering here at ChessTalk please note that the same or similar rules apply here as applied at the previous Boardhost message board. In particular, the following content is not permitted to appear in any messages:
* Racism
* Hatred
* Harassment
* Adult content
* Obscene material
* Nudity or pornography
* Material that infringes intellectual property or other proprietary rights of any party
* Material the posting of which is tortious or violates a contractual or fiduciary obligation you or we owe to another party
* Piracy, hacking, viruses, worms, or warez
* Spam
* Any illegal content
* unapproved Commercial banner advertisements or revenue-generating links
* Any link to or any images from a site containing any material outlined in these restrictions
* Any material deemed offensive or inappropriate by the Board staff
12. Users are welcome to challenge other points of view and opinions, but should do so respectfully. Personal attacks on others will not be tolerated. Posts and threads with unacceptable content can be closed or deleted altogether. Furthermore, a range of sanctions are possible - from a simple warning to a temporary or even a permanent banning from ChessTalk.
Helping to Moderate
13. 'Report' links (an exclamation mark inside a triangle) can be found in many places throughout the board. These links allow users to alert the board staff to anything which is offensive, objectionable or illegal. Please consider using this feature if the need arises.
Advice for free
14. You should exercise the same caution with Private Messages as you would with any public posting.
15. Have fun!
(Thanks to Nigel Hanrahan for writing these up!)
AlphaZero - is this what 4000 rated chess looks like?
Vlad, you overestimate the wealth of a regular 2780-2800 player (unless he has a wealthy parents).
Hi Victor,
I based my estimate on previous postings of the top earners. For example, here are the 2012 estimates >>>>>>>https://thechessworld.com/articles/n...-in-the-world/
Also, now there is the Grand Chess Tour to augment the winnings.
Granted the players have expenses such as travel but that is usually paid for by the tournament they are invited to.
"I have been watching Matthew Sadler's instructional videos on AlphaZero, on @YouTube. On seeing the engine's games, I feel like I am in the presence of God. There is an extraordinary beauty to these long-term positional sacrifices that it is so fond of making."
My sentiments exactly. Looking at the way this thing plays chess is truly something other worldly to behold. Material aspirations are now replaced by a library of patterns to aspire towards. It is like seeing an old for humans but radical new approach to chess for computers (that now do it far better then humans) that we have not seen since perhaps Tal beat Botvinnik in their 1960 World championship.
Last edited by Sid Belzberg; Saturday, 22nd December, 2018, 12:22 AM.
"I have been watching Matthew Sadler's instructional videos on AlphaZero, on @YouTube. On seeing the engine's games, I feel like I am in the presence of God. There is an extraordinary beauty to these long-term positional sacrifices that it is so fond of making."
My sentiments exactly. Looking at the way this thing plays chess is truly something other worldly to behold. Material aspirations are now replaced by a library of patterns to aspire towards. It is like seeing an old for humans but radical new approach to chess for computers (that now do it far better then humans) that we have not seen since perhaps Tal beat Botvinnik in their 1960 World championship.
Very good insight Sid that you realize what AZ is doing is "old for humans but radical new approach to chess for computers (that now do it far better then (sic) humans".
It is old for humans to play many complete games of chess and learn from each one of them. Until AZ came along, no chess program ever did this. But now AZ does do exactly this, because from a given position, it plays complete games with semi-random variation of moves and collects scores and uses that data to evaluate what best move to make. Totally outperforming humans who simply don't have the perfect digital memory and score feedback mechanism to match.
All we are learning from this is that humans are not good at perfect information games because we have such imperfect memories, 99.999% of us can't for example store all values we calculate or measure in various memory locations and access them all perfectly later. It isn't "other worldly' as Sid calls it, it is simply technological. Computers have perfect memory, humans don't. It would be interesting if someone with photographic memory could learn to play chess by playing game after game after game and memorizing everything, but even then, that person is not able to match AZ on speed. AZ is orders of magnitude faster.
