AlphaWhat?

[Ovyron]

url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleph_number]Aleph-Null[/url] but that is just the German form of the mathematical term. Alpha Zero is more natural to English speakers. A form of infinity like ∞, where Google gets its name from. Aleph is used in the mathematical symbol, I suppose because Georg Cantor used that? Not sure.

Great find! Aleph-null would be a wonderful logo for A0. Thanks Eelco!

But nobody is going to look at that and read "Alpha Zero", they'll read it as "Aleph Null"...

What about this?:



If you see one after the other it's as if Aleph was hammering Stockfish down!

[Rodolfo Leoni]

.................................................
Sorry, but did you not read the paper at all? Or am I misunderstanding your doubt?
........................................................

I once read The Bible but I stopped reading it when I discovered it was the story of old Aliens, UFOs and the use of their DNA to make a man out of a monkey.

Joking... I really read only a little % of everything was posted here, just because of being too busy with a lot of projects. So, sorry, I missed the holy paper. But I started having an idea about how it worked, and similarities with Romichess approach. Vert different learning on a very different software/hardware, of course, but the same philosophy. I wish to stay out of that battle, anyway. We can discuss about what and how it worked for next years without getting any agreement...

Thanks for your knowledge contribution!

[Rodolfo Leoni]

People get so involved in discussions about ELO, TBs and TimeControls and other technicalities, they forget the basics of chess.
If you just go through the Games as a chess player, its completely obvious that Stockfish was completely out-classed and simply didn't have a clue about what was going on.
It is obvious to any average chess player that AlphaZero was playing at a completely different level and was seeing the Chessboard as a whole in a completely different way than Stockfish.
You can grumble about the version of SF used, TC used and anything else, but in my humble opinion, AlphaZero was so completely superior to Stockfish, that it wouldn't have made any significant difference to the outcome.
Its the Dawn of a New Age in computer chess, whether the nay sayers agree or not.
Of course, unfortunately since DeepMind isn't showing much interest in chess, the voices of these negative people will only grow stronger.
Soon they will claim that there was nothing like AlphaZero and it was all a big hoax.
But the people who really understand what Chess is about, have seen what actually happened on the ChessBoard and know the Truth.

Hi Anil,

I think there's nothing wrong in trying to understanding this "phenomenon" a bit better. The only ways we have to get a comparison is opponent configuration and how SF could have been stronger if it played at its best. Unfortunately, we can only produce conjectures. But I don't consider A0 to be the ultimate chess engine. Deep Mind avoided the match against the strongest SF just because it wasn't possible to get such a spectacular result. That doesn't mean to be negative. I think everybody here thinks a new age is starting, but we'll discover the full potential of this revolutionary approach only if/when the hardware will be available to programmers. It could be that within 15-20 years we'll consider that old crappy A0 as a pacman of the new technology.

Progress never stops.

[APassionForCriminalJustic]

People get so involved in discussions about ELO, TBs and TimeControls and other technicalities, they forget the basics of chess.
If you just go through the Games as a chess player, its completely obvious that Stockfish was completely out-classed and simply didn't have a clue about what was going on.
It is obvious to any average chess player that AlphaZero was playing at a completely different level and was seeing the Chessboard as a whole in a completely different way than Stockfish.
You can grumble about the version of SF used, TC used and anything else, but in my humble opinion, AlphaZero was so completely superior to Stockfish, that it wouldn't have made any significant difference to the outcome.
Its the Dawn of a New Age in computer chess, whether the nay sayers agree or not.
Of course, unfortunately since DeepMind isn't showing much interest in chess, the voices of these negative people will only grow stronger.
Soon they will claim that there was nothing like AlphaZero and it was all a big hoax.
But the people who really understand what Chess is about, have seen what actually happened on the ChessBoard and know the Truth.

You need to remember that the conditions were not at all favorable to Stockfish. This is not about being negative. It's a fact. Stockfish only had one minute to move. That in and of itself is certainly going to make it weaker. Then you can talk about the hash file size. But to me AlphaZero clearly had a hardware advantage running on 4 TPUs. Yes - I am sure that this point has been made multiple times but people seem to agree that those 4 TPUs are many, many times more powerful versus Stockfish's 64-core rig. Team Google should have had more balls. They should have made Stockfish as absolutely as strong as possible. That way - you cover all of your tracks and ultimately diffuse the inevitable skepticism.

Despite all of this Stockfish still had nearly 80 draws. That is far from your claimed whole new different play of chess. Maybe AlphaZero is the future of computer chess. But not anytime soon... good luck affording the particular hardware used... plus AlphaZero is not really that impressive when you do consider its massive state-of-the-art hardware. Don't be blind...

[Tobber]

People get so involved in discussions about ELO, TBs and TimeControls and other technicalities, they forget the basics of chess.
If you just go through the Games as a chess player, its completely obvious that Stockfish was completely out-classed and simply didn't have a clue about what was going on.
It is obvious to any average chess player that AlphaZero was playing at a completely different level and was seeing the Chessboard as a whole in a completely different way than Stockfish.
You can grumble about the version of SF used, TC used and anything else, but in my humble opinion, AlphaZero was so completely superior to Stockfish, that it wouldn't have made any significant difference to the outcome.
Its the Dawn of a New Age in computer chess, whether the nay sayers agree or not.
Of course, unfortunately since DeepMind isn't showing much interest in chess, the voices of these negative people will only grow stronger.
Soon they will claim that there was nothing like AlphaZero and it was all a big hoax.
But the people who really understand what Chess is about, have seen what actually happened on the ChessBoard and know the Truth.

