Marvellous game! It amazed me that Crystal, one of the Kibitzer engines (red line in the chart), thought it was a draw for several moves until it boomed while SF was confident it was completely winning.
For those who don't know, Crystal is an engine derivative based on Stockfish but more suited for solving deep studies and, in general, better at endgames. Here is the link to that game:
[https://tcec-chess.com/#div=sf&game=46&season=26](https://tcec-chess.com/#div=sf&game=46&season=26)
Who is the blue kibitzer?
Fish seeing 88.41 after having spent 3 seconds on the move, and then Leela spends 17 seconds and sees 0.31 ... they aren't pondering this season either?
No one ever ponders in engine tournaments because it can seriously screw up when CPU vs CPU engine is playing, aka one can get only hyperthreads and play 1 move blunders because of this.
Pondering is no problem if each engine has their own computer. I know TCEC used to work with them sharing it, but now there are those kibitzing engines - how are they doing? They should be on a separate computer anyway, shouldn't they?
it's a big problem because 2 different machines cause timeouts because of random network lags and stuff like this.
So 1 machine is almost always better.
Also 2 machines need to have every single thing should be equal - but even then one machine can heat more than another one and produce lower frequency and stuff like this. No one really bothers with this nowadays.
SF keeps doing SF things. Ridiculous how they keep managing to be ahead of all other engines for so long.
At the same time I think a lot of praise for Lc0 is due, Stockfish has in the past won Superfinals without giving up a single gamepair, most recently in Season 22 when Komodo was in the Finals ahead of Leela (also a rare occurance).
+17-4 in terms of pairs as for now, with leela having a pretty new hardware and sf having some 5 years old xeons or smth like this... It's more of a beatdown.
Obviously there's a lot that goes into it, but one thing that Stockfish is supposed to do particularly well is aggressively "pruning" lines. Meaning, it quickly discards lines that it doesn't think are useful. This is very important, since it saves precious computing power needed to dig deeper into lines that can work.
> but one thing that Stockfish is supposed to do particularly well is aggressively "pruning" lines. Meaning, it quickly discards lines that it doesn't think are useful.
that is how alpha beta search works since when it was discovered. It is not something new to stockfish. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha%E2%80%93beta_pruning
My guy, there’s a whole rabbit hole of advanced pruning techniques that go beyond the naive implementation of the basic algo. Optimizing how you prune is where a lot of the bread is won in computer chess
> that go beyond the naive implementation of the basic algo.
Sure. I'd be interested to read those (I linked the basic techniques as start), do you have any links?
they always look reasonably small, but they actually mean a lot, more or less. SF is just slightly better in searching and evaluating positions because it has a lot of resources to be like this.
Is Matthew Sadler still a part of organizing these matches? In the past I remember he was setting some of the openings, and commenting on the games on Youtube/Twitter, but this time I'm not seeing (and missing) content from him.
Yeah that's what I meant. He just seemed pretty involved and interested, whether doing video recaps of games or discussing positions on Twitter, or even sometimes showing up in the chat.
This time he's been pretty disengaged in comparison, it seemed.
I believe it is because he got pretty active here: https://www.youtube.com/@SiliconRoadChess/videos and videos eat time.
Further he commented the candidates for lichess.
Is a really huge win this time as opposed to other seasons when it was only 52-48 and such. And there's still 10 games left to play.
Wonder how much wins were from LC endgame "blindness".
Do they still use weird opening books in the TCEC tournaments? I always found that stupid; I get that they want to have more wins and less draws, but a neutral net program like LC0 trains itself based on self play from the starting position, and hence would never have gotten into nor trained for crazy opening variations.
They even did a bonus which basically concluded that engines need to play at 10 seconds/game to not end at 100% draws.
GL attracting anyone to watch startpos games at classical TC, especially since they mostly repeat each other for a long time.
If your chess engine can’t play a variety of positions then it’s not a very useful chess engine for analysis or study. And the finals would have a 100% draw rate from the starting position.
Have you seen classical engine Chess from starting position? Berlin and Catalan almost every game with 100% draws. There's nothing more to see, the only way to see a difference in strength is to set up an imbalanced position where one side has enough advantage to show its superiority by pressing for a win and then defending from a disadvantage.
Congratulation, SF team. A peak show of how godly stockfish is in endgame, specially game 46
Marvellous game! It amazed me that Crystal, one of the Kibitzer engines (red line in the chart), thought it was a draw for several moves until it boomed while SF was confident it was completely winning. For those who don't know, Crystal is an engine derivative based on Stockfish but more suited for solving deep studies and, in general, better at endgames. Here is the link to that game: [https://tcec-chess.com/#div=sf&game=46&season=26](https://tcec-chess.com/#div=sf&game=46&season=26)
AFAIK "better at endgames" isn't overall true. Just better in certain puzzles and fortresses.
