lkaufman wrote:Lyudmil Tsvetkov wrote:This afternoon I tried to play a couple of games against Komodo with only time handicap. Unfortunately, as I seemingly am not in a good form at all, I fared rather poor.
Conditions: latest Komodo 10.1, kindly provided by Komodo team, strictly keeping TC, engine output hidden, 4 cores with hyperthreading off.
At 2' + 2" for both I managed roughly 1-2 draws from 10 games, throwing away plentiful winning positions with seconds to go.
At 2' + 2'' for Komodo vs 5' + 3'' for me, roughly double TC, still no wins, 3 or 4 draws from 10 games.
At 2' + 2'' vs 10'+ 10'', 5-fold time handicap, I already scored a single win, and drew 3 or 4 out of 10 games.
Do not have time for trying longer TC, but obviously with more time humans start to fare better.
I think I can do much better than that, but today was a slump day for me. And looking constantly at the clock drives me crazy. That makes a big difference: I am missing moves, that otherwise, if not under pressure, would not have missed.
Below my single win, it is a pity that I threw away much more spectacular positions, where I am certain Komodo was already showing +500-600cps advantage.
[pgn][Event "Blitz 2m+2s"]
[Site "Microsoft"]
[Date "2016.08.08"]
[Round "?"]
[White "Lyudmil Tsvetkov, owner"]
[Black "Komodo 10.1 64-bit"]
[Result "1-0"]
[ECO "A46"]
[Annotator "owner"]
[PlyCount "65"]
[EventDate "2016.??.??"]
[TimeControl "120+2"]
{512MB, OWNER-PC} 1. d4 {0} Nf6 {-0.77/20 7} 2. Nf3 {2} e6 {-0.84/18 3} 3. Bg5
{3} c5 {-0.94/19 3} 4. c3 {2} Nc6 {-0.88/21 8} 5. e3 {2} h6 {-0.82/20 8} 6.
Bxf6 {3} Qxf6 {-0.82/20 6} 7. Bd3 {1} d5 {-1.04/20 4} 8. O-O {2} Bd7 {-0.95/21
9} 9. Nbd2 {2} cxd4 {-0.91/21 10} 10. exd4 {2} Bd6 {-0.86/22 10} 11. Re1 {10}
O-O {-0.91/21 4} 12. Qe2 {2} Qd8 {-0.83/21 4} 13. Ne5 {2} Nxe5 {-0.83/21 4} 14.
dxe5 {1} Bc7 {-0.82/21 5} 15. Nf3 {4} Rc8 {-0.85/21 5} 16. Rad1 {3} Ba4 {-0.80/
23 18} 17. Rd2 {4} a6 {-0.73/23 12} 18. Bb1 {2} Bb5 {-0.81/22 6} 19. Qd1 {2} g6
{-0.77/19 4} 20. h4 {8} h5 {-0.68/21 4} 21. Rd4 {24} Bb6 {-0.62/18 2} 22. Rf4 {
6} Bc5 {-0.50/21 11} 23. Qd2 {20} Be7 {-0.50/21 6} 24. g3 {162} Bc6 {-0.50/21 4
} 25. Nd4 {98} Bd7 {-0.49/25 3} 26. Re3 {25} Qb6 {-0.49/19 4} 27. Ref3 {20} Qc7
{-0.48/21 5} 28. Qe3 {176} Qc5 {0.59/16 4} 29. Rf6 {55} Bxf6 {5.63/22 2} 30.
Rxf6 {13} Qe7 {10.19/22 7} 31. Qh6 {43} Rc4 {10.50/22 0} 32. Bxg6 {54} fxg6 {
10.71/23 0} 33. Rxg6+ {4} 1-0
Nice game. I think you forgot to mention "no opening book" handicap as well as time handicap since it shows evals from the first move. That's quite reasonable, but you should mention it. Also, do you always play White or do you alternate colors? Always White is fine, but again if so you should mention it as additional handicap. Anyway your results suggest you are a pretty strong player.
[/pgn]
Yesterday I always played white.
Main difficulty playing top engines at blitz level is that quite often you get positions like that:
[d]r4k1r/3bbp2/4p1p1/q2pP3/1ppP1PRP/1nP1QN2/1P5N/1B4RK w - - 0 1
Above, I have 5 minutes for the game, and Komodo has 5 seconds.
Very complex position. I know the positions is winning, but which move wins? Bg6 sacrifice requires a lot of computations. Ng5 is an alternative, also involving very complex lines. Some other move?
For this position, 5 minutes for the game are not enough, you need 5 minutes only on this specific position. I played Bg6 and later lost, but SF rightly shows Ng5 wins.
That is why playing any blitz TC against current top engines is simply suicidal.
How Komodo travelled successfully those very complex lines in 5 seconds is a bit of a puzzle to me, for me this position is very complicated.
I tried to down Komodo flag in a couple of games, but the engine stubbornly held onto its scanty 2 remaining seconds...
Another big plus for the engine is that humans get more and more tired with each subsequent game, and the engine is unaffected by this. And when you start thinking about the last won game that you lost, one is also psychologically affected. This all favours the engine.
Anyway, nice sparring match, have to add a bit of additional strength to compete...
I think Carlsen, Nakamura and Caruana are all shaking in their boots. Put up or shut up! Setup a real match against Komodo where conditions are controlled with an anti cheating system in place, and then let's see what happens. Of course I could be wrong and you could be a "hidden" chess genius that has gone under the radar. Posting unverified games and tossing around head to head game scores against one of the top engines (in blitz no less) where you have quite a few draws and even a win!!!!@@@@ ... and considering it as a "bad" day is silly. If you are so good, why not take the engine on in controlled conditions? I am sure it can be arranged!