So this approach is the way forward for computers to take over from humans in evaluation and "learning"... but only when the learning involves quantitative measurements that lead to distinct and unequivocal conclusions. Chess is such a world: complete games always end 1-0, 0-1 or draw. There are no "gray areas" in chess when it comes to results. Thus AZ can play millions of complete games and measure each result.
To apply this to human economics or politics or social policy is still an impossible goal because there are so few quantitative measurements available and so many of them are subjective. Some are implying that AZ is heralding a new age where computers and AI will take over everything, and that is balderdash. Humans still have intuition and instinct that AZ can never have. And of course, we have some humans (Trump) who have intuition and instinct which goes against everything sensible for the human race. There is no coding morality or common sense into some future Alpha Zero. Morality and common sense are very human traits and only some of us have them. That has been the central theme of many SciFi stories / novels / movies / TV shows over many years and AZ doesn't change anything there.
I still say at this point we need to see AZ (with opening book) versus AZ (with opening book) in a match of many hundreds of games to get a clear picture of where chess is now at. I think the result is pretty predictable, chess is at a point where this new best play leads to something like 99.9% draws.
Only the rushing is heard...
Onward flies the bird.
Yes it is only technology but the results are indeed other worldly. Here is an example of a game with the ancient opening the Giuoco Piano that every beginner loves playing where alphazero plays a bizarre and unique novelty on move 4 (!) 4...a6. No chess engine or serious chessplaying human being would have ever even considered this move. Despite stockfish playing the "best" moves it gets crushed.
Someday Quantum computers will likely be able to resolve a public key back to its derived private key and even though it is only technology this too will seem other worldly and just like this example it is in fact "other worldy". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-OmM_UWaEg
Yes it is only technology but the results are indeed other worldly. Here is an example of a game with the ancient opening the Giuoco Piano that every beginner loves playing where alphazero plays a bizarre and unique novelty on move 4 (!) 4...a6. No chess engine or serious chessplaying human being would have ever even considered this move. Despite stockfish playing the "best" moves it gets crushed.
Someday Quantum computers will likely be able to resolve a public key back to its derived private key and even though it is only technology this too will seem other worldly and just like this example it is in fact "other worldy". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-OmM_UWaEg
I suppose we can each of us have our own definition of "other worldly" so I won't belabor the point. To a Neanderthal, the steam engine would be other worldly. To us in today's world, it is somewhat antiquated.
I contest your point that no engine or serious chessplaying human being would ever have considered 4...a6 in the GP opening. The fact that it hasn't been considered so far doesn't mean it would never have happened in any future timeline. It could just be that the serious chessplayers of the last few decades have been working on other openings, not even paying much attention to the GP, or that in studying the GP they've just been focusing on later moves. The point is, EVENTUALLY someone would have gotten around to 4....a6. Humans do after all discover opening novelties.
So is it other worldly that AlphaZero is the first to consider this early move? Well, to some it could be. But remember that AZ is by its very nature a human-like engine. The only difference is that it is supported by a massive technological infrastructure, the bleeding edge of AI technology. That immediately means that it plays like a human but both remembers and calculates much much better.
The fact that it plays like a human has only been enabled by the advances in technology. If you consider the progression of chess engines to the present day, it's all very logical and orderly. Minimax engines dominated for decades precisely because there wasn't the technology to support the idea of monte carlo tree search (mcts)... the monto carlo method existed but the required technology to make mcts feasible didn't. The term "monte carlo tree search" wasn't even coined until 2006.
The very idea of playing full games from a given position, storing the result of each, feeding back those results and doing this enough times to actually learn something just wasn't feasible in 1980 or 1990 or 2000. MCTS is an idea whose time has come, thanks to the very latest advances in GPGPU (General Purpose Graphics Processing Unit) technology. Sid if you disagree with this, ask yourself why up until very recently -- literally the last few months -- it took millions of dollars to support an AlphaZero engine? You gave the example of LCZero which can now apparently run on GPUs costing a few thousands of dollars. In 10 years, we might all have an AZ that never loses at chess built into our HUD (Head Up Display) which all of us might be wearing by then.
