Doubling of time control

[cdani]

The paradigm of Chess seems to follow closely the paradigm of Checkers. When Chinook started having 95%+ draw rates against top humans and 99% draw rate in self-play from the starting position, it took 10 or so more years to weakly solve Checkers as draw. It is more likely, if this capping of Chess at 400-500 more ELO points to current top engines is correct, that engines like Stockfish and Komodo already play non-losing Chess in say 5-10% of games from starting position. I don't believe the ways to win in perfect play the game of Chess are very rare or unique, more likely they are none. And the higher draw rate might indicate a real progress in solving Chess (again, like in Checkers). So, the capping in current paradigm might be not due to current paradigm, but to real progress in strength. It might be that this is the limit to weakly solved Chess as draw ftom starting position. It surely will take much longer than in Checkers, but I don't see a fundamental difference.

As with very long time control Stockfish & co rarely loses a game, will be nice to make an artificially stronger engine to test what can happen in the future.
So for example a version of Stockfish can be done that it reduces clearly less, so it will find more moves that standard Stockfish will ignore. Then we do a long time control match giving more time to the modified Stockfish to compensate, and see what happens. Ideally this match should be run in SMP mode, to be able to see if even with the widening of lazy smp the engines overlook many important moves.

To compensate, I suppose that one should give the modified version enough time to reach similar depths, but maybe there are better ways.

In fact I can do all this myself, but I think that explaining it here we can mature more the idea. Anyone interested on giving an opinion?

[duncan]

It surely will take much longer than in Checkers, but I don't see a fundamental difference.

more longer as in a couple of hundred/thousand years longer?

[duncan]

It says that at this 3700-3800 CCRL ELO level the doubling won't give any gain and draw rate becomes 100% for Komodo in self-play.

would you know about how many extra ply is needed to get to 3700-3800 CCRL ELO level with same evaluation. ?

[Robert Pope]

Is it likely or unlikely white find himself in zugzwang from starting position?

Very unlikely, but that's not at all the same as "isn't".

[MikeB]

This testing clearly shows a fundamental flaw in the Elo model.
The engine does not get weaker at long time control but stronger.
When given an hour to think, compared to one second, the move chosen with more time allowed will clearly be a much better move.

The increase in draws probably just shows that more careful chess is played by both sides at slower time control.

I've been crying myself hoarse for the last few years that testing through Blitz/STC games is NO SUBSTITUTE for testing through LTC games.
Glad to be vindicated.
Its not just a matter of engines being "more careful"....LTC games ruthlessly expose any weakness in the Evaluation and Search patterns of the Engine.
That is why in the TCEC, Houdini winning the Rapids is no guarantee that it will beat SF in the super-final ( though I hope it does, just to discomfit Adam ).
Adam has a point though, when he says that the Super-Final will be a different kind of ballgame.
Houdini can win only if it is REALLY the better Engine.

+1 I'm with you - the beauty in chess are in the deep searches...

edit: sorry - I think I just responded to a very old post that I thought was recent- just ignore - my bad ...

[shrapnel]

+1 I'm with you - the beauty in chess are in the deep searches...

edit: sorry - I think I just responded to a very old post that I thought was recent- just ignore - my bad ...

Its OK. A +1 is always welcome

[Laskos]

The paradigm of Chess seems to follow closely the paradigm of Checkers. When Chinook started having 95%+ draw rates against top humans and 99% draw rate in self-play from the starting position, it took 10 or so more years to weakly solve Checkers as draw. It is more likely, if this capping of Chess at 400-500 more ELO points to current top engines is correct, that engines like Stockfish and Komodo already play non-losing Chess in say 5-10% of games from starting position. I don't believe the ways to win in perfect play the game of Chess are very rare or unique, more likely they are none. And the higher draw rate might indicate a real progress in solving Chess (again, like in Checkers). So, the capping in current paradigm might be not due to current paradigm, but to real progress in strength. It might be that this is the limit to weakly solved Chess as draw ftom starting position. It surely will take much longer than in Checkers, but I don't see a fundamental difference.

As with very long time control Stockfish & co rarely loses a game, will be nice to make an artificially stronger engine to test what can happen in the future.
So for example a version of Stockfish can be done that it reduces clearly less, so it will find more moves that standard Stockfish will ignore. Then we do a long time control match giving more time to the modified Stockfish to compensate, and see what happens. Ideally this match should be run in SMP mode, to be able to see if even with the widening of lazy smp the engines overlook many important moves.

To compensate, I suppose that one should give the modified version enough time to reach similar depths, but maybe there are better ways.

In fact I can do all this myself, but I think that explaining it here we can mature more the idea. Anyone interested on giving an opinion?

If you can build a "reasonable" to test, less reducing and pruning Stockfish, it would be interesting. LTC seems scary a bit to test. Maybe scaling is better (at faster TC). Komodo can modify these in UCI options, but, for example, getting rid of LMR will give an advantage at fixed depth to non-LMR of maybe 100-200 ELO points, and I don't know what to do with those, see the scaling of this difference? See the blunders of LMR-enabled?

[Laskos]

It says that at this 3700-3800 CCRL ELO level the doubling won't give any gain and draw rate becomes 100% for Komodo in self-play.

would you know about how many extra ply is needed to get to 3700-3800 CCRL ELO level with same evaluation. ?

Maybe double of what we are seeing today. Just guesstimate. It won't get to non-losing player from standard opening position, but very close to that.

[Laskos]

It surely will take much longer than in Checkers, but I don't see a fundamental difference.

more longer as in a couple of hundred/thousand years longer?

Dozens of years, again, guesstimate.

[duncan]

It surely will take much longer than in Checkers, but I don't see a fundamental difference.

more longer as in a couple of hundred/thousand years longer?

Dozens of years, again, guesstimate.

if there are 10^43 positions in chess according to shannon , and 10 ^50 atoms on earth. assuming it takes 10 million atoms to store a position in the future, the tablebase will be as big as planet earth.

where would this maga database be stored ?