Post by lkaufman » Fri Mar 08, 2019 5:52 am

M ANSARI wrote: ↑ Thu Mar 07, 2019 8:24 am I think if you wanted to create a network for Lc0 that plays really well at Knight odds is to train it to play without the Knight. I think it will very quickly figure out the best chances in the position and play much stronger than if it was simply playing with a network trained on the normal start position. This is why I also think that Lc0 will soon be unbeatable at Chess 960. If it took Google 4 hours to get a strong network at the start position ... theoretically once hardware catches up you could have a network for each of the Chess 960 positions and if the few weaknesses of Lc0 are sorted out, this would make a formidable Chess 960 engine as it would play each of the start positions equal to how it now plays the classic chess start position. I think if you wanted to create a network for Lc0 that plays really well at Knight odds is to train it to play without the Knight. I think it will very quickly figure out the best chances in the position and play much stronger than if it was simply playing with a network trained on the normal start position. This is why I also think that Lc0 will soon be unbeatable at Chess 960. If it took Google 4 hours to get a strong network at the start position ... theoretically once hardware catches up you could have a network for each of the Chess 960 positions and if the few weaknesses of Lc0 are sorted out, this would make a formidable Chess 960 engine as it would play each of the start positions equal to how it now plays the classic chess start position.

I don't think it is necessary to train Lc0 at knight odds for it to play well, it seems that at least network 11248 is already incredibly good at it! I've played a bunch of 5' + 5" games against it, alternating between b1 and g1 knight odds, and setting TempValueCutoff for 0.2 for 3 moves to avoid repeat openings (at little cost since it thinks it has about 12% win chance at the odds, so dropping to 11.8% occasionally on the first three moves is minor), and I've lost every game. No trivial blunders or time losses. I normally beat A/B engines under these conditions. I am truly amazed. Also this is only using a 1060 GPU; I should have a 2080 pretty soon but I can't do any worse! There are limits though; I won quite easily with the same conditions at rook odds. I think that training the network at knight odds wouldn't help very much, as the odds giver would lose almost every game. Maybe if the games were played with a large time (or nodes) handicap to produce fairly even results this would indeed work well.I encourage any readers above 2000 elo strength to try the same test if they have a 1060 or better GPU. My own strength in fast games is probably only around 2200 FIDE level now, so if you are much stronger than that at blitz perhaps you will fare better than I did. But be sure to use 11248 (or one close to it); recent networks are not nearly as good at giving knight odds, some are awful.