Comments by vickalan

When I go to the game, it says "Drawn Game" and I do not have any options to do anything. (I haven't played a move, or accepted the draw, or anything).

Is there a way to take back my move (since you rejected it)?

All we need is a system to show a board diagram, and I'm wondering if there is an easier way to play this.

HGMuller,
I can move the pieces and set-up the board to the current position, but I don't know what to do to save it.

I already have a username and password. The opening window shows a conversation between you and "jon".

So my two questions:
1) how do a save a position?
2) how do I clear the conversation, so it's a fresh board for Aurelian and me?

This may work, but having trouble with some basic things.

Ok, I set up "VReinhart" as my username, and setup a game "VReinhart - VReinhart" since I plan to only use this to display a chess diagram. Now two more questions:

What is the data next to "white/black" (i.e. "+23.46/-79.96"). Is there an engine evaluating moves?

Any idea for the best way for Aurelian to communicate moves? Maybe just on this forum, while I update the diagram there?

That's fine. Just leave a message once you have your username, and I'll setup a new game with the moves we've made so far. I believe the game so far is:

White      Black
Aurelian   VReinhart
1.d4    ...Nf6
2.e4    ...Nxe4
3.Reject...d6

Since we don't have a working board diagram yet you don't need to make your next move yet. Once I setup the game with your and my usernames, I'll setup the game from here and we can keep playing.

Just for the record, my moves are chosen by the computer but the computer thinks it is playing chess, but we are really playing Refuse Chess.

Ok, I believe I played a move. This should be an interesting experiment. For the record, I'm playing the "computer" where the computer believes it is playing normal chess.

For clarity, the way I'm using an engine is that it plays the best move. If that gets rejected, then it plays the next best move. It also accepts or rejects moves using this same logic.

(If nothing else, this has gotten HGM to play a game, who I believe doesn't frequently play games on public forums. Hooray!)

I've gotton busy with other stuff so I plan to usually only play one move per day.:)

Ok that's fine. If the commputer makes a capture I'll inform you rather than playing the move (and wait if you reject it or not).

Stockfish (set to level 10) actually plays e6 (another way to protect the pawn, as you predicted it will do). It did accept your move because Qh5 (by normal chess) is not the best move.

For move 2, White played Qh5, and then Black played e6.
For move 3, White refused Black's move, and then Black played Nf6.

At each move, each player can do one thing - same as normal chess.

Wouldn't this be the normal way to notate a game of Refusal chess? Maybe the parenthesis aren't needed. Does this look better?

1.e4...c5
2.Qh5...e6
3.Refuse...Nf6

Thanks Nicolino, I appreciate the info.

I've been watching some of the Top-10 chess engine tournament, and am also swamped with my normal work, so have been playing slow. But I have not forgotten about this game.:)

chess.com just held a 4-day tournament of the top chess engines. Three days were qualifying rounds. The match between the top two engines was just finished today (20 more games to determine the best engine).

I can reveal the result, but it might be better for visitors to just go there. There is video commentary, chat forums, and a pgn file of all the games. It will probably continue to be discussed and analyzed for several more days.:)

Link is here:

https://www.chess.com/article/view/chess-com-announces-computer-chess-championship

That's interesting too.  I actually prefer games with longer time control.

But I did like the chess.com live commentary - like watching a baseball game with experts discussing the games. I think they did a pretty good job overall considering it was the first year.

HGMuller:

Sorry for no moves for a few days. I tried to get the engine's moves today, but had problems. Not sure if it was chess.com or my connection. I'll be travelling for a few days, so might not play for a few days. But hope to continue game soon. Sorry for the delay.

As for AlphaZero (AZ) playing chess against humans this much is pretty clear:

Stockfish >> human
AZ >> Stockfish

So obviously:

AZ >> human

("Stockfish" denotes the chess engine supported by a typical desktop CPU. Its performance against AZ with stronger hardware has not been tested)

Two comments I have about AZ:

1) AZ (currently) requires supercomputer-equivalent support (application-specific devices its developers call TPUs or "tensor processing units").

2) AZ and its related programs have also become very good at playing Shogi and Go. I don't see any reason why it could not master every chess variant I've ever seen. It's just the time (programming of the rules), and the required  hardware that would deter its developers from doing this. There is certainly many other things for neural networks to be studying, so i don't anticipate AZ will "invade" the chess variant world.

Thanks @HGMuller for the info about Stockfish (SF) and AlphaZero (AZ). I was curious about the hardware in the SF/AZ games. Stockfish was certainly not handicapped, and yet apparently didn't win a single game. It lost 28 and tied 72.

One source I saw says that Google's most recent TPU can process instructions at a rate of 45 TFLOPS, which I believe is significantly faster than what most people have available at home (cpu or bandwidth limited)

I think it's pretty much hopeless for anyone to argue that humans can win against computers in any type of game. Our only chance of winning a game is to play it before it gets studied by computers. So people like @Aurelian and @JoeJoyce will need to stay busy inventing new games faster then people like @GregStrong and @HGMuller can program this stuff!!

@Aurelian - Happy new year!

@HGMuller - Thanks for the detailed answer. I really appreciate it.

I'm not sure if you can answer this or not, but you mentioned retrograde analysis can be done "on the fly" instead of pre-calculated. Obviosly this saves storage space, at the small cost of more code.

Do you have any idea what is the most men on the chessboard that can exist where this strategy can be used? The reason I ask is that tablebases have been created for normal chess with up to 7 men, but the storage space required was immense.

Could some storage space have been saved by using retrograde analysis instead, or can the 7-men tablebase be effectivelly expanded by adding a retrograde analysis in front of it (thus getting info on 8-men positions).

Not sure if that would be easy to answer, but curious if you or anyone knows.

@HGMuller,

As usual thanks for the info. I believe that there is only one institution that has produced a complete 7-man tablebase, and it required a few months using supercomputers in Moscow. I believe queries of the data can be made here:

Since this has been completed, there is no reason for anyone to do it again. But I've been curious how much work it would take to expand it to an 8 man tablebase. Doing it completelly is probably currently not feasible, but from your description I would guess some "shortcuts" can be used to gain some end-game results for a range of 8 (or more) end-game positions.

Again, this is for normal chess, so you and Greg have a lot of work to do.;)

Thanks HGMuller for the very informative information.

I believe the Lomonosov EGT is based on DTM because it includes forced mates that go on for hundreds of moves without pawn moves or promotions. The longest I believe is a 546-move forced mate.

Many of my questions are from the point-of-view of seeking an engine which plays perfectly. Of course there's no prospect of anyone doing this in the near future. But the question of "how" is interesting to me.

As for using the existing Lomonosov tablebase for actual play, I believe it could be possible for anyone who has paid to use the resource. Although the database is huge, information related to the "position-at-hand" could be transmitted in packets. I would think the internet is fast enough to support a game with 90 min/40 moves (for example).

Nevertheless, you raise some very good points. Another interesting point is that in perfect play, most of the 7-man tablebase includes positions that may not even exist in a perfectly-played game. In other words, although the tablebase represents "perfect play", much of it may not be part of "perfect games".

It's interesting to think how chess is still so far from being solved, and yet people like you (Fairy-max), Greg (ChessV), Nicolino (Chess and a Half ), Aurelian (Enep), and others keep inventing stuff that is beyond chess!

Yes, agree with all. There are some 7-men endings that engines can't play perfecty, such as the mate-in-546 position. I once plugged that position into a chess engine and it was pretty much clueless. Even with the 50-move rule, the side that could achieve the draw (by playing to 50 moves) sometimes lost the game. (Of course, these endings aren't seen often if ever in actual play).