game showing some blindness by Lc0

[jdart]

This was played on playchess.com today. White (Lc0) seems to have made a couple serious errors here. One is 31. Rxh6?:

[d]r2q1k1r/5p2/3p1n1p/1p2pP2/p3P3/2Pp3R/PP1Q2P1/3B2KR w - - 0 31

White took the wrong pawn: it was much better to capture the dangerous passer with Qxd3. Also note 36. Rh7? Better was Kg1, a move Stockfish and Houdini find quickly:

[d]r3k3/5p2/2qp3R/1p2pP2/p3n2Q/2Pp4/PP4P1/3B1K2 w - - 0 36

After this Lc0 had negative evals for a while but they were quite moderate compared to its opponent. It did not seem to see the danger. In the final endgame material is even but Black is winning.

[pgn][Event "Sunday 13 October Rapid Tour, 16+0, 12 "] [Site "playchess #643450Machines A"] [Date "2019.10.13"] [Round "2"] [White "Taras0404, Lc0 v0.22.0 - i7 97"] [Black "Wolfgang Baller, Raubfisch X41a1"] [Result "0-1"] [ECO "C54"] [WhiteElo "2397"] [BlackElo "2468"] [PlyCount "122"] [EventDate "2019.10.13"] [EventType "swiss (rapid)"] 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Nf6 4. d3 Bc5 5. c3 d6 6. O-O a5 7. Bg5 Ba7 8. Nbd2 h6 9. Bh4 g5 10. Bg3 O-O 11. Bb3 Kg7 12. Nc4 b5 13. Ne3 Bd7 14. Bc2 Re8 15. h3 a4 16. Qd2 Bxe3 17. fxe3 Ne7 18. Rf2 Nh5 19. Bh2 g4 20. hxg4 Nf6 21. Nh4 Nxg4 22. Rf3 Nxh2 23. Kxh2 Ng8 24. Nf5+ Bxf5 25. exf5 Nf6 26. e4 Rh8 27. Rh1 Kf8 28. Rh3 c5 29. Bd1 c4 30. Kg1 cxd3 31. Rxh6 $2 (31. Qxd3) 31... Qb6+ 32. Kf1 Rxh6 33. Rxh6 Nxe4 34. Qe1 Qc6 35. Qh4 Ke8 36. Rh7 d2 37. Kg1 a3 38. bxa3 Qd5 39. f6 Kd7 40. Kh2 Rxa3 41. Bf3 Kc7 42. Bh5 Kc6 43. Bf3 Rxc3 44. Bxe4 d1=Q 45. Bxd5+ Kxd5 46. Rxf7 Rc1 47. Qb4 Qh5+ 48. Kg3 Qg6+ 49. Kh2 Kc6 50. Ra7 Qh6+ 51. Kg3 Qe3+ 52. Kh2 Qxa7 53. Qe4+ d5 54. Qg6 Qg1+ 55. Kh3 Qh1+ 56. Kg3 Rc3+ 57. Kf2 Qh4+ 58. Ke2 Qc4+ 59. Ke1 Re3+ 60. Kf2 Qf4+ 61. Kg1 Re1# 0-1 [/pgn]

[Nay Lin Tun]

Do you know the net version , GPU and approx speed of Lco?

[jdart]

I do not know. It is a server account. Rating on playchess is 2397.

--Jon

[shrapnel]

This was played on playchess.com today. White (Lc0) seems to have made a couple serious errors here. One is 31. Rxh6?:

[d]r2q1k1r/5p2/3p1n1p/1p2pP2/p3P3/2Pp3R/PP1Q2P1/3B2KR w - - 0 31

Blindness, my FOOT !
lc0 will play only as strong as the Hardware and Neural Nets it gets, unlike the AB Engines using which, even a relatively weak 4-Core Player can hold a 16 Core player to a Draw, quite often.
Using my new 2080 Ti which just arrived and am still Tuning and the very powerful and large Sergio NN which is 384x30 ( which even slows down the mighty 2080 Ti) lc0 found Qxd3 in just over 30 seconds.

This just confirms my view that people with weak GPUs shouldn't even bother trying out lco, as it just gives a bad reputation to the Engine when they get beaten badly.
lc0 NEEDS strong GPUs and large NNs to realize its full potential. Smaller Networks give more Knp/s no doubt, but they are ultimately too weak to hold their own against Stockfish/Stockfish derivative players.
In fact I think the folk over at lczero.org are wasting their time doing Training runs using the very weak 128x10 NNs.
Despite the very high Knps I get, I usually get beaten or draw on Infinity Chess.
The 320x24 NNs are much better and I rarely lose.
The GPU should be able to run the cudnn-fp-16 backend at the very least, if it wants to be taken seriously.

[jdart]

This was a rapid game so White may not have had 30 seconds to make the right move, and would have required even more than that if running on lesser hardware. Stockfish will find Qxd3 right away.

[glennsamuel32]

Using my new 2080 Ti which just arrived and am still Tuning and the very powerful and large Sergio NN which is 384x30 ( which even slows down the mighty 2080 Ti) lc0 found Qxd3 in just over 30 seconds.

Lc0 finds a move when that move is the "first focus" -- your pic shows it still hasn't chosen it.
My laptop finds it in 64 secs...

[shrapnel]

This was a rapid game so White may not have had 30 seconds to make the right move, and would have required even more than that if running on lesser hardware. Stockfish will find Qxd3 right away.

True. Rapid games are certainly not the forte of GPU-intensive Engines.Even the first AlphaZero-Stockfish Match was played at 1 min/move. So the Google Brains were also well aware of this.
All the more reason that people with weak GPUs shouldn't even look at lc0.
On the positive side, GPUs are only getting stronger and stronger and lc0 performance can only improve, provided you have the money.
Thomas Spark over at Chessbase Server is running TWO 2080 Tis and is rarely beaten and has a ELO Rating of 2548.
A GPU faster than the 2080 Ti is being released in March '20 and the Networks will only get stronger.
So plenty to look forward to....

[shrapnel]

Lc0 finds a move when that move is the "first focus" -- your pic shows it still hasn't chosen it.

It does, just a few seconds later. I was just trying to highlight the earliest when it started considering that move seriously.
With TWO 2080 Tis, like what Thomas Spark over at the Chessbase Server has, the time taken will become almost half.
I too, am considering a 2nd 2080 Ti or I may wait for the new nVidia GPU which is being released in the first quarter of 2020.
Cheers !