Which of the many chess engines in this forum use b strategy ?

[mclane]

After Tal sacs are blunder-checked with a strong engine, they may not seem beautiful anymore because they were incorrect

This is largely a myth. As explained by Ivan Sokolov in the preface to Sacrifice and Initiative in Chess:

Mikhail Tal's sacrifices have a reputation that there was a significant amount of bluff involved, and before I started working on this book and had a serious look at his sacrifices, I was inclined to concur to this general opinion.

But nothing could be further from the truth! Even if you give them enough time to run, computer engines are not able to refute 90% of Tal's sacrifices. There is always compensation even against the very best defense, and most of the time it is enough for at least a draw.

Of course, I do not know, and I will never find out, how much of those possibilities Tal actually saw and how much was his 'intuition' (please see in the chapter on 'Intuitive Sacrifices' my opinion on this subject). But I’m sure that he saw a lot! Tal was an attacking devil, a nine-headed monster, a true Houdini. Not the crap we buy for 80 euros and install on our computers – Tal was the real deal. He could hide an elephant!

When it comes to Shannon type A vs B: As has been pointed out earlier, all modern programs use type B, but they use shallow verification searches to verify that moves are safe to prune. Omitting verification searches would not make the engines play more intelligent or attractive chess, it would only cause them to make more tactical blunders (and this is the only way in which it would make the engines play more human-like).

While I agree with Thorsten that the engines of the past could be more entertaining and had more varied styles, this has nothing to do with type A vs type B searches. It is partly because of improved search depth and speed, and partly because human evaluation tuning has been largely replaced by automated tuning.

You can actually see something similar in elite human play: Elite chess has become much more about concrete calculation and less about clash of different styles and ideas, and there is less diversity of styles. If you go back to the age of Steinitz, Lasker, Nimzovich, Tarrasch, Spielmann and Rubinstein, you see much more variety and personality than in the current computer-assisted age.

What I miss are alternative ideas how to program chess.

We have now very strong chess engines.
To name komodo and stockfish.

But why is anybody interested in participating in the same race these 2 are in ?

If you do a verification search to be safe which branches to prune, you mainly destroy the whole idea that the engine itself needs to find out via knowledge which moves to follow and which moves not to follow.

Only knowledge can decide.

Similar it is about planning.
Instead of planning ideas in chess, the conventional chess engines create a huge chess tree.
And call this main line planning,

But this is not how chess works,

A chess player looks into the root position and sees weaknesses and creates ideas how to exploit the weaknesses by manoeuvre pieces etc.
Then he only generates those moves that follow his ideas.

All the other moves and areas on the board are not needed,

The chess player completely ignores them,

So I miss that today’s chess programmers , instead of trying out new ideas, repeat the common and used to ideas and by doing this
Repeat the development Komodo and stockfish were going,

Why ?

This way computerchess makes no progress,

[Dann Corbit]

We have now very strong chess engines.
To name komodo and stockfish.
{snip}
But why is anybody interested in participating in the same race these 2 are in ?

This way computerchess makes no progress,

Look at Andrew's frustration with Ethereal.
Komodo is the last independend commercial chess program that seems to be attempting to advance.
You can still buy Shredder and whatever ChessBase is selling, but I do not think a lot of effort is going into those projects.

I think the main problem is that LC0 and Stockfish have enormous, dedicated teams who work for free to create tremendous engines. (If you can call that a problem -- a free lunch for the consumer)

Let's suppose you are a software developer.
How do you compete with 50 programmers who work for nothing, 100 testers who work for nothing, 200 machines donated for free use?
On top of that, you have to compete with the price: free.
How many people are going to buy your 3400 Elo engine when there are two 3800 Elo engines that are free?

Let's suppose you are a hobbyist.
Do you want to toil for 10,000 hours to achieve 3rd place?

The only reason we have people writing chess engines is for the pure joy of science and discovery. They do it for the challenge of it and for personal discovery.

BTW, computer chess is making exponential progress. It just isn't the kind of progress that you want.
On the other hand, the thing you want is still there. No really, it is.
Just look at the programs in the lower ranks of Graham's contests.
And, by the way, they are much stronger than the programs of yesteryear, even though they are bringing up the rear.

Olithink, for instance, uses mostly mobility do decide what move to make. Think about that. It's really interesting.