For anyone wondering about the difference between so-called "minimax" engines and mcts, minimax does a search only to a very shallow (in chess terms) depth, and then uses an "evaluation function" to try and determine the value of the position, then feeds that value back. This evaluation function is where the difference lies in various engines. For example, Stockfish's evaluation function might value Pawn structure ahead of passed Pawns, whereas another engine's might not. The evaluation function implies the possibility of error. Whereas with mcts, games are played to full completion in memory using random or heuristical move generation, and the actual game results are fed back. In other words, no evaluation function. It is still possible for errors -- the move generation might miss a corner case winning line. But generally speaking, the mcts method is more human like because humans learn over time by playing complete games. When you're a junior and losing games, you learn things. Mcts engines do this same process in memory (which might be in the Terabytes on a distributed compute cluster) except they do it millions of times faster and with perfect feedback.
To me this isn't other worldly, this is just the natural progression of things. I remember in the late 1990's I investigated a chess engine called Octavius which was a neural net engine. It all seemed very promising, but the technology wasn't there to support it. It played at a sub-2000 ELO level. Nevertheless I was impressed and ever since then I've been expecting a NN style engine to eventually come along and rise to the top given the right advances in technology.
In a non-perfect information game such as poker, an AZ type of engine could only be expected to be a top performer, not doing significantly better or worse than the best human players. It wouldn't beat humans every time as it would in chess. The reason is that in poker, playing the absolutely best play from a probability and statistical point of view is what the best human players have already been doing for decades using well-developed theory, and unlike in chess can still be defeated by the draw of the next card.
And since "the draw of the next card" is what governs most of life around us, an AZ engine within some kind of robot isn't going to eventually run the world to perfection, which I believe goes against the scenario some people are proclaiming. Nevertheless such an AZ robot would certainly help... perhaps such a robot will discover a new way to counter climate change just as AZ "discovered" 4....a6 in the Giucco Piano opening.
If anything is "other worldly" it is the very existence of human beings. Just think about our eyesight and everything that goes into the processing of light rays by our eyes and brains. There's no robot that can even approach what we do naturally. And then there's hearing, and touch, and taste... could all of those actually have happened all at the same time through evolution? They could perhaps have been PERFECTED through evolution, but for each of them to have independently happened from nothing, from a dead universe, seems.... other worldly. If we use that as our standard, there is nothing happening in chess or in technology so far that seems other worldly.
Only the rushing is heard...
Onward flies the bird.
the point is, EVENTUALLY someone would have gotten around to 4....a6. Humans do after all discover opening novelties.
Yes my point exactly, "Eventually", in this case I very much doubt if any master strength player would come up with this in our life time. I will say that in another version of the Italian game, the two nights defense, Fischer in 1963 playing Bisguer revived a novelty first introduced in the 19th century by Steintz 9.n-h3 setting up a very similar strategic theme with the white pieces as Alpha Zero was aiming for with black in the above example. But, I digress. The point is that a machine that goes through trillions of patterns and finds the best ones does produce an array of novelties at a rate the likes of which have never been seen before on this planet.
