[Skybird]

Wowh, what stuns me, what completely perplexes me is when the video says Stockfish calculates 70 million positions per seocnd, which does not impress me, but that Alpha Zero only calculates 80 thousand positions per second. That is a message in its own.

I recall times when peope, thought that advanc ein chess porgramming would not be that deicisve, but hardware (speed) imnprovmeent - this would be the drive behind better playinbg chess computers. Today ee have overwhelmingly playing chess oftware of unbelievably good start5egic and psoit9nal gameplay on hardware that is not even especiaqlly< fast, like a 6 year old cellphone. The prophets were wrong. Different chess software coding was the decisive ingredinet to poush computer chess. Not quantity of calculations (called brute force or Shannon A), but quality of preselections and according criterions ("knoweldge", if you want, or Shannon B), were the more important part.

Unfortunately, all this has done chess no good swervice, the game on professional level has fundamentally changed, and imo not for the better. Prepared knowledge and just calling it up has become most important. That is why Manus Carlson is so popular in chess: becaswue he doe snot like this conserved way of playing, too, but likes to fall back to the needs of actually calculating and playing during the running game. And that is where his strengths lie. Its a less efficient and mor eromantic approach, yes. But it fits the human dimension better, I think.

More and more players demand that the starting position at beginning shall be given up and shoukd be shuffled at random ever yagme, to bypass the dead, canned and conserved opening theory that computer analysis has revolutionised and somewhat "completed", and turned into something more oerfect, but also more lifeless. Think of that! This far it has gone already. Myself , I have fallen into the habit to switch off the openign library when playing against my computer programs.