If engines have style...

[muxecoid]

I heard engines have different "style". By looking at game between two strong computers can you guess who played white and who played black with better than random accuracy? Obviously I mean analyzing the game by yourself, no computers involved.

[LaurenceChen]

I heard engines have different "style". By looking at game between two strong computers can you guess who played white and who played black with better than random accuracy? Obviously I mean analyzing the game by yourself, no computers involved.

Can you do the same with two super GM games with their names removed?
Obviously, not...
Engines do have playing style...

[muxecoid]

What about series of 20 games? Given 20 games between engine A and engine can you make a good guess?

[tmokonen]

My engine has style. It's called pathetic stupidity.

[UncombedCoconut]

Michael did say "strong".
Some top engines seem to have notable differences in style. For instance, I think Stockfish really likes passed pawns. But these differences are only observable in games where a player gets a chance to proceed according to two distinct yet strong strategies, neither of which is obviously more likely to work.

Speculative rant: There are many versions of the initial question that are worth asking.
Can a human group a set of games based on White's engine family better than random? I think so: Don Dailey's program can easily detect a stylistic match between engines if it can query them on an arbitrary set of positions. Humans are better at pattern-matching, and probably good enough to get decent results if they're limited to looking at positions from real games.

Can a human "feel" an engine's style by looking at games, and figure out which positional features make it a good analysis or sparring partner? I doubt it. Even statistically speaking 20 games shouldn't be enough, and I rarely "feel" patterns which are established by a larger sample size.

[silentshark]

My engine has style. It's called pathetic stupidity.

nice.. for mine it's intermittent insanity

[tmokonen]

My engine has style. It's called pathetic stupidity.

nice.. for mine it's intermittent insanity

The sad part of it is... my engine still beats me mercilessly nine games out of ten.

[UncombedCoconut]

The sad part of it is... my engine still beats me mercilessly nine games out of ten.

Indeed, it's depressing how little effort it takes to write a board-game-playing program that can beat its creator. (I've actually done this with Othello, Ataxx, and Connect Four.) It's worst when you see your program make obvious strategic errors and still win!

[tmokonen]

The sad part of it is... my engine still beats me mercilessly nine games out of ten.

Indeed, it's depressing how little effort it takes to write a board-game-playing program that can beat its creator. (I've actually done this with Othello, Ataxx, and Connect Four.) It's worst when you see your program make obvious strategic errors and still win!

Exactly! Tony's Chess will expose its king to attack, weaken its pawn structure, get behind in development, etc. ... but since my tactical ability is limited, it will just beat me with tactics.

[Nimzovik]

I dare submit that as strength increases the 'stylistc' differences will be much less noticible as perhaps there is only one absolute truth in chess.....