End of the Torch Experiement

[jefk]

ah ok didn't know this yet (his ban) well i can't regret this (lol) he had earlier complaints from others,
and while i was quite tolerant against him i (also) started to notice that it became almost impossible
to engage in reasonable discussions (not condemning the guy btw, he just may be a problematic person)
sigh
ah well, now back to 'normal' again

[chrisw]

well Srdja i've simply put mr CQ on my ignore ('foe') list, but his name (and quotes of his silly messages) still pop up
(also notified a moderator but didn't get a reaction; that they grant some freedom of expression is understandable
but his impulsive messages with posting misleading youtube clips for me became rather annoying).
[...]

Hmm, CQ got banned (cos of signature misuse) and if YT embed is the issue, the mods can deactivate that module in phpBB backend:

Youtube links
viewtopic.php?t=83925

Ban of member
viewtopic.php?t=83939

--
Srdja

We already did a youtube signature disable (back in April?) because he was spamming youtube vids into his sig back then. I'm assuming he must have found a way round the disable and then inserted a current political propaganda video, via sig, into the yesterday post. He knows it's not allowed and I, for one, do not intend to play a moderation war with him of escalating measure/countermeasure. Hence the ban.

[AndrewGrant]

We already did a youtube signature disable (back in April?) because he was spamming youtube vids into his sig back then. I'm assuming he must have found a way round the disable and then inserted a current political propaganda video, via sig, into the yesterday post. He knows it's not allowed and I, for one, do not intend to play a moderation war with him of escalating measure/countermeasure. Hence the ban.

based

[Krzysztof Grzelak]

Why on earth would chess.com do that, having invested what I think is a large sum of money in it in order to drive their business ? It seems that a lot of people think everything should be free these days.

And why wouldn't chess.com do it?

[Krzysztof Grzelak]

Andrew, when will the free version of Torch be available?

[Kanizsa]

Torch has beaten Leela in multiple Bullet and Blitz events in a row; Never managed to win one of the Rapid events; But has beaten Leela in a h2h classical event.

"We all know that the alpha-beta search approach tends to outperform neural architectures, so it’s not surprising that Torch consistently defeated Leela in Bullet and Blitz competitions. However, I’m surprised by your mention of Torch beating Leela in a ‘classical’ event. For me, and likely for many others, ‘classical’ refers to the traditional time control, such as that used in the TCEC (Top Chess Engine Championship). I regard you as a precise and knowledgeable person in this field, and I’d appreciate your opinion on a couple of questions.

Firstly, could you clarify what you mean by ‘classical chess’?"

As for the second question: what do you think the result of TCEC 26 would have been in an alternate final between Leela and Torch based on Noomen’s book?

[AndrewGrant]

Andrew, when will the free version of Torch be available?

As a stand-alone UCI engine, there are no plans for this. Torch is available in your browser, on chess.com, however.

[AndrewGrant]

"We all know that the alpha-beta search approach tends to outperform neural architectures, so it’s not surprising that Torch consistently defeated Leela in Bullet and Blitz competitions. However, I’m surprised by your mention of Torch beating Leela in a ‘classical’ event. For me, and likely for many others, ‘classical’ refers to the traditional time control, such as that used in the TCEC (Top Chess Engine Championship). I regard you as a precise and knowledgeable person in this field, and I’d appreciate your opinion on a couple of questions.

Firstly, could you clarify what you mean by ‘classical chess’?"

As for the second question: what do you think the result of TCEC 26 would have been in an alternate final between Leela and Torch based on Noomen’s book?

The event was here, https://www.chess.com/computer-chess-ch ... nd-torch-1 , in which Torch won with a score of 51 to 49. The time control was 30 minutes + 5 seconds. Lichess considers this as "classical" for example. Although many would call this the upper-end of Rapid.

I don't know how things would go at TCEC. The CPUs there are weaker than what you can readily get as a consumer now. While the GPU at TCEC is the same as at CCC. So it is hard to say what amount of impact that has. Speed is worth a lot of elo, for 1-thread bullet games. Less so as the time control grows, and the thread count grows. But it is also clear to me that Lc0 does not "scale better" than Alpha-Beta engines.

My guess would be the same guess I've made for every recent Rapid or Classical event between Leela and Torch: Coin Flip.

[pohl4711]

I don't know how things would go at TCEC. The CPUs there are weaker than what you can readily get as a consumer now. While the GPU at TCEC is the same as at CCC. So it is hard to say what amount of impact that has. Speed is worth a lot of elo, for 1-thread bullet games. Less so as the time control grows, and the thread count grows. But it is also clear to me that Lc0 does not "scale better" than Alpha-Beta engines.

For me, Lc0 definitly gains more strength with each doubling of computing-power (no matter, if doubling thinking-time or 2x fast hardware), compared to other engines. But not because Lc0 scales better, I agree here. But just because Lc0 has so much lower nps than Stockfish, Torch etc. And it is a fact in computerchess, that doubling the computing-power or doubling the thinking-time gives the less Elo-gain the higher the number of calculated nodes per played move on the board (depends on nps and thinking-time) already were before the doubling. IMHO, if we could accelerate both Lc0 and Stockfish by a really huge factor (10000x or so (perhaps, when the light-based CPUs are coming in the future...)), Lc0 should beat Stockfish and all other nnue-neuralnet engines.

[Werewolf]

I don't know how things would go at TCEC. The CPUs there are weaker than what you can readily get as a consumer now. While the GPU at TCEC is the same as at CCC. So it is hard to say what amount of impact that has. Speed is worth a lot of elo, for 1-thread bullet games. Less so as the time control grows, and the thread count grows. But it is also clear to me that Lc0 does not "scale better" than Alpha-Beta engines.

For me, Lc0 definitly gains more strength with each doubling of computing-power (no matter, if doubling thinking-time or 2x fast hardware), compared to other engines. But not because Lc0 scales better, I agree here. But just because Lc0 has so much lower nps than Stockfish, Torch etc. And it is a fact in computerchess, that doubling the computing-power or doubling the thinking-time gives the less Elo-gain the higher the number of calculated nodes per played move on the board (depends on nps and thinking-time) already were before the doubling. IMHO, if we could accelerate both Lc0 and Stockfish by a really huge factor (10000x or so (perhaps, when the light-based CPUs are coming in the future...)), Lc0 should beat Stockfish and all other nnue-neuralnet engines.

I may be misunderstanding your point above, apologies if I am.
But if Lc0 can get close to the strength of SF/Torch using far fewer nps, then its greater improvement per doubling of compute actually is better scaling, surely? What else can we call it?
I would have thought your points above only became valid if there was a clear difference in strength between the top 3.
Your final point about light-based CPUs also supports superior scaling (I agree here).