As mentioned in an earlier thread we are already seeing some limited success in using this methodology in games of incomplete information like Poker. In heads up competition the machine routinely sends the top players to the rail. In multi player tournament play it is more problematic probably because the machine does not have enough of its opponents hand history to learn it's opponents patterns so with best play it is more or less a coin flip although I suspect the machine has a slight edge as it does not "tilt" and can more accurately remember its opponents strategies from what little information it can glean. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5519_PzT8g
For anyone wondering about the difference between so-called "minimax" engines and mcts, minimax does a search only to a very shallow (in chess terms) depth, and then uses an "evaluation function" to try and determine the value of the position, then feeds that value back. This evaluation function is where the difference lies in various engines. For example, Stockfish's evaluation function might value Pawn structure ahead of passed Pawns, whereas another engine's might not. The evaluation function implies the possibility of error. Whereas with mcts, games are played to full completion in memory using random or heuristical move generation, and the actual game results are fed back. In other words, no evaluation function. It is still possible for errors -- the move generation might miss a corner case winning line. But generally speaking, the mcts method is more human like because humans learn over time by playing complete games. When you're a junior and losing games, you learn things. Mcts engines do this same process in memory (which might be in the Terabytes on a distributed compute cluster) except they do it millions of times faster and with perfect feedback.
You say that the human approach to chess is more akin to the MCTS method because that is what juniors do when learning the game. But it seems to me that juniors after playing some large number of games develop a 'feel' for a type of position - or rather an evaluation for such things as mobility, piece strength, doubled pawns etc. This therefore is more akin to an 'evaluation' function. However many games a junior may play during the learning stage it is not comparable to the MCTS where gazillions of games would be played and remembered.
Therefore, I have to side with the argument that Alphazero plays otherwordly style chess. The term I used in my initial post when I started this thread was extraterrestrial and I still stand by that.
Last edited by Vlad Dobrich; Monday, 24th December, 2018, 12:19 PM.
Our dear former FIDE President, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, always has claimed that chess itself is extra-terrestrial!
He was advised by the aliens that a long time ago, when they visited earth, they gave their game to various groups of humans in different parts of the globe (At that time geography was a great barrier to movement). The various nations then adapted the game according to their own culture, time and beliefs about the game......thus we end up with different varieties of chess being developed in different parts of the world.
I wonder if it is the aliens who have recently introduced humans to AI? Might explain why we are somewhat in awe and perceive that AI is extra-terrestrial as well.
Yes it is only technology but the results are indeed other worldly. Here is an example of a game with the ancient opening the Giuoco Piano that every beginner loves playing where alphazero plays a bizarre and unique novelty on move 4 (!) 4...a6. No chess engine or serious chessplaying human being would have ever even considered this move. Despite stockfish playing the "best" moves it gets crushed.
Someday Quantum computers will likely be able to resolve a public key back to its derived private key and even though it is only technology this too will seem other worldly and just like this example it is in fact "other worldy". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-OmM_UWaEg
Actually, the move appears 204 times in Megabase 2019 by players rated as high as 2400. The move also independently appeared in the games of at least three or four of my beginner students in the last few months and a few more over the last few years. I have discouraged them from playing the move this early. This may be a clear sign of my lack of imagination. I have seen it played a bit later in the games of even 2800 or 2700 players.
Actually, the move appears 204 times in Megabase 2019 by players rated as high as 2400. The move also independently appeared in the games of at least three or four of my beginner students in the last few months and a few more over the last few years. I have discouraged them from playing the move this early. This may be a clear sign of my lack of imagination. I have seen it played a bit later in the games of even 2800 or 2700 players.
A "bit later in the game" is very different from move 4. 4 a6 immediately provokes n-g5 forcing the "ugly" n-h6 and all the complications that follow. Moving a6 a bit later is routine, especially after after n-f6 and 0-0 is normal as it allows an escape square for the bishop on c5 and has other attributes that are more standard and expected such as supporting b7-b5 followed by b-b7 etc. I am surprised that it appears in megabase at all albeit 7.1 million + games is alot of games. How many of the 204 games were simply beginners? Which 2400 rated player played it or is it a computer? When did these 204 games appear and how many of the 204 were at master level chess or even expert level for that matter. Zero games at grandmaster level is no surprise, and that is my point, Alphazero shows that would have never been believed at the highest levels that 4....a6 is in fact the strongest move. It reminds of an April fools joke Martin Gardner published in 1975 in Scientific American claiming a computer discovered 1) h4 to be a winning move. Well it is not April fools and Alpha zero is showing something almost as preposterous with 4)a6 except it is for real!
