Re: AlphaZero No Castling Chess
Posted: Sun Dec 08, 2019 5:10 pm
I also ran it overnight, and my results agree remarkably well with yours. I used 300 +3", my I7 laptop runs at 4.9 Ghz (is yours also pretty fast?). My result was 106 White wins, 103 draws, 5 Black wins, so with Armageddon scoring 106 to 108. So no real trend for the results with more time, and the trivial Black win is at least in the direction I hoped, since White will probably do better in human play.Laskos wrote: ↑Sun Dec 08, 2019 8:36 amI tested at longer TC in 100 games overnight, it came completely even with 0 Black wins.lkaufman wrote: ↑Sun Dec 08, 2019 6:50 amOK, so far quite remarkable that this ultra-simple rule could be so balanced. I downloaded your nbc book and will run my own tests on it; the big question is whether it will tilt too much one way with more time (although your forty games at 240 +2.4" said no). I can also test it on Komodo MCTS and on Stockfish (since Stockfish also has similar contempt settings); I guess there's less point to checking it out on Lc0 without a way to make it go for wins as White and draws as Black. I checked out the initial position with several engines. Komodo gives it a bit over +1, and SF about +1.3, both of which are well above what I consider the win/draw threshold on those engines (roughly 0.7 on K and 1.0 on SF). However the nn engines showed about 71% win prob. (72.5% for two top Lc0 networks, 69% for Fat Fritz), which is right about where the win/draw line should fall. I still think that in human play White will score well over 50%, but that is due to psychological reasons rather than objective ones; it's simply more fun to look for wins than to try to avoid them, and being unhappy is not conducive to best results. But we can't model this, so I think the best we can do is to hope that White scores a bit under 50% in engine play with more time, so that the human bias for pleasant positions won't give White too big a score in human play.Laskos wrote: ↑Sat Dec 07, 2019 11:36 pm
I am on the phone and TeamViewer now, but the result with
Contempt = 75
White Contempt = True
is almost identical:
60+0.6
White wins: 99/200
Draws: 94/200
Black Wins: 7/200
The openings were built with the White Contempt = 50 (and no Black castling), so I would not worry too much about them. An interesting result, I guess a much larger White Contempt would even harm the White. So, Komodo seems to consider this a very simple and balanced Armageddon variant.
240+2.4
White wins: 50/100
Draws: 50/100
Black Wins: 0/100
One issue would be that these are self-plays of identical Komodos. But I think the performances being so stable with TC, even if strong humans would do better as White, the White performance would hover in human games at say 60% irrespective of time control and even strength (well, strong and very strong humans anyway).
I am now testing the resolving power of this simple variant pitting Komodo at 60+0.6 versus Komodo at 40+0.4, and comparing the result to standard chess result. Also, the White performance will be again interesting to see with these unequal opponents. Probably 400 games. Now I am controlling my PC remotely on the phone, so troubles copying and pasting here might occur.
This is really remarkable. I gave up on the idea too quickly when I first thought of it because the SF and Komodo evals were too high, but it seems that they are just wrong. Looks like the NNs got it right. So we now have a variant of chess that appears to be perfectly balanced (at least between engines), has no draws, and can be explained in one short sentence ("Black cannot castle but wins draws"). I guess the NBC Armageddon name is the best one. The fact that Kramnik and AlphaZero have just promoted no castling chess in a big way makes this incredibly timely!
I'll have to test it with K mcts and with SF.