Where did all these 3400 engines come from?

[Peter Skinner]

Hello all,

I've been getting into computer chess again after a long hiatus due to family responsibilities. Raising 3 children on your own is tough work, so if you had a single Parent at any point in your life, thank them for putting you first before everything.

On a side note, where did all these 3400 engines come from? When I left there was 6 engines that cracked 3300+.

Is this more of the same from Robbolitto and what not?

Congratulations to the Komodo team for winning the World Computer Chess Championships in Macao.

[Zenmastur]

Hello all,

I've been getting into computer chess again after a long hiatus due to family responsibilities. Raising 3 children on your own is tough work, so if you had a single Parent at any point in your life, thank them for putting you first before everything.

On a side note, where did all these 3400 engines come from? When I left there was 6 engines that cracked 3300+.

Is this more of the same from Robbolitto and what not?

Congratulations to the Komodo team for winning the World Computer Chess Championships in Macao.

Haven't you heard?

"Taking ideas is not a vice, it is a virtue." We have another word for this. It is called learning.

There is, of course, a legal definition for this activity. It's called intellectual property theft. But what's a few ideas among friends, right?

But sharing ideas is an even greater virtue. Especially when they're NOT yours. We have other legal words for these activities. They're called industrial espionage and reverse engineering.

All of these “Virtues” have been practiced with GREAT virtue in the computer chess community!

A few virtuous moments and a lot of testing later and we have a lot of 3400 rated engines.

“Just add water, shake, and bake!”

Regards,

Zenmastur

[PK]

It's not like that. Guys writing open source Stockfish (3400 Elo) invent something. Guys writing open source Laser (3200 Elo) code something similar in a way that happens to be easier to read for me. They admit the Stockfish influence in a commit message. I test the same stuff in open source Rodent (3000 Elo) and it works. Now there are three places a programmer can learn the idea from. Knowledge diffuses.

[Sven]

On a side note, where did all these 3400 engines come from? When I left there was 6 engines that cracked 3300+.

Is this more of the same from Robbolitto and what not?

Which 3400 engines are you talking about? In the current CCRL 40/40 list there are three, plus one almost 3400:
- SugaR is a Stockfish fork, and CCRL lists only one engine from the same "family"
- Lc0 is an open source neural network engine following the AlphaZero approach
- Komodo and Houdini are well-known

[mclane]

Hello all,

I've been getting into computer chess again after a long hiatus due to family responsibilities. Raising 3 children on your own is tough work, so if you had a single Parent at any point in your life, thank them for putting you first before everything.

On a side note, where did all these 3400 engines come from? When I left there was 6 engines that cracked 3300+.

Is this more of the same from Robbolitto and what not?

Congratulations to the Komodo team for winning the World Computer Chess Championships in Macao.

The main problem I see is that all those engines play chess on a level between 2600-3300+
ELO, but they do not really have a clou what chess is or what the target of chess is.
They mainly solve chess via a deep search tree. Reach 15-44 search depths and outcompute the opponent.
But do they play really chess ? I mean, do they have a plan or do they make moves that do not lose material?!

[xr_a_y]

All open-source engine, even very often taking and sharing ideas from pioneers and from stockfish, are also a new opportunity to test again, to learn again, to teach again, to discover again, to love again chess programing . Having many strong engines, and thus engines developpers also strenghten the whole community and creates new interresting debate on forums.

Speaking for myself, I always spend a lot of time understanding and testing each thing used in my engine and very often ask for help here.

[jdart]

Code: Select all

But do they play really chess ? I mean, do they have a plan or do they make moves that do not lose material?!

Well, they don't usually lose material to shallow tactics. The NN engines used to do that but they have improved to the point where mostly they don't.

All these programs rely on heuristics: techniques that, on the average over many games, lead to good results.

There is usually no plan in the sense that is easy to explain to a human.

[zullil]

Code: Select all

But do they play really chess ? I mean, do they have a plan or do they make moves that do not lose material?!

Well, they don't usually lose material to shallow tactics. The NN engines used to do that but they have improved to the point where mostly they don't.

All these programs rely on heuristics: techniques that, on the average over many games, lead to good results.

There is usually no plan in the sense that is easy to explain to a human.

"Planning" is what humans do so that their chess playing is (a bit) less terrible than it otherwise would be.

[mclane]

The idea behind chess is to mate. For that you need a plan. Otherwise you run around on the board without understanding and IMO you do not play chess but survive.

If an engine plays 2600+ ELO but is not planning to mate, it has IMO no understanding of the game.
Ok it plays 2600 elo.
But is chess running around and winning because the opponent resigns or has not enough material or is chess the art of mating the opponent ?

IMO even those strong chess programs have no clue about chess and run around waiting for the opponent to make a mistake.
We have so many draws in computerchess because the engines have no plan.

Yes humans have plans.
Why would machines NOT have a plan ??

It’s Intelligent to have a plan for the day.
Machines having NO plan are stupid.

IMO the next step in computerchess are programs that plan what to do to mate from the given position.

It’s what intelligent entities do. No matter if dog, human being, alien or AI machines.

[Henk]

Maybe there plan is have as much elo as possible no matter what. Thats what they are tuned for.
Don't know how much knowledge is needed to achieve that goal.


If they use much knowledge then they are not stupid.