What will be the score of knight odds match vs. FM Bolzoni?

[lkaufman]

Komodo W/L/D, 3/0/3
If a draw is a win, that would be 6/6.

Could you give your reasons for this forecast? Of course I hope you are right, but I cannot imagine such a result myself.

[TShackel]

Until now contempt was just another name for drawscore (with sign flipped). But now we have changed Komodo to also use the contempt setting to try to avoid piece exchanges, especially queen exchanges. It's probably similar to what Houdini did. We will probably keep the default setting modest, but for handicap matches it should be pretty aggressive. I'm trying to determine now what setting would likely work best in this match. What do you mean by "fix the goals of Komodo"? Komodo will still aim for a draw when possible if it's significantly behind; if it is not much behind it will almost surely not lose in any case.

I am "very" glad to hear that you decded to do this contempt in Komodo Larry. I had suggested that other top engines use Houdini 4.0's contempt fror a long time now. Avoiding exchanges makes for an exciting game provided that Komodo knows how to gain advantage with the pieces it keeps on board. At the very least it discourages quick draws after lots of exchanges getting to endgame. It's very possible with more pieces on the board Komodo has a better chance of stumblingn onto an advantage-gaining strategy.

Thanks for this idea and change in Komodo. I hope this leads to good elo increases along with more exciting games.

Sincerely,

Tim.

[lkaufman]

Until now contempt was just another name for drawscore (with sign flipped). But now we have changed Komodo to also use the contempt setting to try to avoid piece exchanges, especially queen exchanges. It's probably similar to what Houdini did. We will probably keep the default setting modest, but for handicap matches it should be pretty aggressive. I'm trying to determine now what setting would likely work best in this match. What do you mean by "fix the goals of Komodo"? Komodo will still aim for a draw when possible if it's significantly behind; if it is not much behind it will almost surely not lose in any case.

I am "very" glad to hear that you decded to do this contempt in Komodo Larry. I had suggested that other top engines use Houdini 4.0's contempt fror a long time now. Avoiding exchanges makes for an exciting game provided that Komodo knows how to gain advantage with the pieces it keeps on board. At the very least it discourages quick draws after lots of exchanges getting to endgame. It's very possible with more pieces on the board Komodo has a better chance of stumblingn onto an advantage-gaining strategy.

Thanks for this idea and change in Komodo. I hope this leads to good elo increases along with more exciting games.

Sincerely,

Tim.

It will probably hurt a bit against Stockfish but help against everyone else.

[APassionForCriminalJustic]

Latest Komodo (with contempt to avoid needless exchanges) on fast six core vs. FM Bolzoni (FIDE 2187, born 1962), Komodo giving knight (b1) odds but always getting White and winning draws. Time limit 45' + 15". The only similar match on record was Rybka (near Rybka 3, on octal machine about 8 years ago) against FM John Meyer, won by Meyer with a perfect 4 out of 4 score. Without making any prediction about the match myself, I'll just make the comment that IF Komodo manages to draw or win the match, I think it would be a remarkable achievement. Masters normally just resign when they lose a piece for nothing, or even sometimes if they get a pawn for it. If Komodo pulls off a drawn or better result, it would mean that chess is a much deeper and more difficult game than is generally believed. So even if I had no involvement with Komodo, I would root for it just for what it would tell us about how far human play is from what is possible.

Anyone with a 2187 ELO rating is definitely a strong player, but that is not a great rating for a Fide Master. I am pretty sure that what occurred with Rybka will obviously not be replicated for this match. We are talking about a human brain hundreds of ELO below our best humans versus a machine, and modern engine that effectively far exceeds 2700 ELO levels. The abilities, skill, and what the engine sees in its search is a thing of prolific genius compared to a strong player. I find it very difficult to believe that Bolzoni would win even one match despite being a full knight ahead. I would not be surprised at all. I hope that you do not allow the engine to resign too quickly if Bolzoni manages a won position. He could still very likely blunder the game or not see the win.

I personally think that handicap matches take away from the game of chess. That said, I like your point, Larry, that if Komodo can manage to win this match series it will show just how imperfect human play is. Certainly this is an interesting but true point.

By the way, what CPU are you using (a six core yes, but which one)? How much RAM? Are table bases included? How deep will the opening book go?

