The Next Big Thing in Computer Chess?

[CornfedForever]

As this is a non - engine specific question...and the it is an inevitability...the answer is: 8 man tablebase.

[smatovic]

Just let computers compete at playing a game that is more interesting (less drawish) than orthodox Chess.

Tenjiku Shogi would be an interesting candidate, as it requires extremely deep tactics.

I myself will stay with orthodox Chess. Checkers, Chess, Go, sooner or later they all fall.

If draws are the issue in orthodox chess, there could be another method for giving points, via a distance to draw metric, 2 games, longest distance to draw white vs. shortest distance to draw black, something like that. But regardless what rules you set up, it will only prolong the fall IMO.

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Srdja

[Rio]

There are exists drawless variants - shogi, janggi or drawless games (go).
Maybe the next big thing for computer chess will be to come up with a variant that is at the same time as similar as possible to classic chess, and at the same time is drawless.

[smatovic]

Well, if have no draws but perfect play engines the score will be 1:1?

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Srdja

[Dann Corbit]

Draws are realistic, in my opinion. Not all wars or fights end in a win. Sometimes, the outcome is that neither side triumphs.
True, nobody likes a sister kisser.
But that is simply reality

[CornfedForever]

As, again, the question concerns 'computer chess', not 'engines' specifically, let me say that we are ALREADY seeing the Next Big Thing. That is what is loosely termed 'AI' when it comes to explaining/teaching the game of chess.

Chess.com has their (newly revamped) GAME REVIEW...not bad but far from ideal
Lichess has something similar - same issues as above.
Aimchess - a full 'suite' aimed at player development...different from the others I list...and pulls your games from the above sites. Still needs work to be really 'useful' IMHO. And they promise things like the ability to import you OTB games and never deliver.
Decode Chess - is the best of these...but at $84 a year, I am not sure the cost/benefit is there. Also, it may be 'good' at dissecting a game, I don't think they will give someone the benefit of doing this for a group of your games and targeting your weaknesses.

The reason I think it is the #1 'next big thing' is because whatever happens or does not with engines, HUMANS will still play the game as it is...and struggle to get better at it. The future of 'computer chess' belongs to 'programmers', not engines or it's tweaking/tweakers.

[Leo]

Here is my take on a subject that interests me.

1. Stockfish development is still finding improvements to the engine.
2. I find it very interesting when one engine holds in an unbalanced opening or position and the other engine doesn't in the reverse game.
3. If you play Stockfish vs your opponent who is also using Stockfish in the engine room,yes, there will be many draws.
4. Hardware is improving every year. It would be interesting to see a supercomputer play the TCEC computer. With gigantic hardware I would assume you could get out front and defeat it.
5. I think computer chess will go substantially beyond 4000 Elo over time.

Just my opinions.

[Rebel]

The next big thing is a neural net driven search.

[hgm]

The next big thing is a neural net driven search.

Isn't that what LC0 already does?

[towforce]

The next big thing will be when the GPUs and CPUs transparently share memory resources so that we do not have to copy to and from GPU memory.
Suddenly, engines like LC0 will become unbeatable.

It's not just the copy time that we save, it is a whole new programming paradigm.

You mean SoC?

I think SoCs are an astonishing piece of technology - but their strengths lie in their size (tiny) and their power consumption (milliamps). Having said that, one thing that Seymour Cray (famous supercomputer engineer and proprietor) used to emphasise strongly was reducing the distance between components - and not much does that better than an SoC.