Next Komodo vs GM match.

[Ron Langeveld]

More than elo I would welcome a slight change in playing style. Komodo is supposed to have a positional style, whatever that means. Lately I haven't been very impressed by K's style because it lacks 'ambition' compared to H6 for example. More often than not K manages to win by 'waiting' until the opponent makes a mistake. Elowise this might be a good achievement, but it ain't very exciting. In my view K is not realizing its full potential with this 'wait-and-see' approach.

Ron

[lkaufman]

More than elo I would welcome a slight change in playing style. Komodo is supposed to have a positional style, whatever that means. Lately I haven't been very impressed by K's style because it lacks 'ambition' compared to H6 for example. More often than not K manages to win by 'waiting' until the opponent makes a mistake. Elowise this might be a good achievement, but it ain't very exciting. In my view K is not realizing its full potential with this 'wait-and-see' approach.

Ron

Higher King Safety, higher Dynamism, and higher Contempt should all make Komodo more aggressive at some Elo cost. It's been reported that super-high Dynamism settings do great on problem sets and on matching some of Alpha-zero's surprising sacrifices, but will show large elo losses in engine play.

[leavenfish]

More than elo I would welcome a slight change in playing style. Komodo is supposed to have a positional style, whatever that means. Lately I haven't been very impressed by K's style because it lacks 'ambition' compared to H6 for example. More often than not K manages to win by 'waiting' until the opponent makes a mistake. Elowise this might be a good achievement, but it ain't very exciting. In my view K is not realizing its full potential with this 'wait-and-see' approach.

Ron

Higher King Safety, higher Dynamism, and higher Contempt should all make Komodo more aggressive at some Elo cost. It's been reported that super-high Dynamism settings do great on problem sets and on matching some of Alpha-zero's surprising sacrifices, but will show large elo losses in engine play.

Yes, that's the reason (correctly or not) I subscribe to Komodo...if I just want ELO, Stockfish is there. But I want....more, from an engine. I am not sure I am getting it, but you spend your money and take your chances.

[jmartus]

With a high enough contempt I believe you can win 4-0. What will be the contempt for the match?

[lkaufman]

I haven't decided yet, perhaps somewhere around 100 or so. I haven't found it wise to go too high with Contempt, it makes Komodo play dubious moves to avoid swaps.Based on Komodo vs sKomodo bullet games, the average elo value of the four handicaps is 872 elo points.

[jmartus]

Perhaps a higher contempt could have komodo complicate positions more like contempt of 150. Perhaps do some testings vs 2600 elo engines. Just an idea.

[lkaufman]

Perhaps a higher contempt could have komodo complicate positions more like contempt of 150. Perhaps do some testings vs 2600 elo engines. Just an idea.

Contempt of 150 or so is probably reasonable for knight odds matches, I think I used this value in some of them. But I'm pretty sure it's too high for a two pawn handicap game. The displayed evaluation of the initial handicap position should still be significantly negative or else the Contempt value is too high. The judgment is in the word "significantly".

[Ovyron]

Contempt of 150 or so is probably reasonable for knight odds matches, I think I used this value in some of them. But I'm pretty sure it's too high for a two pawn handicap game. The displayed evaluation of the initial handicap position should still be significantly negative or else the Contempt value is too high. The judgment is in the word "significantly".

Have you considering "Dynamic Contempt"? The idea here is that Komodo wants to believe that it has some advantage in the position, say, a 0.90 advantage, so, on the next move, if the previous one had 0.80 advantage, it raises contempt by 10, but if it was 1.00, it reduces it by 10.

The idea here is that Komodo adjusts its contempt depending on how the opponent plays, so that, if Komodo has already equalized, it now plays with Contempt 0 because it assumes it can beat the human from an equal position.

[lkaufman]

Contempt of 150 or so is probably reasonable for knight odds matches, I think I used this value in some of them. But I'm pretty sure it's too high for a two pawn handicap game. The displayed evaluation of the initial handicap position should still be significantly negative or else the Contempt value is too high. The judgment is in the word "significantly".