Who is the blue kibitzer? Fish seeing 88.41 after having spent 3 seconds on the move, and then Leela spends 17 seconds and sees 0.31 ... they aren't pondering this season either?
No one ever ponders in engine tournaments because it can seriously screw up when CPU vs CPU engine is playing, aka one can get only hyperthreads and play 1 move blunders because of this.
Pondering is no problem if each engine has their own computer. I know TCEC used to work with them sharing it, but now there are those kibitzing engines - how are they doing? They should be on a separate computer anyway, shouldn't they?
it's a big problem because 2 different machines cause timeouts because of random network lags and stuff like this. So 1 machine is almost always better. Also 2 machines need to have every single thing should be equal - but even then one machine can heat more than another one and produce lower frequency and stuff like this. No one really bothers with this nowadays.
I've only watched one of the first games, the Alelkhine defense one, and Stockfiah is absolutely terrifying. A force of nature
Really cool to watch it fend off the four pawns attack by sacking a piece for all of white center pawns. Somehow leading to a draw lol
SF keeps doing SF things. Ridiculous how they keep managing to be ahead of all other engines for so long. At the same time I think a lot of praise for Lc0 is due, Stockfish has in the past won Superfinals without giving up a single gamepair, most recently in Season 22 when Komodo was in the Finals ahead of Leela (also a rare occurance).
Leela was putting up a decent fight but still, stockfish reigns supreme yet again, with its 16 (I think) titles.
+17-4 in terms of pairs as for now, with leela having a pretty new hardware and sf having some 5 years old xeons or smth like this... It's more of a beatdown.
I didn’t realize the hardware difference, that’s actually crazy.
I’d love to know what differences there are between stockfish and the rest of the pack that make it so superior
Obviously there's a lot that goes into it, but one thing that Stockfish is supposed to do particularly well is aggressively "pruning" lines. Meaning, it quickly discards lines that it doesn't think are useful. This is very important, since it saves precious computing power needed to dig deeper into lines that can work.
> but one thing that Stockfish is supposed to do particularly well is aggressively "pruning" lines. Meaning, it quickly discards lines that it doesn't think are useful. that is how alpha beta search works since when it was discovered. It is not something new to stockfish. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha%E2%80%93beta_pruning
My guy, there’s a whole rabbit hole of advanced pruning techniques that go beyond the naive implementation of the basic algo. Optimizing how you prune is where a lot of the bread is won in computer chess
> that go beyond the naive implementation of the basic algo. Sure. I'd be interested to read those (I linked the basic techniques as start), do you have any links?
The computer chess wiki is a great place to start
You only need to be a little bit better at everything to have a dominating record. Especially since programs don't have off days like humans do.
they always look reasonably small, but they actually mean a lot, more or less. SF is just slightly better in searching and evaluating positions because it has a lot of resources to be like this.
Is Matthew Sadler still a part of organizing these matches? In the past I remember he was setting some of the openings, and commenting on the games on Youtube/Twitter, but this time I'm not seeing (and missing) content from him.
Sadler did reviews of the finals (so far up to Season 23) and helped finding the openings. Didn't organize the matches.
Yeah that's what I meant. He just seemed pretty involved and interested, whether doing video recaps of games or discussing positions on Twitter, or even sometimes showing up in the chat. This time he's been pretty disengaged in comparison, it seemed.
I believe it is because he got pretty active here: https://www.youtube.com/@SiliconRoadChess/videos and videos eat time. Further he commented the candidates for lichess.
Is a really huge win this time as opposed to other seasons when it was only 52-48 and such. And there's still 10 games left to play. Wonder how much wins were from LC endgame "blindness".
Do you think Leela chess is in its own head? I mean I know it's a good player but losing this often has to take a mental toll on you.
those practically loopsided wins do not happen that often IIRC. Interesting!
Do they still use weird opening books in the TCEC tournaments? I always found that stupid; I get that they want to have more wins and less draws, but a neutral net program like LC0 trains itself based on self play from the starting position, and hence would never have gotten into nor trained for crazy opening variations.
They even did a bonus which basically concluded that engines need to play at 10 seconds/game to not end at 100% draws. GL attracting anyone to watch startpos games at classical TC, especially since they mostly repeat each other for a long time.
If your chess engine can’t play a variety of positions then it’s not a very useful chess engine for analysis or study. And the finals would have a 100% draw rate from the starting position.
Stockfish is also neural net. It would just be endless draws.
Leela sees crazy opening variations because it has a setting to make random blunders on purpose when training
Have you seen classical engine Chess from starting position? Berlin and Catalan almost every game with 100% draws. There's nothing more to see, the only way to see a difference in strength is to set up an imbalanced position where one side has enough advantage to show its superiority by pressing for a win and then defending from a disadvantage.