Stockfish evaluation

[Karlo Bala]

After a while, I'm playing with Stockfish. The thing that is strange to me is that in equal positions Stockfish always think that stands better, even with reversed colors.

Does new Stockfish use asymmetric search or evaluation?

[Ras]

The thing that is strange to me is that in equal positions Stockfish always think that stands better, even with reversed colors.

Did you set the contempt parameter to 0?

[Karlo Bala]

The thing that is strange to me is that in equal positions Stockfish always think that stands better, even with reversed colors.

Did you set the contempt parameter to 0?

You're right. At first sight, I simply didn't notice the contempt option. Somehow it is barely visible
Thank you!

[syzygy]

After a while, I'm playing with Stockfish. The thing that is strange to me is that in equal positions Stockfish always think that stands better, even with reversed colors.

To avoid this problem while analyising a position (Stockfish will think whoever has the move is in the lead), you can set "Analysis Contempt" to "Off". (The default "Both" setting makes little sense.)

[Ovyron]

What I've found is that this is not a problem, advantage can be gained with a new paradigm where you keep two different evals, one for white and one for black, so both colors try to maximize their own scores, and there's positions to be avoided by both colors (like the Marshall-counter attack) or favorable to both colors (specially against weaker opposition, where you could beat them from both sides.)

NNUE broke all those paradigms, though (if both sides like their own position, one of them is wrong, says the net...)

[syzygy]

What I've found is that this is not a problem, advantage can be gained with a new paradigm where you keep two different evals, one for white and one for black, so both colors try to maximize their own scores,

But alpha-beta does not work like that.
Both colors are always trying to maximise/minimise the same evaluations, which however suddenly change when the other gets to move in the root position (if you use "Both").

But if you're happy with the placebo effect, then never mind me.

[Ovyron]

But alpha-beta does not work like that.
Both colors are always trying to maximise/minimise the same evaluations, which however suddenly change when the other gets to move in the root position (if you use "Both").

But if you're happy with the placebo effect, then never mind me.

I'm talking about analyzing positions for games against other people that are not using this paradigm, and getting advantageous positions and better analysis quality despite having worse hardware and not analyzing as many positions (or for much shorter depths; like analyzing at depth 32 all positions while opponent goes to depths of 60).

What I've said is that people that just analyze at home against themselves are fooling themselves into thinking they've found something good, and the only way to know is to go out there and play with someone with a better a analysis method and get beaten badly, discovering the analysis method is garbage. Like the unassisted alpha-beta analysis of engines which makes it waste more time with more analysis (the time wasted grows exponentially.) I'll not even say that this new paradigm is good, it's just that it's very easy to improve over unassisted alpha-beta.

Question: what's the highest Stockfish depth that you can beat? (this means that you get all the time in the world and takebacks and whatever you require to beat this depth) - the higher the depth you can beat, the better your analysis method, because that depth will rely on alphabeta.