Historic Milestone: AlphaZero

[Laskos]

Did this published paper give any estimate for perfect chess? One figure has 3500 limit or +100 from SF8. Are we near? Where is Kai, when we need him ?

I started following yesterday this development, I have no much time recently.

About your question. First, to define perfect chess. Say, perfect chess in the sense of non-swindling or fooling around, 32-men tablebases.

I had a wide range of estimates, from 3700-4500 CCRL 40/40 rating points, and with the latest data of Andreas Strangmüller tipping to the lower bound, say 3800.

With this result, +28 =72 -0 (is it correct, or I missed some more results?), the tip is again towards a low bound in ELO. a +36 =56 -8 result would tip towards a higher ELO bound, although the ELO advantage of AlphaZero would have been the same over SF8.

It seems both these monsters play very often perfect moves, and sometimes maybe even perfect games. So, it seems the ELO bound cannot be very far away.

[Albert Silver]

Can't believe it without a press release from Google.

They did more than that. They published a scientific paper anyone can read.

https://en.chessbase.com/post/the-futur ... arns-chess

Why not actually cite a paper instead of your article, why the need for self-promotion?
https://arxiv.org/abs/1712.01815

Because I wanted to.

[Leo]

Did this published paper give any estimate for perfect chess? One figure has 3500 limit or +100 from SF8. Are we near? Where is Kai, when we need him ?

I started following yesterday this development, I have no much time recently.

About your question. First, to define perfect chess. Say, perfect chess in the sense of non-swindling or fooling around, 32-men tablebases.

I had a wide range of estimates, from 3700-4500 CCRL 40/40 rating points, and with the latest data of Andreas Strangmüller tipping to the lower bound, say 3800.

Again, this result, +28 =72 -0 (is it correct, or I missed some more results?), the tip is again towards a low bound in ELO. a +36 =56 -8 result would tip towards a higher ELO bound, although the ELO advantage of AlphaZero would have been the same over SF8.

It seems both these monsters play very often perfect moves, and sometimes maybe even perfect games. So, it seems the ELO bound cannot be very far away.

Alpha Zero won only 3 games with black.

[fern]

In a way this is the end of chess.
In 25 years, the end of us as the leading mental entity in the earth.

Becoming a kitten regards
F

[Daniel Shawul]

Thanks Albert! Well written article.

A minor comment is that there is a distinction b/n AlphaGo Zero, and AlphaZero but I guess you left this out deliberately to keep it simple.
Maybe Google had this chess results when they first published AlphaGo Zero anyway -- only been a few months b/n these two.

Daniel

[fern]

" just that outcalculates Stockfish consistently...."

Well, that is enough, pal.

Fern

[Leo]

While I understand why you would like to do that (so would I), I believe it will never happen.
This is surely not the original intend of the team that worked on AlphaZero.

They just proved that by letting an IA develop within a few hours it could get more than a match for a regular program on which several thousands of hours were spent....

Unfortunately, the proof is done and they will likely move to the next things. SF with opening book, this or that..... is most probably of little interest to them.

rgds

Agree.

[Albert Silver]

In a way this is the end of chess.
In 25 years, the end of us as the leading mental entity in the earth.

Becoming a kitten regards
F

I'll be honest, I don't get these comments at all. AlphaZero played great, no question, and the games showed a computer engine that did nt suffer from the same problems we usually see. This too was great.

However, the end result was still a 102 Elo performance over SF on a 32-core machine. I never thought to myself: "if we just get 102 more Elo on Stockfish it will be the end of chess."

[Laskos]

In a way this is the end of chess.
In 25 years, the end of us as the leading mental entity in the earth.

Becoming a kitten regards
F

Fern, be kitten, a silly kitten, and drink wine, good wine! No one will ever beat us at that!

Cheers pal!

[Leo]

Can't believe it without a press release from Google.

They did more than that. They published a scientific paper anyone can read.

https://en.chessbase.com/post/the-futur ... arns-chess

Albert, you wrote a nice article. Thanks.