Dragon versus Nakamura

[lkaufman]

Nakamura should have been given the white pieces. Just a couple of inaccuries and Dragon may equalize. Human does not have much margin of error to go on against top engines, even with odds.

The problem with this is that we played a series of such rapid games (two Black pawn odds, same pawns as Naka match) with an Indian kid with a 2500 chess.com blitz rating, and Dragon only came out mildly ahead. Nakamura is 700 elo higher on chess.com blitz, so I would expect Dragon would lose badly. Playing second with the f7 pawn missing is particularly difficult normally, with a second pawn also missing it's a big handicap. With f7 and c7 handicap even I have decent chances vs Dragon.

[lkaufman]

Nakamura psyched himself out.

I don't think he realized he was playing the MCTS version.

I mentioned we used MCTS mode in the chess.com chat along the side of the game board. He speculated there was a more aggressive setting. The only change was MCTS mode. In both regular and MCTS mode we used a low Time Usage to make Dragon move faster. We even had the same Contempt. We have speculated in the past MCTS mode (although much weaker against engines) might be better against some opponents, since it should prefer to leave them with positions with just a few good moves over positions with many good moves. Regular alpha-beta does not care since if one move is a refutation, the rest are never searched at that point in the tree. We cannot prove this though since it would take a lot of games to do so.

It shouldn't actually be very complicated to build a search function that in each position selects objectively sub-optimal move that, however, leads to positions where all but one or very few moves for opponent are bad. That kind of engine would easily win against best human even with a rook handicap.

I totally disagree about it.

rook is a rook and I think nakamura did not do his best against dragon with 2 pawns handicap.
I do not claim that he lost on purpose but you do not do your best when you talk during the game and explain what you think to other people.

I agree with you Uri, I believe no engine will ever beat a top player in a Rapid series at rook handicap. The idea is interesting though, but not worded properly, since choosing moves where most replies are bad typically means choosing captures, and trading off is a bad strategy when behind in material. But looking for moves that appear to offer many plausible replies, most of which can be refuted with deeper search, is a good idea. I think MCTS does this to some extent, but it could be improved on.

[Fulvio]

It was an interesting and fun show: thanks for the new engine and to Naka.
The last game he really tried to play its best, with very few chatting. It was amazing how the engine gained so much space (poor Naka's bishop on h8!) and even before the blunder the position seemed so difficult for an human!

[lkaufman]

Someone proposed Rook for Two Minors in the Twitch chat. This is a considered a huge advantage.

Is this something to consider as future odds configuration ?

Yes, it has been proposed before, but never tried. Two knights for rook is probably a bit more than two pawns handicap. Worth a try. Two bishops for rook would be significantly larger handicap.

[Chessqueen]

Someone proposed Rook for Two Minors in the Twitch chat. This is a considered a huge advantage.

Is this something to consider as future odds configuration ?

Yes, it has been proposed before, but never tried. Two knights for rook is probably a bit more than two pawns handicap. Worth a try. Two bishops for rook would be significantly larger handicap.

I still believe that if Nakamura does NOT comments and play fully concentrated with another GM making comments for him of why he made X move instead of another candidate move, plus having Nakamura play half of the match with White Pieces is more than enough to get an even match under the same two pawn Odds and time control condition. Offer Nakamura a rematch under those conditions and see if he agrees?

[lkaufman]

Someone proposed Rook for Two Minors in the Twitch chat. This is a considered a huge advantage.

Is this something to consider as future odds configuration ?

Yes, it has been proposed before, but never tried. Two knights for rook is probably a bit more than two pawns handicap. Worth a try. Two bishops for rook would be significantly larger handicap.

I still believe that if Nakamura does NOT comments and play fully concentrated with another GM making comments for him of why he made X move instead of another candidate move, plus having Nakamura play half of the match with White Pieces is more than enough to get an even match under the same two pawn Odds and time control condition. Offer Nakamura a rematch under those conditions and see if he agrees?

Well it might be "even", but I think White would just win most of the games (with some draws), whoever is White. Two pawns and move is just a lot bigger handicap than two pawns. Anyway he didn't seem like he wanted to do this again any time soon, probably it will be someone else next.

[JJJ]

Is there a video of Nakamura playing against Dragon somewhere for free ?

[Ponti]

[quote=Vinvin post_id=874006 time=1605831936 user_id=299]
Final score : Dragon wins 6.5-1.5 (===+++++)

The 8 games on Lichess with a quick automatic analyze : https://lichess.org/study/x960lWCJ

8 games in PGN :

Code: Select all

[Event "Live Chess - Odds Chess"]
[Site "Chess.com"]
[Date "2020.11.18"]
[White "PlayKomodo"]
[Black "Hikaru"]

1. c4?? { Blunder. e3 was best. } ......

What ? 1.e3 is better than the English opening ??

[Alayan]

Trying to apply normal opening theory to an odds game is a terrible idea.

[Chessqueen]

Someone proposed Rook for Two Minors in the Twitch chat. This is a considered a huge advantage.

Is this something to consider as future odds configuration ?

Yes, it has been proposed before, but never tried. Two knights for rook is probably a bit more than two pawns handicap. Worth a try. Two bishops for rook would be significantly larger handicap.

I still believe that if Nakamura does NOT comments and play fully concentrated with another GM making comments for him of why he made X move instead of another candidate move, plus having Nakamura play half of the match with White Pieces is more than enough to get an even match under the same two pawn Odds and time control condition. Offer Nakamura a rematch under those conditions and see if he agrees?

Well it might be "even", but I think White would just win most of the games (with some draws), whoever is White. Two pawns and move is just a lot bigger handicap than two pawns. Anyway he didn't seem like he wanted to do this again any time soon, probably it will be someone else next.

The reason for Nakamura not willing to play now is because he was offered the last spot to play in the skilling Open , once it is over you could offer Alireza Firouzja to play with the White pieces
https://en.chessbase.com/post/skilling- ... 20-preview