jp wrote: ↑Tue Jul 09, 2019 8:33 pm
Well, I'm not one to push for material handicaps, but I wouldn't feel that a handicap game must have a crazy back-story or history that connects it the chess starting position to justify itself.
But chess games have a "history", they don't begin in the middle of the game, you get there from the opening positions, and in chess, players have
infinite freedom to choose what they play, and how they arrive to it. The only exception is thematic tournaments, but can you show one where the sides are playing suboptimally to reach the starting board? The worst I've seen is thematic tournaments with the Muzio variation of the King's Gambit, and white players were giving material handicaps starting with a Knight less, yet it seems white is fine as white scored better, so this isn't about the material (I'm sure there's plenty of positions where the side with most material is losing), but about evaluation advantage (which can be achieved in positions with equal material.)
jp wrote: ↑Tue Jul 09, 2019 8:33 pmHow many moves out of book is the second example? I don't think the moves between the end of book and the end of move 16 must be "played" by the engine. It seems a bit artificial to claim they are. We could produce them by any means and just start at the position at the end of move 16, which would be fine.
No, because we don't know what moves the human is going to play. This is just like the game would be if the human was playing without any handicap, and the book is there to add variety. But the human can play some obscure opening to get the engine out of book ASAP, or get into the Sicilian Lowenthal hoping the book last very long. Etc. Like a normal game, except the engine would play badly once the book is over, so the human can capitalize and make it so that when the engine shows the human with huge advantage and goes full strength, it matters.
Anyway, Larry has the right idea, just let the human decide what handicap they want to play. If anybody asks why was the handicap used, answering that's what the human wanted works. If nobody steps up to the plate then the answer to the OP's "Why there is no interest in Computer with odds Vs Humans match?" would be that no human was interested in any kind of handicap (above 2200 rating, for no money), so the case was closed.
Nordlandia wrote:Ovyron: the days when human can compete against the computer in the classical starting position is by a long shot over. Material odds or cripple the hardware is needed to give the human any practical chances.
There are many other options (depth limit, node limit, takebacks...)
Dann Corbit wrote:IOW, a computer would not let you arrive there either, playing white.
Oh, but it did! The example I posted wasn't made up, white was actually Komodo, and it played those moves, once out of book. So Depth 1 Komodo chose its own handicap position, and black's human moves decided where to go (black had absolute freedom as well). The human can choose their own poison. And at no point this stops being chess (because game starts from opening position, it's when Komodo changes to full strength that is different), unlike material odds.