Cursed win at TCEC

[Michel]

I just get annoyed (in general) by wilful ignorance.
In this particular case: with the 50 move rule in play and under perfect play by both engines (guaranteed by the use of tablebases) the relevant position is a draw. There's simply no room for discussion.

I agree. This discussion is simply ridiculous.

[tpoppins]

Hey, you leave Zaphod out of this. :)

Threads like this one are useful whatever their outcome. They tend to bring out differences in individual posters' thinking, and those who cannot handle simple logic reasoning and/or lack common sense stick out like a sore thumb. Then in other threads you have a better idea whose statements to take with a pound of salt or perhaps ignore out of hand.

[bob]

Have a look:

http://tcec.chessdom.com/archive.php?se=9&sf&ga=17

Engines showing 0.00 due to 50-move rule, but position was auto-adjudicated as an M72 TB win

Discuss

Not much discussion possible.
Both engines know that it's a draw (0.00) and play accordingly.
Suddenly the GUI decides otherwise and is clearly not following the rules of chess as implemented in the engines.
It's kinda ridiculous, but not very important.

Agreed, it should be a draw. As I posted in the TCEC chat, the adjudication should match the result if the engines had played the position out. In this game, it was a 50 move draw.

I would not agree here with Gary.
A tablebase win is a tablebase win. The position is simply won for white, so why declare it a draw? If both engines assume it is 0.0, that is only their fault they still have not implemented the much more relevant 100-move draw rule instead of the well-outdated 50-move rule. (or, what is the longest tb win without captures/promotions/pawn move?)

I am not certain what FIDE says about the 50-move/100-move draw rule, but why should engines follow FIDE? Engines are at the cutting edge of progress and progress says abovementioned position is simply a win for the stronger side. It is simply time to implement longer draw rule than 50-moves.

That should be specified in some protocol though, I agree it was not quite fair to both Houdini and SF in terms of their lack of knowledge, but a win is a win.

You are ignoring ONE important point here. The official FIDE rules of chess. And the 50 move rule is clearly spelled out and there are NO exceptions to the rule. That is the very reason SYZYGY tables exist, in fact, to allow a program to win positions that are winnable, while still playing with the 50 move rule in full effect.

This was a flawed result, any way you look at it. In a FIDE tournament it would have been declared a draw after both sides had played 50 non-reversible moves.

[Sven]

The following valid points were made in various posts:

1) The TB used for adjudication is a DTM TB which is not appropriate for a tournament where the 50-moves FIDE rule is used; for that purpose a DTZ50 (or in theory DTM50) TB would be required.

2) Currently there is no tournament manager supporting a DTZ50 TB for adjudication.

3) The engines were equipped with DTZ50 TBs so they had no chance to see the same TB scores that were available to the GUI.

Therefore rules and setup contradict to each other. To resolve the contradiction one of two rules must be given preference: either the 50-moves FIDE rule or the adjudication based on a DTM TB. For me the most natural decision would be to withdraw the adjudication and change the result into a draw, since the conditions of the adjudication were not as they should have been.

For the future I suggest to add a clarification to the rules saying that adjudicating a position as a TB win will be skipped if the shortest mate is not possible within the 50-moves rule. This would resolve the situation in which the handling of endgames with a TB mate in more than 50 moves is defined by two different contradicting rules.

[styx]

I too think, this game should be declared a draw. But it seems like it doesn't matter much. Only if Houdini is between 0 and 1 point behind Stockfish after 100 games, the result of this one game becomes significant. And to be honest, it doesn't look like that at the moment. But let's wait and see.

[Dirt]

For the future I suggest to add a clarification to the rules saying that adjudicating a position as a TB win will be skipped if the shortest mate is not possible within the 50-moves rule.

How are you going to manage that? Cutechess does seem to have Syzygy support started, but it is still unreleased as far as I can tell.

[elpapa]

There's simply no room for discussion.

And yet here we are on page eight.

[mwyoung]

Because I said dubious opens. As in not sound.

I still don't see why you think that would skew the results, if each engine has to play both sides. In the worst case the start position is a certain win, and then they would just get a 1-1 on that line, and it is as if the game was never played, and there were just fewer games.

And I don't see why you don't think that it does skew results.

And the games are played and do count in TCEC.

Lets make an absurd example to show the point. I play GM Carlsen a 6 game match with 6 fixed and very unsound openings. So unsound I am able to win with white every game. And so is GM Carlsen.

You would say that is fair. Each side played the same openings and that does not skew results.

But I scored 3 wins and drew the match against GM Carlsen. Hmmm.

If GM Carlsen played those 6 fixed openings against GM Caruana the results would be the same. 3 wins for GM Caruana and 3 wins for GM Carlsen. And you would say that is to be expected anyway, and that is fair they played the same openings.

The problem is it does skews results. And the wider the strength deference between the players. The more such a fixed opening design choice to cause more decisive games can skew results.

[syzygy]

Because I said dubious opens. As in not sound.

I still don't see why you think that would skew the results, if each engine has to play both sides. In the worst case the start position is a certain win, and then they would just get a 1-1 on that line, and it is as if the game was never played, and there were just fewer games.

And I don't see why you don't think that it does skew results.

And the games are played and do count in TCEC.

Lets make an absurd example to show the point. I play GM Carlsen a 6 game match with 6 fixed and very unsound openings. So unsound I am able to win with white every game. And so is GM Carlsen.

And that is exactly what is not happening in TCEC.

[MikeB]

There's simply no room for discussion.

And yet here we are on page eight.

+1 it's clearly one of those cases where the obvious solution is so clear and recognizable by most people - yet the people running the show, I'm sure very smart people in their own right , show to the entire world - their utter lack of common sense and sound judgement . At this point it's not about the 1/2 point at all - not only are they displaying a total lack of judgment, but they are also displaying to the world , their circle the wagons mentality and are even not even considering the possibility they missed the boat , that's it even possible that they could even be wrong. One has learned more about them in this one episode , than anyone ever desired 😳