[chrisw]

We have now very strong chess engines.
To name komodo and stockfish.
{snip}
But why is anybody interested in participating in the same race these 2 are in ?

This way computerchess makes no progress,

Look at Andrew's frustration with Ethereal.
Komodo is the last independend commercial chess program that seems to be attempting to advance.
You can still buy Shredder and whatever ChessBase is selling, but I do not think a lot of effort is going into those projects.

I think the main problem is that LC0 and Stockfish have enormous, dedicated teams who work for free to create tremendous engines. (If you can call that a problem -- a free lunch for the consumer)

Let's suppose you are a software developer.
How do you compete with 50 programmers who work for nothing, 100 testers who work for nothing, 200 machines donated for free use?
On top of that, you have to compete with the price: free.

This is really stupid and has already been answered.
50 programmers tinkering away produce small incremental changes down an already defined path.
1 programmer tears up N thousand lines of the 50-programmer code and says “this is how you do it”. I’m sure you can think of an example.
1 programmer goes away and the 50 programmers get on with tinkering again, only with the 1 programmer code.
All major breakthroughs are made by 1 genius person usually with what turns out to be a very simple idea or rearrangement of old idea(s) in new way. Everybody else is basically just hacking, some with university certificate, some not. Most of computer chess is hacking. Kind of fun if you’re that way inclined, but no more.

How many people are going to buy your 3400 Elo engine when there are two 3800 Elo engines that are free?

Zilch. But they’re not going to buy anything else you do either. Btw, the big buyers up of all the software engineering/ML/AI/whatever all froze employing anyone new back in March. Armies of techie geeks, but nothing to do.

Let's suppose you are a hobbyist.
Do you want to toil for 10,000 hours to achieve 3rd place?

BS. It’s not toil, they enjoy it and they have nothing else productive to do.

The only reason we have people writing chess engines is for the pure joy of science and discovery. They do it for the challenge of it and for personal discovery.

More BS. It’s the intellectual equivalent of a hamster wheel.

BTW, computer chess is making exponential progress.

Good hamster wheel marching song, repeat mantra every revolution.

It just isn't the kind of progress that you want.
On the other hand, the thing you want is still there. No really, it is.
Just look at the programs in the lower ranks of Graham's contests.
And, by the way, they are much stronger than the programs of yesteryear, even though they are bringing up the rear.

Olithink, for instance, uses mostly mobility do decide what move to make. Think about that. It's really interesting.

[Madeleine Birchfield]

Similar it is about planning.
Instead of planning ideas in chess, the conventional chess engines create a huge chess tree.
And call this main line planning,

Yet earlier you said this about Lc0 earlier in this forum:

Artificial intelligence in chess is to make the machine create beautiful games and try to mate the opponent king with all material that is there and with all creativity the machine can generate,

LC0 shows this intelligence in games versus normal AB engines,

Lc0 uses a variant of Monte Carlo Tree Search as its main search algorithm, which according to its name still builds a huge chess tree. What makes Lc0's search tree different in your opinion from the conventional engines' search tree in this regards?

[Madeleine Birchfield]

But this is not how chess works,

A chess player looks into the root position and sees weaknesses and creates ideas how to exploit the weaknesses by manoeuvre pieces etc.
Then he only generates those moves that follow his ideas.

All the other moves and areas on the board are not needed,

The chess player completely ignores them,

Are you looking for an engine with only knowledge, no search? Then existing engines should be enough as they have configuration settings which you could set depth = 1 or depth = 0 depending on the engine, which is essentially the same as eliminating search entirely from the paradigm.

[mclane]

We have now very strong chess engines.
To name komodo and stockfish.
{snip}
But why is anybody interested in participating in the same race these 2 are in ?

This way computerchess makes no progress,

Look at Andrew's frustration with Ethereal.
Komodo is the last independend commercial chess program that seems to be attempting to advance.
You can still buy Shredder and whatever ChessBase is selling, but I do not think a lot of effort is going into those projects.

I think the main problem is that LC0 and Stockfish have enormous, dedicated teams who work for free to create tremendous engines. (If you can call that a problem -- a free lunch for the consumer)

Let's suppose you are a software developer.
How do you compete with 50 programmers who work for nothing, 100 testers who work for nothing, 200 machines donated for free use?
On top of that, you have to compete with the price: free.
How many people are going to buy your 3400 Elo engine when there are two 3800 Elo engines that are free?

