Stockfish BEATS AlphaZero 6 Times!

chess computers experienced a revolution in late 2017 when google's deep mind created alpha zero alpha zero defeated stockfish in a hundred game match with 28 wins and 72 draws and then there was a rematch the following year in 2018. the final score line of that match was 155 wins for alpha zero and six for stockfish and when i made this video about it a few days ago a lot of the comments were like wait so can we see the six times that stockfish actually beat alpha zero and that's what i'm showing you in this video but this is where it gets a little bit confusing if you go on chessgames.com and find the stockfish alpha zero match from 2018 there's like 10 wins for stockfish so i don't exactly know which of those games are from the match and which are from practice games but i chose six of the most interesting ones that i can show you and the last game of today is gonna be stockfish standing up to its bully time stamps are on the video player let's get into it so part of the match between stonkfish and alpha zero was the fact that they needed to play positions that had been recorded in the opening database right and so in this first game we have a sicilian defense we have an open sicilian with d4 trade and now black has a choice of moves in place g6 if you left alpha zero to just run alpha zero would not play the dragon okay it would play the night or it would play other sicilian defenses uh or it would play e4 e5 um but both of the computer sides had to do this there was some even really nice games where uh alpha zero beat stockfish and i'm not sitting here complaining or anything um that was just the agreement now this variation of the dragon that we have uh is one where the players castle on opposite sides or in this case i should say bots they castle on opposite sides uh and then ultimately white will go for an attack uh and black will go for an attack all the same now if you haven't seen my video alpha zero crushing stockfish um you i will tell you now that alpha zero really likes dynamics it will often times sacrifice material weather attacking or defending to open up the mobility of its position so first of all it forces stockfish to trade light squared bishop for night now this rook is planted and now the next phase of the attack is coming um what i noticed in studying these games is that a lot of this from stockfish's side is like dealing with a belligerent drunk person like alpha zero will stop at nothing to launch an attack and oftentimes it will realize that it actually has nothing going for it for example you'll notice that in this position it's it's lined up two rooks it's lined up a bishop uh it's lined up the queen on a5 but because it already has the hindrance of the opening being slightly subpar meaning the dragon for computers is slightly subpar uh it's it's actually very much white who is still threatening to infiltrate by using the pawn break on the h file alpha zero has these rooks stacked but there's really nothing there and so now we have a trade i've removed your bishop and look you see it's kind of like trying to sacrifice material um in this case queen d6 loses to a backwards knight move uh and then for example queen to e5 with some checkmate ideas with this bishop like if you go all the way back here or if you don't then i will play bishop e5 and i will win your knight so alpha zero is always on the lookout for a way to sacrifice material you see it's coming forward like full force but stockfish is just sharp enough and then here lands a very nice move you can feel free to pause and try to find the stockfish move preferably without using stockfish that move is the hammer rook takes h7 often times when you're about to launch an attack you should just look for the most flashy way to get it doesn't mean you have to play it in this case though sacrificing the rook is game over because you can't take it if you take it i play rook h1 you can only go here i take your bishop you're going to lose um but again alpha zero likes this because it thinks somewhere in its head that uh it's sacrificing a lot of pawns uh and uh or or in this case it's going to get back a bishop and now it's going to sacrifice a third pawn and uh somehow it's going to survive like it cannot you cannot take the rook but stockfish just pushes forward it keeps its king protected the bishop is not activated like again there's there's moments you're expecting this move d3 to activate the bishop in the corner and remember what i said about the move d3 uh it happens in this position uh alpha zero plays the move d3 and it plays this move because again alpha zero is all about activity the king has no squares here to mobilize uh black's king does have a little bit of squares and so alpha zero looks to get a queen trade going but the problem is like i said it's kind of like it's kind of like holding off a drunk person now you have alpha zero down five pawns for that bishop in the corner and here stockfish begins the ever slow they just process of just very slowly methodically removing every final piece that alpha zero has and ultimately the game is decided by an infiltration of the rook the queen is booted out the king is safeguarded and you pick up the final pawn and this end game is very easily winning for computers it takes i mean it's never super easy against alpha zero but if you notice stockfish just pushes its pawns and it was on move 71 that uh alpha zero resigned because you're just i mean there's just there's made coming or you're going to promote the pawn so even with the nerfing of a really really bad opening for computers it still took stockfish a monumental effort in dealing with the belligerence and sacrificial active nature of alpha zero to finally outplay it by utilizing an attack to transition into an end game with a balance