[lkaufman]

Latest Komodo (with contempt to avoid needless exchanges) on fast six core vs. FM Bolzoni (FIDE 2187, born 1962), Komodo giving knight (b1) odds but always getting White and winning draws. Time limit 45' + 15". The only similar match on record was Rybka (near Rybka 3, on octal machine about 8 years ago) against FM John Meyer, won by Meyer with a perfect 4 out of 4 score. Without making any prediction about the match myself, I'll just make the comment that IF Komodo manages to draw or win the match, I think it would be a remarkable achievement. Masters normally just resign when they lose a piece for nothing, or even sometimes if they get a pawn for it. If Komodo pulls off a drawn or better result, it would mean that chess is a much deeper and more difficult game than is generally believed. So even if I had no involvement with Komodo, I would root for it just for what it would tell us about how far human play is from what is possible.

Anyone with a 2187 ELO rating is definitely a strong player, but that is not a great rating for a Fide Master. I am pretty sure that what occurred with Rybka will obviously not be replicated for this match. We are talking about a human brain hundreds of ELO below our best humans versus a machine, and modern engine that effectively far exceeds 2700 ELO levels. The abilities, skill, and what the engine sees in its search is a thing of prolific genius compared to a strong player. I find it very difficult to believe that Bolzoni would win even one match despite being a full knight ahead. I would not be surprised at all. I hope that you do not allow the engine to resign too quickly if Bolzoni manages a won position. He could still very likely blunder the game or not see the win.

I personally think that handicap matches take away from the game of chess. That said, I like your point, Larry, that if Komodo can manage to win this match series it will show just how imperfect human play is. Certainly this is an interesting but true point.

By the way, what CPU are you using (a six core yes, but which one)? How much RAM? Are table bases included? How deep will the opening book go?

Hardware detaiils were posted separately. - The computer is an I7-4930K - 6 cores at 4.4 GHz, 8 GB hashtbales, syzygy 4-5-6 pieces.

There is of course no standard opening book for knight odds. I could write one (again, as I did 8 years ago) but don't have the time for that. So the "book" will just be my selection of the opening move for White in each game, so as to have some variety and avoid repeat openings. As for the result, opinion so far is evenly split between a Komodo match win and a match loss. I'm personally predicting a 2 to 4 defeat for Komodo. A piece is a lot! My own experience at knight odds is that I can usually only draw at blitz, but I think I could win this match with 15' + 5", and Bolzoni will have three times as much time as that to compensate for his 120 or so lower elo. If we lose we'll probably use my 24 core for the next knight-odds match, though that may not help much.

[Ferdy]

Komodo W/L/D, 3/0/3
If a draw is a win, that would be 6/6.

Could you give your reasons for this forecast? Of course I hope you are right, but I cannot imagine such a result myself.

I looked at the old games on how Meyer had done it vs Rybka and analyze the game 1 with sf6 at 20s/pos.
Meyer is like playing a perfect game, but sf6 have seen that there are some moves that were not optimal too, 2 positions on (50cp to 99cp error) and 8 positions on (20cp to 49cp error).
I am not displaying how rybka fared but there are blunders too. Since Komodo is way better now, there is a good chance that it will win the match.

Code: Select all

Moves Error calculation based from Stockfish 6 64 POPCNT and players from
Event: KnightOdds, after round 1.0

Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600K CPU @ 3.40GHz
Engine id name Stockfish 6 64 POPCNT
Hash 128 MB, Threads 1, MoveTime 20.00 sec/pos
Engine error margin: 10 centipawn

 Rank                       Players  AveDepth  TotalPos  AveError  DECnt  E300CP  E200CP  E100CP  E50CP  E20CP  EECnt   EERate    W    L    D  Games  Score  SRate

    1                      FM Meyer        25        49      9.37      0       0       0       0      2      8      3    6.12%    1    0    0      1    1.0  100.0%

Legend:
AveDepth - average depth reached by the engine in analyzing those positions
AveError - average difference between the engine and player score, in centipawn (1p = 100)
DECnt    - count of positions where position score is below zero, as a result of move error.
         - This is called Dangerous Error Counts
E300CP   - count of positions where player has blundered by 3 or more pawns
E200CP   - count of positions where player has blundered by 2 to 2.99 pawns
E100CP   - count of positions where player has blundered by 1 to 1.99 pawns
E50CP    - count of positions where player has blundered by 0.5 to 0.99 pawns
E20CP    - count of positions where player has blundered by 0.2 to 0.49 pawns
EECnt    - count of positions where player move score is better than engine move score
EERate   - 100*EECnt/TotalPos or the percentage of the Engine Error Counts

[S.Taylor]

The experts who have experience with match results will be more educated.

