A non-chessplayer can't understand why somebody would love to stare for hours to a board with some wooden pieces while in the meantime the weather is nice to organize a barbecue with some friends. I rarely talk about chess with non-players. However also inside our chess-world there exists a lot of variety. The people playing competitions is the largest and most important group but we also have niches of which the computer-freaks are likely the greatest weirdos. They are the nerds of the nerds or some sort of super-nerd.
At least that was the case till recently as last year I noticed a clear change. The arrival of AlphaZero end of 2017 created a chain-reaction. This is very different from what we experienced after Deep Blue defeated in 1997 the reigning world-champion Garry Kasparov. At that time the revolutionary engine got dismantled leaving many questions unanswered. This time the momentum was kept as the code of the new engine was shared so other developers could create an AlphaZero for a standard PC. I am talking of course about lc0 or also called leela (more about this in a later article).
After decades of traditional alpha-beta programming we now see the steep and very spectacular raise of neural networks of which we could witness some very interesting clashes of styles in the most recent tcec-championships. Attractive games combined with a good marketing-strategy caused an explosive increase of chess-fans wanting to follow computer-chess see below graphic which presents the number of viewsessions per month for TCEC.
After decades of traditional alpha-beta programming we now see the steep and very spectacular raise of neural networks of which we could witness some very interesting clashes of styles in the most recent tcec-championships. Attractive games combined with a good marketing-strategy caused an explosive increase of chess-fans wanting to follow computer-chess see below graphic which presents the number of viewsessions per month for TCEC.
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| Bron: http://www.chessdom.com/tcec-season-15-to-ab-or-nnot-to-ab-that-is-the-question/ |
Getting 2 million viewsessions per month by just showing 1 game at once is definitely something extraordinary. Ok Carlsen does still much better but 99,9% of the other professionals never gets this kind of views. Besides this is not the only thing which proves that computer-chess is booming. On youtube we see a huge increase of videos in which games of engines are discussed. However even more stunning is that reporters now start to refer to games played by engines when they cover tournaments played by grandmasters. A couple of years ago this would've been totally unacceptable. The only reason of engine-games were till recently to understand which engine is stronger and almost nobody would value them equal to games played between humans. Well today some reporters do compare games played by top-grandmasters to a game played between Lc0 and Stockfish as happened e.g. in fide grand prix moscow semifinal chess.
Although the grandmasters started their game a couple of hours later than the engines, I do think this was just a coincidence. Nakamura had played this line already several times even just a couple of weeks ago in a rapid and such things aren't missed by a top-professional like Grischuk in his preparation. On the other hand I find it very remarkable that the engines manage to select a hyper-modern opening without using any openingbook nor any human intervention happened.
The fact that the engines can autonomously create games with interesting openings is something very important. Obviously top-players have discovered this too. Since 2010 I already maintain a database of games played by engines to use for my opening-analysis see e.g. using databases. I guess at that time I was an exception but today I am sure any ambitious professional does this even Magnus Carlsen. Well more likely his entourage takes care of it which I deduct from a twitter of his helper, the Danish strong grandmaster Peter Heine Nielsen: "Computer-chess is spectacular."
Besides those engine-games have also influenced Magnus' game. Many of the so called novelties already popped up in games played by engines. We see proof of this in the worldchampionship played against Caruana end of last year as in later tournaments.
The opening is the most obvious phase to learn from but also later phases can be instructive. The American top-grandmaster Sam Shankland would've never resigned below game if he had seen the 35th round of the tcec super-final of season 12. I already used the position in my article fake news to illustrate the gain of strength in endgames of Stockfish.
Earlier an engine was nothing more than a tool. Today more and more people consider engines as an entity with its own identity. Many players cheer for their favorite engine via the chat-box or in fora. Some even make their own website for them as you can see in this example mytcecexperience.
So we see less and less difference between games played by engines or humans. Last Tuesday Ex-Machina was shown once again at the tv but this seems for chess to be today more reality than fiction.
Brabo
So we see less and less difference between games played by engines or humans. Last Tuesday Ex-Machina was shown once again at the tv but this seems for chess to be today more reality than fiction.
Brabo
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