of five pawns for a bishop let's go to game number two okay so game two is more of the same uh the players were instructed to play the semislav variation uh or the computers were instructed and the semislav is very good it's actually significantly better of an opening than uh the dragon especially at computer level by the way if you play the dragon keep playing the dragon you are not anywhere near as strong as these computers in fact you and me combined are probably nowhere near as strong as these computers but let's go g4 okay so this this is exciting um this is uh was this still in their book yes it was so i believe that they were instructed to play this line where white gambits the g pawn uh and then you can you know attack on the g file this is kind of known as the shabal of attack the shear of shabala variation of the semislav you'll notice that alpha zero plays bishop d6 and then bishop b4 which is very peculiar but is totally a thing and we have knight e4 long castle short castle bishop e1 okay again opposite side castling this time totally not a dragon and stockfish brings back its bishops to trade the knight in the center and then you know attack on the diagonal and here we go we're rolling okay great b5 alpha zero does not even hesitate to sacrifice a pawn to get things rolling that is a free pawn uh and it's totally playable for white but you will need to deal with this and rather than letting alpha zero do that again uh stockfish closes the position and here comes alpha zero always finding a way to look for an attack and f5 doesn't matter which side of the board it will thrust pawns it will thrust pawns now you play knight h2 knight h2 is a fascinating move because that actually has nowhere to go so if you notice this knight has no moves can't move anywhere and so stockfish just decides to trap it and alpha zero goes okay you can waste time trapping my knight go ahead go ahead yeah yeah yeah yeah i'm gonna sacrifice and i'm not even gonna take back that pawn i'm gonna play rook to b8 with the idea to play like knight c5 a4b uh knight c5 a4 b3 so stockfish deals with that by playing b3 itself but that invites a4 and now stockfish has to run over here deal with the imminent danger of just getting slaughtered on the a file right so alpha zero sacrifices a a piece and just has two pawns for it now goes back and sacrifices a pawn and then stabilizes this is the thing about alpha zero it'll give away a pawn and just play a stabilizing move but sometimes it'll mis-evaluate the sacrifice of a certain pawn and allow kind of long-term play so stockfish brings both rooks to the middle alpha zero continuous like alpha zero's not playing like it's down a piece alpha zero is playing like it's up a piece it's just it's just giving all its pawns away uh just you don't do that okay you don't you don't do that and then complain that i was trying to emulate the computer like look i mean alpha zero's just got every single piece activated this queen if it could come over here would be game over so now stockfish begins the nerfing process it starts to take pieces away and goes bishop b5 and a few moves later plays bishop a4 gluing the position shut desperately trying to defend itself against the uh the titan overlords and like and by the way this whole game starfish is playing without this knight that's the thing about alpha zero's playing style but alpha zero sometimes has no chill to a fault okay it doesn't know how to say you know what probably the best thing in this in this game is just going to be to make a draw um it put all of its pieces on decent squares but the problem is that white just was able to stabilize like you know white's next move is going to be probably f4 getting the night out or just knight g4 right away because there's a pin on this pawn and if you go back a few moves actually uh well my browser based stockfish uh likes alpha zero's position it it actually it it believes in the position around here it thinks that there's chances of course it's a joke because this computer that they're playing with is significantly stronger but um it's wild like like some of the moves that alpha zero plays engines don't even see it doesn't even see it it needs time to be convinced of it and so here's a second game that stockfish dealt with this just feral assault and even though stockfish is winning these games in some ways it's more interesting still to see the way alpha zero plays and how it sometimes mis-evaluates let's go to game number three so in this game we have a queen's gambit but knight c6 knight c6 is not a bad move uh but for the strongest computers in the world it's it's not a very good move there are a lot better options let's put it this way it's a bad move given the alternatives it's known as the chigorin defense but it's actually a very very decent weapon i've played it myself with black and the point is that black just goes all in and assaults the setter and basically gets a position uh where you have two bishops versus two knights white has a place plot of pawns kind of everybody capturing toward the middle and you try to expand and essentially the opening position that you get uh is one where black controls the center castles and tries to move down the middle of the board now alpha zero is faced with a pawn attack right so obviously it gives the pawn away uh because it wants to win some time now stockfish has to waste a little bit of time getting out and alpha zero has officially activated all of its pieces the problem is that knights are inherently not very mobile and by the way you leave a super computer on its own it will play the movie h4 um by the way if you ask me what the hell the move the point of the move h4 is i can try to find an answer i think the point is h5 to prevent knight to g6 the knight on f5 carries a lot less pressure