Recent Alpha zero vs Stockfish 8 match.

[Leo]

https://www.chess.com/news/view/updated ... game-match

"The machine-learning engine also won all matches against "a variant of Stockfish that uses a strong opening book," according to DeepMind. Adding the opening book did seem to help Stockfish, which finally won a substantial number of games when AlphaZero was Black—but not enough to win the match."

So the other games SF has no opening book?!

SF began to win with white and a book. Most of Alpha zeros wins are with white also.
So it sound likes AZero crushed SF 8 with no opening book. lol. Wow. I just cant figure this out. I don't trust these people.

[Dann Corbit]

If neither engine had a book, it is completely fair.

[jhellis3]

A0 trained with movecount as an input....

[jp]

Leo, there is a whole thread on this topic:

http://talkchess.com/forum3/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=69175

[Uri Blass]

If neither engine had a book, it is completely fair.

I do not agree.

A0 played the opening position so many times that it is better without books.
A0 is optimized to play the opening position well when stockfish is optimized to play in all the tests not from the opening position.


If you want to make a fair competition with another program the only fair way is simply to contact the authors of the opponent before you do the competition so everybody can decide about a book to use or not to use book.

If you decide that the book of the opponent is fixed(no book or a specific book) then you can decide to publish results only if you win and it is not fair.

The unfair thing is that A0 did not tell that they are going to compete against stockfish before the competition so the stockfish team could choose version of stockfish and book and and they had no risk of losing because if they lose they publish nothing and we know nothing.

[corres]

If neither engine had a book, it is completely fair.

No.
NN itself is the book.
Opening + middle game + endgame book together.

[Leo]

Leo, there is a whole thread on this topic:

http://talkchess.com/forum3/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=69175

Thanks. I will look at it. I am late to the game.

[Leo]

If neither engine had a book, it is completely fair.

I do not agree.

A0 played the opening position so many times that it is better without books.
A0 is optimized to play the opening position well when stockfish is optimized to play in all the tests not from the opening position.


If you want to make a fair competition with another program the only fair way is simply to contact the authors of the opponent before you do the competition so everybody can decide about a book to use or not to use book.

If you decide that the book of the opponent is fixed(no book or a specific book) then you can decide to publish results only if you win and it is not fair.

The unfair thing is that A0 did not tell that they are going to compete against stockfish before the competition so the stockfish team could choose version of stockfish and book and and they had no risk of losing because if they lose they publish nothing and we know nothing.

This is pretty much my line of thinking.

[hgm]

If neither engine had a book, it is completely fair.

No.
NN itself is the book.
Opening + middle game + endgame book together.

And the same holds for Stockfish, obviously.

[corres]

If neither engine had a book, it is completely fair.

No.
NN itself is the book.
Opening + middle game + endgame book together.

And the same holds for Stockfish, obviously.

In Stockfish where is a book?