Have you considering "Dynamic Contempt"? The idea here is that Komodo wants to believe that it has some advantage in the position, say, a 0.90 advantage, so, on the next move, if the previous one had 0.80 advantage, it raises contempt by 10, but if it was 1.00, it reduces it by 10.

The idea here is that Komodo adjusts its contempt depending on how the opponent plays, so that, if Komodo has already equalized, it now plays with Contempt 0 because it assumes it can beat the human from an equal position.

The idea of contempt is mostly to avoid simplification. If we are playing a weaker player, we want to avoid simplifying in equal positions to minimize drawjchances. True, a draw is unlikely, but it is more likely without contempt than with it. But perhaps we could have it vary a bit with the eval, maybe one point per five or ten eval points.

[lkaufman]

Here is game 1. Izoria gave back one of the two pawns to reach an endgame, but he overlooked that his 22...Re2 move did not really have a threat. Later, 30...Kf8 instead of ...Kh8 might have held the draw. Next game at 5 pm Eastern time on chess.com.

[pgn]
[Event "Rapid 45 min + 15 sec"]
[Site "chess.com"]
[Date "2018.01.15"]
[Round "1"]
[White "Komodo 2000.00 64-bit"]
[Black "Izoria, Zviad"]
[Result "1-0"]
[Annotator "Kaufman,Larry"]
[SetUp "1"]
[FEN "rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/P1PPPP1P/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 1"]
[PlyCount "71"]
[TimeControl "2100+8"]

{6144MB, Book2016.ctg, DESKTOP-16c} 1. c4 {-0.51/26 30} Nf6 {231} 2. Bb2 {
-0.54/28 78} g6 {63} 3. Nc3 {-0.80/30 78} Bg7 {43} 4. Nd5 {-0.64/27 22} O-O {56
} 5. Nxf6+ {-0.83/31 26} Bxf6 {51} 6. Bxf6 {-0.65/29 29} exf6 {14} 7. Bg2 {
-0.57/31 26} Nc6 {33} 8. e3 {-0.58/31 58} d6 {170} 9. Qb3 {-0.53/29 44} Na5 {
510} 10. Qc3 {-0.51/31 38} c5 {20} 11. d3 {-0.48/33 40} Be6 {59} 12. Ne2 {
-0.74/35 0} d5 {50} 13. cxd5 {-0.59/35 5} Bxd5 {16} 14. e4 {-0.59/34 15} Be6 {
38} 15. Qxc5 {-0.46/33 43} Nc6 {159} 16. d4 {-0.53/40 0} Qa5+ {83} 17. Qxa5 {
0.00/32 25} Nxa5 {14} 18. d5 {-0.14/31 30} Bd7 {35} 19. O-O {0.00/34 57} Rfc8 {
166} 20. f4 {0.00/34 91} Rc2 {239} 21. Nd4 {0.00/37 42} Rd2 {54} 22. Nf3 {
0.00/39 0} Re2 {42} 23. Rfc1 {0.26/33 35} Rc8 {344} 24. Rxc8+ {0.06/40 0} Bxc8
{14} 25. Rc1 {0.03/36 35} Bg4 {65} 26. e5 {0.04/38 0} fxe5 {119} 27. Nxe5 {
0.07/38 0} Bf5 {83} 28. Rc7 {0.00/41 0} Rxa2 {314} 29. Nxf7 {0.00/46 0} Rd2 {
529} 30. Nh6+ {0.00/50 0} Kh8 {160} 31. h4 {0.35/32 38} b5 {100} 32. h5 {
1.68/32 20} a6 {305} 33. Bf3 {9.36/32 43} Nc4 {52} 34. Nxf5 {10.47/33 180} gxf5
{4} 35. h6 {250.00/36 34} Kg8 {17} 36. Bh5 {250.00/41 0} 1-0
[/pgn]