for the center and if you play h5 e4 d5 this knight will never get out because it will not be able to go to any of those squares uh which is actually why alpha zero very confidently just smacks out the move h5 because you want to be able to move your knight now we kick out the queen now we double in the b file you'll notice stockfish just hasn't even moved anything and because it's terrified stockfish is absolutely terrified of what's coming alpha zero has smacked it enough times now we play king f1 to try to move the rook on the g file and kind of in a rare turn of events alpha zero actually engages some trades uh to i i i suppose in this case if you were to take um and just cocoon with like bishop e1 uh there's no imminent danger but i guess alpha zero just evaluates that the rook is extremely powerful here uh despite being potentially down material now stockfish begins the closing up process it starts to close the center and the evaluation starts to build but as the uh position gets advanced more for white alpha zero begins saying well these are weaknesses like i'm going to target your weaknesses and i'm going to try to break up your center with moves like c6 and you can't take me because i have this beautiful shot you can't take my queen so that forces stockfish to continue to push forward and that very well might be the best thing to do because sometimes the only way to refute is to play the most aggressive thing and so it starts to do that and then as the game progresses uh well alpha zero just of course and it's in its usual way being down upon or two actually now actually equal in pawns but the huns stockfish is king it hunts the king down but here's the problem pawn majority in the center and two bishops versus two knights is always gonna be better for the player with the two bishops and like i said this is how stockfish dealt with alpha zero it just braced for dear life the king is in the middle i'm gonna push my pawn you can take it but now i have this very strong move bishop c2 your king cannot escape i've got back rank threats all your pieces are out and about but none of them can get to my king my king is safe on f1 it doesn't look very safe but i promise you it is and now i'm gonna take this into an endgame i don't care if we trade pieces you're threatening my bishop but the more pieces we trade i'm happy because i have the outside pass pawn and now watch as stockfish very confidently marches its king to the middle dealing with the knights keeps its bishop safe tries to engage in trades like tries to trade its bishop for a night and the end game will be decided by that outside past pawn and that is exactly what we get we have a position with rook bishop 2 vs rook knight 1 and it doesn't matter how good the out computer is uh tactically because this end game uh will be will be winning and stockfish advances and ultimately wins on move 77 because the king is coming into outflank like you just for example let's say king g7 i play king h5 you say okay king h7 you can't come in i say okay great you're going to lose your knight and you say well you're not i'm not going to lose my knight so okay great i'm going to play king h6 king h7 and you're going to run out of moves so that's three games now that we see stockfish doing this kind of zapping nerfing slowly chipping away but this next one is pretty funny game number four is the only win i could find where stockfish played with the black pieces and i'm actually not even gonna like really focus too much on the analysis of this game uh you'll be like how dare you well here's the thing uh we have a we have like a queen's gambit declined exchange variation very solid system stockfish doing its thing plays this knight e4 little trick bishop comes back say levy i am here for chess analysis i am not here for you to blast through the moves look i i know i know i know it's a positional game stockfish uh trades a night for a bishop it traded it tonight it got a light-scored bishop it blocks up the center of the board uh we trade bishops this game was just uber solid because as you will begin to notice the computers start to trade all their pieces so we have queen tonight's queen night bishop completely symmetrical structure in fact this continues to be the case for a very long time okay like it's just it like this knight is trying to come in it can't but this queen can't do damage by itself it's not you know it's not going to work because like i guard everything this is known as a fortress this is a defensive fortress by black uh you will hear people use that term now you will also hear people say that computers don't really like fortresses and some of them don't even understand them meaning that if they have a way to continue the game they will and so alpha zero traded queens and then like like again this is a complete fortress this is a draw any human will agree to a draw here but alpha zero started pushing its pawns which was fine and then alpha zero just wouldn't accept the draw i was not joking in the intro of this video when i said that alpha zero is kind of like a belligerent drunk and at some point you just gotta give it a smack alpha zero even managed to promote a queen in this game and must have thought that since stockfish is a move away from promoting that it was winning but it's not there's no way to stop promotion there's just no way the king is too close and ultimately both sides got a queen this game went on for another 20 moves and we ended up in an end game with queens and pawns where black has more pawns than white so i don't really know if this is impressive on stockfish's part or if alpha zero is just a lunatic i mean if you beat somebody 150 times to zero you probably also will not give them any draws i i yeah this part of the video if you if you made it to game number four is honestly