But with that 2187 player, assuming he is especially talented for this kind of style, the very most he could get from 6 games vs komodo with komodo giving the knight odds, i'd say would be 1.5-4.5 to komodo.

If it was NOT giving odds, then i can hardly believe the human would not lose all 6 games, at most, get one draw.

[Uri Blass]

Latest Komodo (with contempt to avoid needless exchanges) on fast six core vs. FM Bolzoni (FIDE 2187, born 1962), Komodo giving knight (b1) odds but always getting White and winning draws. Time limit 45' + 15". The only similar match on record was Rybka (near Rybka 3, on octal machine about 8 years ago) against FM John Meyer, won by Meyer with a perfect 4 out of 4 score. Without making any prediction about the match myself, I'll just make the comment that IF Komodo manages to draw or win the match, I think it would be a remarkable achievement. Masters normally just resign when they lose a piece for nothing, or even sometimes if they get a pawn for it. If Komodo pulls off a drawn or better result, it would mean that chess is a much deeper and more difficult game than is generally believed. So even if I had no involvement with Komodo, I would root for it just for what it would tell us about how far human play is from what is possible.

Anyone with a 2187 ELO rating is definitely a strong player, but that is not a great rating for a Fide Master. I am pretty sure that what occurred with Rybka will obviously not be replicated for this match. We are talking about a human brain hundreds of ELO below our best humans versus a machine, and modern engine that effectively far exceeds 2700 ELO levels. The abilities, skill, and what the engine sees in its search is a thing of prolific genius compared to a strong player. I find it very difficult to believe that Bolzoni would win even one match despite being a full knight ahead. I would not be surprised at all. I hope that you do not allow the engine to resign too quickly if Bolzoni manages a won position. He could still very likely blunder the game or not see the win.

I personally think that handicap matches take away from the game of chess. That said, I like your point, Larry, that if Komodo can manage to win this match series it will show just how imperfect human play is. Certainly this is an interesting but true point.

By the way, what CPU are you using (a six core yes, but which one)? How much RAM? Are table bases included? How deep will the opening book go?

Hardware detaiils were posted separately. - The computer is an I7-4930K - 6 cores at 4.4 GHz, 8 GB hashtbales, syzygy 4-5-6 pieces.

There is of course no standard opening book for knight odds. I could write one (again, as I did 8 years ago) but don't have the time for that. So the "book" will just be my selection of the opening move for White in each game, so as to have some variety and avoid repeat openings. As for the result, opinion so far is evenly split between a Komodo match win and a match loss. I'm personally predicting a 2 to 4 defeat for Komodo. A piece is a lot! My own experience at knight odds is that I can usually only draw at blitz, but I think I could win this match with 15' + 5", and Bolzoni will have three times as much time as that to compensate for his 120 or so lower elo. If we lose we'll probably use my 24 core for the next knight-odds match, though that may not help much.

I think that the main problem is that the search does not consider the fact that you do not play against perfect opponent.

If you want to do the best you should play also non optimal moves with the idea that the opponent may go wrong.

In other words you may even allow a forced mate for the opponent because you think that there is a good chance that the opponent is not going to see it and being a rook down for no compensation that is the alternative gives no practical chances.

Uri

[Isaac]

I hope that Komodo never resigns and keep playing until it's checkmated, if it ever loses. Because humans can mess up even when leading by a lot.

[Uri Blass]

I hope that Komodo never resigns and keep playing until it's checkmated, if it ever loses. Because humans can mess up even when leading by a lot.

Practically there are things that humans have no practical chance not to win
so I have no problem if komodo resign when the position is a simple win for black.

Of course there is no reason to resign only because of the evaluation of the computer.