Let's suppose you are a hobbyist.
Do you want to toil for 10,000 hours to achieve 3rd place?

The only reason we have people writing chess engines is for the pure joy of science and discovery. They do it for the challenge of it and for personal discovery.

BTW, computer chess is making exponential progress. It just isn't the kind of progress that you want.
On the other hand, the thing you want is still there. No really, it is.
Just look at the programs in the lower ranks of Graham's contests.
And, by the way, they are much stronger than the programs of yesteryear, even though they are bringing up the rear.

Olithink, for instance, uses mostly mobility do decide what move to make. Think about that. It's really interesting.

Computerchess in the way I see it is not there to make money or rank 1 or 2 in whatever list or tournament.

I see no real sense anymore in reaching rank 1 or 2 or whatever elo record.

But to increase the quality of chess programming.
That's interesting.

I am open for ANY effort. No matter which different path you go.

But the race on top is completely boring.

I am not using all my pcs anymore.

I worked testing with Don daily once. That made fun. When the first komodo versions appeared. Or many years ago tested now with Mark lefler.

I once tried to help Chris Whittington doing chess system tal.

Tried to win title with Mark uniacke.

Operated mchess.
Tested zarkov.

That was all interesting.

Worked with Christophe Theron on chess tiger and tested many rebel versions. That was all cool.
Diep versions. Shredder at the early stage.

But the engines of today and Computerchess today is boring.
The engines play almost perfect machine chess.

I see no progress other then hardware and
ELO.

But the quality of chess programs did not increase.

Maybe Chris W. Can make it with his corona chess.
Or others who try out new paths.

The only games that make fun in the moment are lc0 games.

[mclane]

Similar it is about planning.
Instead of planning ideas in chess, the conventional chess engines create a huge chess tree.
And call this main line planning,

Yet earlier you said this about Lc0 earlier in this forum:

Artificial intelligence in chess is to make the machine create beautiful games and try to mate the opponent king with all material that is there and with all creativity the machine can generate,

LC0 shows this intelligence in games versus normal AB engines,

Lc0 uses a variant of Monte Carlo Tree Search as its main search algorithm, which according to its name still builds a huge chess tree. What makes Lc0's search tree different in your opinion from the conventional engines' search tree in this regards?

The quality of the games is higher.

[mclane]

But this is not how chess works,

A chess player looks into the root position and sees weaknesses and creates ideas how to exploit the weaknesses by manoeuvre pieces etc.
Then he only generates those moves that follow his ideas.

All the other moves and areas on the board are not needed,

The chess player completely ignores them,

Are you looking for an engine with only knowledge, no search? Then existing engines should be enough as they have configuration settings which you could set depth = 1 or depth = 0 depending on the engine, which is essentially the same as eliminating search entirely from the paradigm.

I am looking for engines doing things different then the mass is doing.

The knowledge is imo important to create ideas. It helps analyze the situation in the end positions in chess tree.
Knowledge is the base if you want to find weaknesses and create ideas.

[Madeleine Birchfield]

The quality of the games is higher.

But the quality of Lc0 has nothing to do with the search, and everything to do with the fact that its evaluation function is a massive neural network. Smaller neural networks result in worse performance in Leela and lower quality games, while bigger neural networks result in better performance and higher quality games.

Lc0 still creates a huge search tree every time it moves, and it is well known that monte carlo tree search results in tactical blind spots for the engine, so it is in some regards an inferior search algorithm to alpha-beta. But it could handle large neural networks better than alpha-beta could.

[Madeleine Birchfield]

I am looking for engines doing things different then the mass is doing.

The knowledge is imo important to create ideas. It helps analyze the situation in the end positions in chess tree.
Knowledge is the base if you want to find weaknesses and create ideas.

And the trend in modern chess is towards more knowledge in chess engines. As shown with NNUE and Leela, neural network reinforcement learning could more easily generate evaluation functions that encode more knowledge than any human handcrafted evaluation functions could, and furthermore the encoding of said knowledge is hidden inside the neural network black box, in the same way that human knowledge is hidden inside the human brain black box for human chess players. So most engines are actually becoming more human like in that sense, but the engine developer no longer plays as large of a role in designing the evaluation function as that part has been automated.