In any event dozens of weird early strange moves have been already produced by alpha zero that few would have imagined are the best move, in particular at the GM level and 4 a6 is one of many interesting novelties at this elevated level of chess.
As for discouraging your students from playing this move, I am sure you are in good company as until now likely any GM in the world would have given the same guidance.
Last edited by Sid Belzberg; Tuesday, 25th December, 2018, 03:26 PM.
...In any event dozens of weird early strange moves have been already produced by alpha zero that few would have imagined are the best move, in particular at the GM level and 4 a6 is one of many interesting novelties at this elevated level of chess.
So now you are even going so far as to say 4...a6 is not just a novelty but is the best move. Well I have some news for you.
I did a rudimentary Google search of the Giucco Piano opening move sequence up to 4...a6 and came up with several hits on the chesstempo.com web site, which is an online database of about 2 million games. I found the following 8 games listed below. In all 8 games, Black is rated over 2000 ELO.
The very first one is a game from 1988 where GM Vlastimil Hort is White, and his opponent is rated 2335. So that blows your whole theory about never seeing 4...a6 at that level in our lifetimes.
I also draw your attention to the 5th game, Hofmann, Lorenz (1663) vs Logar, Metod (2024). Black has over 300 ELO rating advantage and plays 4...a6 and is held to a draw. The 5.c3 response seems to be very powerful.
Also in all 8 games, White did NOT respond with the move you assume would be always forthcoming in response. Instead of your 5.Ng5 that you seem to think is automatic, the move 5.c3 was played in every game below.
Your talk about 4...a6 as some kind of miracle move that no human would ever think to play and that shows AZ is some kind of other worldy chess intelligence is reduced to rubbish. You were hoodwinked by the person who analyzed that game on YouTube, whoever he is. The real question of that game is why does Stockfish 8 reply 5.Ng5 which which may not be nearly as good as it looks.
The truth about 4....a6 is that Stockfish 8 itself ranks it the second strongest move in the position, as I found out by running it to 30 ply search depth:
As you can see, SF8 has 4....a6 only 0.07 points worse than 4....Nf6 which is negligible. So much for no GM recommending this move, it is as playable as 4...Nf6 and this according to SF8 not AZ.
There is nothing about 4....a6 that is revolutionary. I have to wonder whether AZ would even play this move repeatedly in that opening, or would it only play it sporadically or maybe 50% of the time with the other 50% being 4...Nf6. The truth may be that in playing more like a human, AZ is mixing up its repertoire and not really telling us with each "novelty" it plays that "this move is actually much better than you humans have ever realized". The real message may be "I'm playing like a human and changing up my opening moves quite often compared to an engine that uses a rigid opening book."
The real question of that game is why does Stockfish 8 reply 5.Ng5 which which may not be nearly as good as it looks.
Really???, You are questioning Stockfish's choice of moves, a machine that is far stronger then any human but far weaker then Alpha Zero. On what basis? That no human ever replied with N-g5 in the very few games that this move a6 ever showed up? Or is this a pearl of your B player strength chess wisdom?
By the way, not one GM ever took up this move up so indeed a6 is a novelty as it would be considered just that if a strong human super GM took it up today. The fact is that AlphaZero is stronger then any human and is the first "super GM" strength program to introduce this move in recorded play and beat the worlds strongest program Stockfish with it. Yes, indeed that is novel and is but one example of many amazing novel chess ideas introduced by Alpha zero.
Even after 30 ply Stockfish did not rank a6 as the best move and then got trounced by AlphaZero with just that move.
Last edited by Sid Belzberg; Wednesday, 26th December, 2018, 12:25 PM.
