Re: Alphazero news
Posted: Sun Dec 16, 2018 9:05 pm
Any engine has an opening repertoire by definition. Stockfish also prefers some opening moves over others, and would considtently play these.
If you define "having an opening repertoire" as "playing deterministically", then yeah.
Stockfish without book is not deterministic and may play different moves in the same position in the opening dependent on luck because of SMP
not sure, mostly curious about the strength & depth of it. i have no concrete idea about the test i want to see, just some nebulous theories.jp wrote: ↑Sun Dec 16, 2018 8:18 pmYeah, I'm not sure if we can make a good guess for what 'x' might be, but there's no way that SF+bookX is simply outbooking its opponent. If bookX were so great an advantage, Lc0+bookX would not have done so badly against SF no book, even if Lc0 did not like those openings.yanquis1972 wrote: ↑Sun Dec 16, 2018 7:54 pm depending on what 'x' is, that the book(or resultant TC advantage) is overly strong. as i've said, there's a massive difference between opening variety & simply outbooking the opponent. if you want to test the former it's vital to make sure you're not falling into the latter. so low-ply & with relatively high randomness as to moves selected, imo, is sensible.
Maybe some info on how many plies bookX goes would be good.
yanquis, if Kai gives the url to download bookX, could you run the test you want to see?
Yeah, you could say that the NN engine is essentially outbooking its bookless opponent. The Deepmind argument for not giving its opponent a book is that neither has a book, but no one here is disagreeing that the NN engine obviously has an opening repertoire.yanquis1972 wrote: ↑Sun Dec 16, 2018 7:54 pm i don't really understand the LTC argument w/r/t lc0, provided the book is sufficiently shallow. a thoroughly trained NN has what is essentially an opening repertoire, so i agree it's essential to test it against a large variety. (much larger than deepmind did; as i said, i believe those openings are primarily important for benchmarking against A0)
Didn't you want e.g. SF+book vs bookless SF?yanquis1972 wrote: ↑Mon Dec 17, 2018 12:14 am not sure, mostly curious about the strength & depth of it. i have no concrete idea about the test i want to see, just some nebulous theories.
the reason i can't hold any special weight to the Lc0+book result is that, again, it goes against principle. you're starting Lc0 in a 'foreign' position, even if it's believed to be (or objectively) superior.
So the meaningful thing to say is not that "AlphaZero has an opening repertoire", but "in contrast to AlphaZero, Stockfish' built-in opening repertoire sucks". Whether the line of reasoning "this is a weak spot of Stockfish, so it would not be fair to include it in any strength test" makes any sense... Well, I suppose anyone can judge that for himself.
What do you think is the "proper" way to perform a strength test? Let's just say now I create a book, have it compiled into the engine, how can this kind of cheating get justified and the other engines cannot beat it from the starting position is because their "opening repertoire sucks"?hgm wrote: ↑Mon Dec 17, 2018 9:29 amSo the meaningful thing to say is not that "AlphaZero has an opening repertoire", but "in contrast to AlphaZero, Stockfish' built-in opening repertoire sucks". Whether the line of reasoning "this is a weak spot of Stockfish, so it would not be fair to include it in any strength test" makes any sense... Well, I suppose anyone can judge that for himself.