I don't know if "what timing" means "when" or "what time limit", but since we can already do it in blitz while it is not a realistic goal for classical time limits, we are talking about "rapid", and since the FIDE Rapid Championship is at 15' + 10", I think that is the appropriate time limit for this challenge. GM also needs to be narrowed down; I'm a GM but no longer play at GM level, so I think it should be a GM with a current FIDE rating (including recent games) over 2500, the normally required rating to get the title (except for winners of World Championships in their categories). With these conditions specified, I hope we can do it sometime this year, although it might not be a wise bet to make.duncan wrote: ↑Sun Jan 05, 2020 3:30 pmWhat timing are you hoping to beat a GM at knight odds ?lkaufman wrote: ↑Fri Jan 03, 2020 5:32 pmChess.com is only interested in providing live commentary for matches with "big names", which cost real money (we do give small prizes for wins and draws (triple for wins) in all matches). Hopefully we'll have such a match before too long. Saturday's match can be regarded as preparation for such matches, in terms of determining fair time limits for knight odds, finding flaws in play at knight odds or in the online play, etc. We've already pretty much proven that we can give two pawns (as White) or f7 and two moves or knight for f7 pawn or the equivalents to strong GMs in rapid play, but in the opening a knight is worth nearly four pawns so we need to establish that giving knight odds to a GM is not ridiculous, so an IM is the obvious step. If knight odds proves unreasonable for GMs, there is still f7 and three moves as an in-between step, which we tried twice at slow rapid, losing to GM Simon Williams but beating IM Danny Rensch. But beating a GM in a knight odds match is the "holy grail" of chess, the ultimate challenge.
By the way Komodo has now played more handicap matches with titled players than I can count or remember, but I'm pretty sure that only one player has a plus score against Komodo in these matches. That would be the very first one to play Komodo a match, namely FM Victor Bolzoni, FIDE 2189 at the time (year 2015), who beat Komodo 4.5 to 1.5 at knight odds at 45' + 15", which is on the cusp between Rapid and Classical chess. So our performance rating then was a bit under 2000 FIDE, and with later knight odds matches it dropped further, whereas the average performance for this year in 17 knight odds games is about 2350 FIDE, although the average time limit was somewhat faster this year. So maybe close to 300 elo improvement in knight odds play in four years, a lot more than the improvement on the rating lists. Probably it's because MCTS is harder for humans to play against than A/B, also Contempt helps a lot.