Really???, You are questioning Stockfish's choice of moves, a machine that is far stronger then any human but far weaker then Alpha Zero. On what basis? That no human ever replied with N-g5 in the very few games that this move a6 ever showed up? Or is this a pearl of your B player strength chess wisdom?
By the way, not one GM ever took up this move up so indeed a6 is a novelty as it would be considered just that if a strong human super GM took it up today. The fact is that AlphaZero is stronger then any human and is the first "super GM" strength program to introduce this move in recorded play and beat the worlds strongest program Stockfish with it. Yes, indeed that is novel and is but one example of many amazing novel chess ideas introduced by Alpha zero.
Even after 30 ply Stockfish did not rank a6 as the best move and then got trounced by AlphaZero with just that move.
Actually, what I am wondering is whether 5.Ng5 as played by Stockfish8 after 4....a6 was not a calculated move at all, but was instead picked out of SF8's opening book.
With my version of SF8, I do not have it using any opening book. So when I play the opening 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.d3 a6 and then ask SF8 to give me it's top 6 moves in reply, here is what it gives me after a 31-ply search depth:
Notice how close the top 4 moves are: varying by only 0.04 points. The 5.c3 move that has been favored by humans is tied with 5.Ng5 in SF8's estimation. I really believe SF8 chose 5.Ng5 out of an opening book, without even doing any calculation.
But the whole point is this: 4....a6 and even 5.Ng5 did NOT decide this game! Sid, you are talking as if AZ won the game simply by playing 4...a6 and that is rubbish. I went to the Talkchess.com site (a site for chess programmers) to see what was being said about this game there, and the big talk was about 13....Ne7. There was not a word about 4...a6.
Perhaps some tournament organizer should hold a theme tournament with exactly this opening up to 4....a6 and gather together the strongest players possible to play all games with this opening, and we'd have a much better handle on the situation. Why don't you finance that Sid? Put your money where your mouth is! If 4...a6 is really some sort of super move in that variation, then such a tournament should have unusually good results for Black. Then you would really have some evidence for your claims.
I wonder if it has occurred to you that the rarity of 4...a6 in the GP opening says more about human players than it does about AZ. I'll grant you that AZ is the strongest player to ever play that move, that's obvious, but I'll not grant you that AZ has somehow "proven" that 4...a6 is the very best move in that opening. The human games show that 5.c3 is a very daunting response.
Your comment about my "B player strength chess wisdom" is very insightful. You seem to imply that I can't reason very well about anything to do with chess because I was only a B strength player.
I wonder Sid if you would be up to a challenge. I'd like to play you a 2-game match of correspondence Option Chess, a game of my invention. Now before you rush to type a knee-jerk response, let me assure you that there is no computer engine in the world that can play Option Chess, so neither you nor I would have any computer help. Even I as the game's inventor have no special insight into how to play Option Chess in any way, and in fact the conditions of the match would be that we each get to choose the first 16 plies of the game ( which are played as normal chess) in 1 of the 2 games. I have done no studies of any kind in "opening theory" of Option Chess, for that you have my word. So the match between us would be even, and your superiority to me at regular chess should actually give you a substantial edge.
I have played only 4 games of Option Chess myself, all against opponents who are much better at regular chess than I am. My result is 3 losses and 1 draw. So there you go, you should win such a match easy!
Well, except for maybe one thing. In those other 4 games I played, I was playing in a deliberate "experimental" mode, not really caring much about winning or losing but rather about discovering something. Against you, I will care only about winning.
My point will be to show this: that even with my significant inferiority to you in regular chess, due to things like what age we each started playing and how much time we put into it, I can hold my own against you in a game that is very much like regular chess BUT has no opening theory nor established theory of any kind. The moves are the same, the board and pieces are the same, but the game is different. And you will have as much time as you like to study the rules of the game. I'll even supply you with the 4 games I've played so far, with full annotations.