just comedy this is one of those wins that's stock fish b and it's the only one with black so take it for what you will have a laugh but don't go anywhere because we got really good games coming up our penultimate game by stockfish versus alpha zero is the grunfeld defense a favorite of all super grand masters taught in every single school including the russian school queen b3 is actually known as the russian system the point is that you actually bring your queen out and deflect blacks deep on off the center and then you take the full center great i pl i know these lines with white very well and the whole point is to play bishop g4 pressuring the knight and then rotate back to d7 there's a lot of ways to play this position uh knight a6 is the very trendy modern main line there's a lot of situations you play c5 excuse me to sacrifice a pawn actually quite surprisingly alpha zero plays c6 i would have thought that alpha zero would much prefer to sacrifice pawns but okay b5 and bishop e3 d5 you are engaging with a psycho what is that psycho going to do okay bishop f5 is not complex one pawn gone yeah i mean it would not be an alpha zero game if you didn't just recreationally not just lose a pawn but also trade a bishop for a knight seemingly one of your most active pieces increase your opponent's king mobility not quite to these squares that would be illegal and remove a bishop the the main defender of your king but alpha zero is well itself is zero for a reason knight f6 a move that literally attacks nothing knight to d4 going after the second bishop and remember we're gonna start an attack bishop moves c4 so stockfish glues the center shut and now we have queen c7 and this move i'm gonna dare say alpha zero missed or misevaluated a move in this position try to find the best move for white i'll try to think like a computer king d2 i mean in the middle of the damn game you move your king to the middle of the board and you just you just say a prayer whatever religion you are a member of or lack thereof you pray to something and now obviously like okay i'm going to open up the center of the board de6 listen what do we know about alpha zero when you take its pawns it doesn't take them back just knight c6 like this thing is crazy man it's crazy queen c5 and now it takes back now it takes back because now if knight takes e6 it looks like a fork but it's not i'm gonna play queen d7 it's check you have to bring your knight back and i just don't really believe in this position so king e1 stockfish is setting up the pieces for the next game and now stockfish again as we have seen throughout this video has to cocoon it's just you know it's like terrified it's like okay i'm better i'm better just wait it out just move the king around a little bit and you'll notice that again like alpha zero is so belligerent every piece is flying forward at every moment you've got to be so precise so precise like look at this you are being swarmed but white is better king e3 you have to be brave and it's it's look at this it's a free bishop right like it's giving you the bishop but rookie one is a problem you almost made it you have to like play bishop b2 so f3 to kick the bishop out the bishop moves it out this very nice move h4 trying to maybe play g3 g4 expand with space and take away squares from the opponent and the rest of this game is stockfish blocking the position desperately now this knight and bishop are kind of repelled like the knight can't come forward the bishop is blocked um you can check me but i will come back and attack your rook so you actually don't achieve anything and then alpha zero sacked a rook for a bishop like this is a crazy move this is a crazy movie it could have played rookie one and then for example like king f2 and then maybe rook back to d1 or b1 but it must have not liked something to such an extent that it just straight up traded rook for bishop then went to give a check then went to go rook a1 i i don't know and then and then again dare i say maybe it missed this move c5 like just the simple pawn move to try to play i don't know i don't i don't know i don't want to insult the overlord it's going to show up at my bedside or something like maybe alpha zero got to this position and was like well white is playing without a bishop and a rook i'm kind of playing without a knight but it's gonna get back into the game and when you look at this optically it actually does begin to look really good for black because okay the knight is gonna come you know maybe into c3 like where do you move these pieces e3 is coming etc the rook is hanging but stockfish plays rook b8 alpha zero kicks out the rook the knight is coming look at that that was the only way that was the only way you needed to be so fast if you played like rook b4 knight f5 and i don't know bishop i don't know bishop b5 just to develop a piece i would have taken this pawn i would have pushed but look at this nice tactic if you take this and i'm just quick enough and now alpha zero does not have enough pieces and stockfish just nerfs its power invests in its e-pawn and um it's actually still for a computer not super simple to win this position uh but rook d8 and alpha zero resigned because i guess it didn't like what was on the horizon it would still take a human a long time to win this game most likely you would need to go for this pawn um but uh h4 is still hanging i mean it's a combination of pushing your e pawn and not going into rook and bishop versus bishop knight i actually think that white needs to keep pawns i don't think white can just swap off every single pawn so um yeah but this last game if you waited this long and made it this far in the video this one's gonna be a treat you're gonna really like this last game this is stockfish standing up to its bully okay e4 what is the worst opening