You need to remember that the conditions were not at all favorable to Stockfish. This is not about being negative. It's a fact. Stockfish only had one minute to move. That in and of itself is certainly going to make it weaker. Then you can talk about the hash file size. But to me AlphaZero clearly had a hardware advantage running on 4 TPUs. Yes - I am sure that this point has been made multiple times but people seem to agree that those 4 TPUs are many, many times more powerful versus Stockfish's 64-core rig. Team Google should have had more balls. They should have made Stockfish as absolutely as strong as possible. That way - you cover all of your tracks and ultimately diffuse the inevitable skepticism.

Despite all of this Stockfish still had nearly 80 draws. That is far from your claimed whole new different play of chess. Maybe AlphaZero is the future of computer chess. But not anytime soon... good luck affording the particular hardware used... plus AlphaZero is not really that impressive when you do consider its massive state-of-the-art hardware. Don't be blind...

I think you are blinded by your interest in chess. Deepmind/Google has in my opinion no interest at all in chess. They used SF, and similar for Shogi and Go, to prove that their methods work.

They used an official download for SF and no development version, make sense to me.

Trained A0 until it was stronger and then showed the world what they can do. Don't you see the whole point? In a few hours A0 was superior to an engine developed for many years by humans. Against a stronger chess engine they had just enhanced the training of A0.

And 1 minute per move, so what? Of course SF would be stronger with another time setting but so would A0, they took the decision and played games with that settings, same for both engines right? Why is it unfair with the same setting for both engines?

Opening books? A0 did beat SF when using an opening book, not a very advanced opening book but similar to what we saw in TCEC. 50 games as white and 50 as black, what is unfair with that?

Last point the hardware difference. The complaints here are nonsense, they have showed that their combination of hardware and neural networks are better than traditional software development on traditional hardware. (Before you come shouting about other software I should add for some types of software). There's no interest in being "fair", they are interested in the commercial potential with their combination of hardware and NN and chess engines are totally uninteresting in this respect.

/John

[shrapnel]

In a few hours A0 was superior to an engine developed for many years by humans.

That's the point most people miss (or choose to ignore ?) and go on harping about TCs and Hardware and the like.
Also, the STYLE of play was simply amazing.
Stockfish has been beaten many times by Komodo/Houdini, nothing new, but the way Stockfish was outplayed was astonishing.
AlphaZero simply TOYED with Stockfish in some of those Games and Stockfish looked so clueless, it was almost SCARY !
It made you wonder "Is THIS (Stockfish) what so many brilliant Programmers have been working on for so many years ? If so, they might have better spent that time with their families or playing Tiddlywinks or something ?"
It certainly didn't look like a routine Engine-Engine Match.
And the way AlphaZero's detractors emphasize on the large number of Draws is simply ridiculous.
If they had even bothered to go through the DeepMind Paper, it would have been obvious from Figure 2 on Page 7 that strength of AlphaZero increases rapidly with more time given, even more so than Stockfish.
In a Rapid/Blitz Match which most Testers here use, Stockfish may even have achieved a Draw.
In fact the result vindicates my oft-stated conviction that even a million blitz games are no substitute for a few good LTC Matches, but that's another story.
If DeepMind had played the Matches at 2 min/move, we would have been looking at a Score of maybe 72-0 and not 28-0 in favor of AlphaZero !
But perhaps DeepMind was just being kind to the old Alpha-Beta Engine lovers.

[pilgrimdan]

In a few hours A0 was superior to an engine developed for many years by humans.

That's the point most people miss (or choose to ignore ?) and go on harping about TCs and Hardware and the like.
Also, the STYLE of play was simply amazing.
Stockfish has been beaten many times by Komodo/Houdini, nothing new, but the way Stockfish was outplayed was astonishing.
AlphaZero simply TOYED with Stockfish in some of those Games and Stockfish looked so clueless, it was almost SCARY !
It made you wonder "Is THIS (Stockfish) what so many brilliant Programmers have been working on for so many years ? If so, they might have better spent that time with their families or playing Tiddlywinks or something ?"
It certainly didn't look like a routine Engine-Engine Match.
And the way AlphaZero's detractors emphasize on the large number of Draws is simply ridiculous.
If they had even bothered to go through the DeepMind Paper, it would have been obvious from Figure 2 on Page 7 that strength of AlphaZero increases rapidly with more time given, even more so than Stockfish.
In a Rapid/Blitz Match which most Testers here use, Stockfish may even have achieved a Draw.
In fact the result vindicates my oft-stated conviction that even a million blitz games are no substitute for a few good LTC Matches, but that's another story.
If DeepMind had played the Matches at 2 min/move, we would have been looking at a Score of maybe 72-0 and not 28-0 in favor of AlphaZero !
But perhaps DeepMind was just being kind to the old Alpha-Beta Engine lovers.

Anil

you may be familiar with a fella name Dale Carnegie...

he wrote a little book called - How to Win Friends and Influence People...

i know you don't 'care' about whether you win friends or not...

but if you want to influence people...

you may want to take a look at it...

truth is harsh...

of which you take great delight in...

wisdom is gentle...

and can influence folks...

you may want to use a little wisdom with your (truthful) words...

folks would listen to you a lot better ... if you did ...

these words I say to you ... are words I say to myself ...

[Leo]

Anil, that was a big unnecessary slap in the face to all the work the SF team has done for years and the engine that you use. Stop using the engine completely if its so bad.

[Michel]

Wide spectrum of opinions here... SF is total crap and DeepMind didn't accomplish anything.

Maybe I'll checkout Romichess.

[Rodolfo Leoni]

Anil, that was a big unnecessary slap in the face to all the work the SF team has done for years and the engine that you use. Stop using the engine completely if its so bad.

+1