Chess.com 2018 Bonus games

[Paloma]

https://www.chess.com/news/view/stockfi ... -3rd#bonus

Bonus games:

After the finals and the third-place match, computer chess fans can relax and enjoy some bonus rounds of odds chess positions. These crazy games might not settle who is best at traditional chess, but they are sure to provide fireworks on the chessboard.

The top six engines from stage two will play a 2x-round-robin tournament with five different positions for a total of 150 games. Each engine will play every other engine one time as White and one time as Black in each position.

The bonus rounds are expected to last about four days of non-stop, odds-chess action.

Details on the positions are below.

Bonus games participants—top 6 engines from CCCC 1:

Stockfish .... 220818
Houdini ...... 6.03
Lc0 .......... 17.11089
Komodo .... 2118.00
Ethereal ... 10.88
Fire ......... 7.1

Bonus position 1: Knightmare!
White starts with only knights for pieces while Black starts with normal piece set minus the knights.

[d]r1bqkb1r/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/NNNNKNNN w kq - 0 1
Stockfish 9 starting eval: -4.88


Bonus position 2: White missing f2 pawn.

[d]rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPP1PP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 1
Stockfish 9 starting eval: -1.00


Bonus position 3: Replace rooks with queens.

[d]qnbqkbnq/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/QNBQKBNQ w - - 0 1
Stockfish 9 starting eval: +0.35


Bonus position 4: Sideways chess! (minus the rooks)

[d]8/NP4pn/BP4pb/KP4pk/QP4pq/BP4pb/NP4pn/8 w - - 0 1
Stockfish 9 starting eval: +1.49


Bonus position 5: Moving on up! White starts up one rank. White can't castle but Black can.

[d]rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR/8 w kq - 0 1
Stockfish 9 starting eval: +1.18

[Paloma]

Standings:

Stockfish 220818 . 13.5/20
Komodo 2118.00 . 12.0/19
Fire 7.1 ............ 11.0/19
Lc0 17.11089 ....... 8.0/19
Ethereal 10.88 ..... 8.0/19
Houdini 6.03 ....... 5.5/20

But, many games unclear decision.

(Ended after 4, 7, 8 or 10 moves)

Someone knows more about this ?

[ernest]

Someone knows more about this ?

Those Bonus games seem to be of dubious value...

For the 3Q vs 3Q games,
Houdini is unable to play : stops (?) after a few moves, then why not stop on 1st move ?
Lc0 plays badly, but that is not to be unexpected...

Now the 7N vs 0(zero)N series has just begun, same is to be expected !

But as long as this is only for fun !...

[zenpawn]

When you give the "knightmare" or queens in the corner position to Houdini, it returns:

Code: Select all

Invalid position: Too many white knights
Reverting to starting position

or

Code: Select all

Invalid position: Too many white queens
Reverting to starting position

respectively.

[ernest]

When you give the "knightmare" or queens in the corner position to Houdini, it returns:

Code: Select all

Invalid position: Too many white knights
Reverting to starting position

or

Code: Select all

Invalid position: Too many white queens
Reverting to starting position

respectively.

But then Houdini should return that on his FIRST move !

[Guenther]

When you give the "knightmare" or queens in the corner position to Houdini, it returns:

Code: Select all

Invalid position: Too many white knights
Reverting to starting position

or

Code: Select all

Invalid position: Too many white queens
Reverting to starting position

respectively.

But then Houdini should return that on his FIRST move !

It obviously returns this before the first move, if you read Erins statement again.
It was very easy to deduct from watching the first AH-Qs for Rs already, to
see that it treats them not as Qs. With above message from Houdini all is clear.

Houdini does exactly what Erin showed above. It reverts to the usual start position
and treats the Qs as Rs. It will only crash when one of those Qs act different than a R.

It is a complete waste of time and energy. I am really astonished that they did no sanity
test on those positions for the participants. (Experimental season... well...)
As the Knightmare start position is also no legal start position it will also refuse to play
if an 'illegal' Knight moves or itself tries to move an 'illegal' Knight as a different piece.

[George Tsavdaris]

Me as centaur with HGM's QueeNy(a specialized engine for Knight variants) with the weak white, versus Stockfish dev with black, in the Knightmare variant.
5'+2" game. 1-0 for Me+QueeNy

https://lichess.org/WTwtpPl2

[hgm]

Amazing (and congrats)! I would not have thought this position would be won for the Knights. QueeNy is just a version of an engine that is about 1000 Elo weaker than Stockfish, with the Knight value set so high that it will avoid trading two Knights for other Queen. When the opponent only has Queens that will pose it a big problem, as at some point it will have to resort to 1-for-1 trades to avoid mate threads, which of course will be losing with 7N vs 3Q. But QueeNy should not be able to prevent Knights being traded for a single piece. I guess Stockfish fails to seek such trading opportunities because it considers even the Bishop more valuable than Knight, until it is too late.

[Guenther]

Amazing (and congrats)! I would not have thought this position would be won for the Knights. QueeNy is just a version of an engine that is about 1000 Elo weaker than Stockfish, with the Knight value set so high that it will avoid trading two Knights for other Queen. When the opponent only has Queens that will pose it a big problem, as at some point it will have to resort to 1-for-1 trades to avoid mate threads, which of course will be losing with 7N vs 3Q. But QueeNy should not be able to prevent Knights being traded for a single piece. I guess Stockfish fails to seek such trading opportunities because it considers even the Bishop more valuable than Knight, until it is too late.

Harm, was the different material value the main hack for Queenys success in the original variant usage?
If that was so, you could make it read a config with adjustable piece values (in case you still have the sources)
and it could be improved even more on this Knightmare variant and similar ones.

[hgm]

Indeed, QueeNy is just Spartacus with the Knight value set to 5 instead of 3.25. (Although I might have cleared the King PST as well, to allow the King to happily march with the pack of Knights.) Spartacus was never released, however, because it was not really finished. And I somehow managed to lose the latest source, and I consider the design on which it was based obsolete anyway.