for computers to play against e4 e6 and during this match we saw alpha zero demolish the french but they put the french in alpha zero's hands thinking let it beat up old stockfish the classical variation with bishop g5 and bishop e7 e5 and the knight drops back and normally here what happens is white trades and plays f4 and big center and black fights back with c5 a6 b5 no no we play the aliogen chateaud h4 don't criticize my french accent i'm here for the chess i'm not here for the french accent takes takes queen g5 yes you can have one of my pawns but stockfish is now channeling its inner alpha zero no disrespect to the stockfish craters nowadays stockfish is much better than alpha zero okay so knight h3 queen e7 queen g4 okay great i sack a pawn for activity this is the whole point of this line in fact when i played this with black i never took on g5 i never did this but alpha zero the materialistic heathen trying to trying to say only i can sacrifice pawns stockfish you can't look at this i mean look at this position now knight c6 is we got to develop okay stockfish plays knight to b5 attacking c7 alpha zero does not blunder that and plays the move knight b6 rook d3 this is not getting taken because of the pin alpha zero needs a few more moves here to get everything consolidated so first it plays h5 because that kind of shuts down that side of the board stockfish plays work um it's like stockfish was being run by alexandra botes that day or something but it's actually not the case because after it takes uh you're gonna lose the queen no matter what i have rook f7 and if queen f8 i had rook f8 so um a6 to try to kick the knight out and i just ignore you i mean like i that's just you could take that like go ahead you go ahead and take my knight because then i'm gonna play rook f7 so alpha zero says you know what stockfish you gotta point a stockfish we're friends right we're friends yes thought was like yeah we cool we cool we're cool no just kidding bishop d3 i'm coming in with knight f7 and bishop g6 so we have knight to f8 i mean i have never seen a game where alpha zero had all these pieces on the back rank and here if you'd like to find a way to tip the scale of pressure beyond the point of salvation try to find it for white it's an absolutely beautiful maneuver and that maneuver is rook to h4 with the intention to play rook f4 and this and now alpha zero plays rook g8 and uh here potentially the most savage move of the entire game you can continue with this plan but here i mean i i if i gave you 10 guesses you wouldn't guess the move here you could try write it on a piece of paper or something um the the move in this position that stockfish chose to stand up to its bully is one of the most savage moves i've ever seen in my life and that move is the move bishop to c4 which looks like a mouse slip i mean it looks like you're watching an eric rosen stream and he's like oh what to do and he plays oh no no my bishop and the crazy thing is stockfish didn't even alpha zero didn't even take it if you take it the e4 square becomes a transfer point but more importantly d5 and d6 if you take knight d5 knight f6 it's game over and if you don't take me i apologize if you don't take me i just push through and knight e4 knight f6 and i have rook d4 and so the game ends with queen d7 knight e4 stockfish begs alpha zero to take it takes takes knight h7 and now the final move of the game rook h5 because you cannot take me and i'm gonna take your knight and go knight f6 and um yeah this was a very thorough beating and i wanted to save this game for last now this game says a lot more about the french defensive computer level than about stockfish uh beating alpha zero but listen we need it it feels good oh listen we gotta root for the underdog okay i mean poor old stockfish eight was getting absolutely clobbered so hopefully you enjoyed that sample size of stockfish standing up to its uh alpha zero uh computer bully now we do have to remember that these games were played in 2018 since then alpha zero has been discontinued and a lot of uh effort has gone into these ai style neural network computers i'm not going to sit here and pretend to know the terms if anything i'm reading them off of a second monitor before i record them on camera most i mean there's many people involved in the world of chess and most of them will watch the video and ultimately comment something along the lines of you know nowadays stockfish nn uh ue or new stockfish 13 and leela will will do some serious damage to the old alpha zero but this was still transcendent alpha zero paved the path for this kind of style of machine learning and it was fascinating that stockfish actually stood up to it now if you made it this far in the video i am going to tell you something crazy there was a moment that the only way stockfish and alpha zero were playing on equal terms back in 2018 was if stockfish had ten to one time odds if stockfish had 10 times more on the clock than alpha zero think about that huh that is insane anyway you guys know the drill let me know if there's a topic or anything that i haven't covered in a video yet and i will see you in the next one peace out get out of here

Channel: GothamChess

Views: 707,920

Rating: 4.9582553 out of 5

Keywords: gothamchess, gothamchess caro kann, gothamchess openings, gothamchess vienna, alphazero, alphazero agadmator, alphazero vs stockfish, alphazero stockfish, alpha zero, alpha zero chess, alphazero chess, alpha zero vs stockfish, alphazero vs magnus carlsen, magnus carlsen alphazero, alphazero magnus carlsen, alphazero vs human, alphazero vs stockfish 12, leela chess, leela chess zero, stockfish, stockfish 13, stockfish 12, stockfish vs alphazero, stockfish vs magnus carlsen

Id: mH4v-Eozxag

Length: 29min 41sec (1781 seconds)

Published: Wed May 19 2021