A really interesting video with some details about how the Stockfish chess engine works and what makes it so good at chess:
A few things that stood out to me in particular:
- I had no idea that it would use a neutral net to evaluate positions. I expected that this would be way too slow, and prevent it from analyzing the game to sufficient depth (i.e. a sufficient number of moves ahead) to be effective. I was wrong!
- Once there are 7 or fewer pieces remaining in the game, the game is solved, as there are pre-generated tables about the ideal set of moves to make. This takes up about 20 terabytes apparently. Wild!
- On the flip side, it sounds like that Stockfish doesn’t special-case openings. I guess it doesn’t have to?