I'm open to suggestions as to what the stakes of the match would be. And I'll go one step further: in order for me to win the match, I must score 1.5 points out of 2. That is to reassure you in case you think I might (as the game's inventor) have some unknown edge which I assure you I don't. If I were to accomplish such a feat, I'd not ask much of you. Maybe just to finance an Option Chess weekend over-the-board tournament at a club close to you, something like that.
So I'm putting out the challenge and the odds are greatly in your favor. We would each have one full week to make a move, and could in case of unforseen circumstances have 2 "time outs" of up to a month. So the match could take a year or longer to finish, but what a year that would be! lol
I know you like challenges, especially intellectual ones. Have a go at it!
And by the way, this does have pertinence to the discussion about AZ. Because it is my theory that AZ would not dominate humans at Option Chess the way it does at regular chess. For that to be proven, we first need to produce some good human Option Chess players.
Only the rushing is heard...
Onward flies the bird.
My point will be to show this: that even with my significant inferiority to you in regular chess, due to things like what age we each started playing and how much time we put into it, I can hold my own against you in a game that is very much like regular chess BUT has no opening theory nor established theory of any kind.
That is a simply a rationalization of your own shortcoming in learning chess. If you want fast and easy proof of that download "social chess" on your phone and challenge me to "chess960" which is what they call FischerRandom chess. My handle is Sidney 81934. i play lots of chess960 mixed in with normal chess and my rating there is not much different then my USCF and Chess.ca ratings, (2032 at this particular moment.)I play at a time control of 5 0.
Last edited by Sid Belzberg; Thursday, 27th December, 2018, 02:08 PM.
I will admit my bias upfront that reading this thread I didn't think 4...a6 demonstrates much of anything, though of course asking one move to prove anything is a pretty small sample size. However, I am really impressed with the amount of research that went into this post.
So now you are even going so far as to say 4...a6 is not just a novelty but is the best move. Well I have some news for you.
I did a rudimentary Google search of the Giucco Piano opening move sequence up to 4...a6 and came up with several hits on the chesstempo.com web site, which is an online database of about 2 million games. I found the following 8 games listed below. In all 8 games, Black is rated over 2000 ELO.
The very first one is a game from 1988 where GM Vlastimil Hort is White, and his opponent is rated 2335. So that blows your whole theory about never seeing 4...a6 at that level in our lifetimes.
I also draw your attention to the 5th game, Hofmann, Lorenz (1663) vs Logar, Metod (2024). Black has over 300 ELO rating advantage and plays 4...a6 and is held to a draw. The 5.c3 response seems to be very powerful.
Also in all 8 games, White did NOT respond with the move you assume would be always forthcoming in response. Instead of your 5.Ng5 that you seem to think is automatic, the move 5.c3 was played in every game below.
Your talk about 4...a6 as some kind of miracle move that no human would ever think to play and that shows AZ is some kind of other worldy chess intelligence is reduced to rubbish. You were hoodwinked by the person who analyzed that game on YouTube, whoever he is. The real question of that game is why does Stockfish 8 reply 5.Ng5 which which may not be nearly as good as it looks.
The truth about 4....a6 is that Stockfish 8 itself ranks it the second strongest move in the position, as I found out by running it to 30 ply search depth:
As you can see, SF8 has 4....a6 only 0.07 points worse than 4....Nf6 which is negligible. So much for no GM recommending this move, it is as playable as 4...Nf6 and this according to SF8 not AZ.
There is nothing about 4....a6 that is revolutionary. I have to wonder whether AZ would even play this move repeatedly in that opening, or would it only play it sporadically or maybe 50% of the time with the other 50% being 4...Nf6. The truth may be that in playing more like a human, AZ is mixing up its repertoire and not really telling us with each "novelty" it plays that "this move is actually much better than you humans have ever realized". The real message may be "I'm playing like a human and changing up my opening moves quite often compared to an engine that uses a rigid opening book."
Tweet
Comment