Are computers bias

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Avatar of chesspuzzlerjunior

Computers have no emotions so how can they be bias. well they seem to prefer different colours in the same position. e.g.

The same position occurs with different colours yet the evaluation is different. Here is another example.

what do you think is happening?

Avatar of madratter7

The positions are not identical. For example in your second case, white has played a move that reduces their flexibility a great deal compared to the second case.

Avatar of aaaaaaairlol
The first position is not bias, as white weakens his kingside and wastes a tempo developing to g4

The second position is not bias, as black weakens his kingside playing g5

(You should know by now that c4/c5 are rudimentary opening moves, while g4/g5 are simply weak to open with)

The third position is not bias, because white wastes a tempo developing to d4.

The fourth position is not bias, because white doesn’t waste a tempo developing to d4.
Avatar of patzermike

Madratter7 and Kemp7, you are incorrect.  The pairs of positions shown by chesspuzzlerjunior are logically equivalent.  I don't know what chesspuzzlerjunior's computer would say, but I had a phase where I was winning a lot of games as black with the Sicilian, so I used to annoy my opponents by playing as white 1. c3, e5; 2. c4.  To play this position as white is logically the same as playing 1. e4, c5 with black.  The computer must have some algorithm that gives an automatic slight advantage to white, but it is not logical.

Avatar of ChessicallyInclined

In the first two positions, it seems to favor the side without the g-pawn pushed, as a "minus" sign means in favor of Black. Why it has different numbers I don't know.

Avatar of LanceBakker

 The positions aren't equivalent, because some side of position 1, 2 and 3 wastes a move on not developing their pieces.

Avatar of Preggo_Basashi

I've come across this before when playing positions with colors reversed then analyzing with an engine.

You have to let it think a long time before it will return the same eval.

I mean... it should be instant of course, so by "long time" I mean ~30 seconds.

As for the technical explanation for why it happens, I don't know, a good question for a engine forum.

Avatar of Preggo_Basashi
madratter7 wrote:

The positions are not identical.

Kemp7 wrote:
position is not bias
LanceBakker wrote:

 The positions aren't equivalent

 omg

Avatar of Preggo_Basashi

Clearing hash table might help (?) My engine only took a few seconds before returning 0.00 for each of these

 

 

Avatar of Preggo_Basashi
patzermike wrote:

The computer must have some algorithm that gives an automatic slight advantage to white, but it is not logical.

It favored black in both cases...

Avatar of tipish

JamesColeman wrote:

It’s probably the dopey chess.com analysis engine - my Komodo assesses then as basically identical, as indeed it should. 

who gives the analysis not SF?

Avatar of Preggo_Basashi
tipish wrote:
JamesColeman wrote:

It’s probably the dopey chess.com analysis engine - my Komodo assesses then as basically identical, as indeed it should. 

who gives the analysis not SF?

I think they switched over to all Komodo (?)

But website engines are dopey because they run in the browser and only think for a few seconds.

Avatar of chesspuzzlerjunior

Thanks to preggo, james coleman, patzermike and chessically inclined. The others didn't seem to realise it was the same positions but with colours changed. I have checked it on a number of engines on other sites and they also seem to present different evaluations. I dont know what it is happenning but i am sure that somewhere out there there lies a logical explanation.

Avatar of LM_player
I guess the computer is biased! xD
Avatar of LM_player
Interesting find by the way!
Avatar of Rocky64

Interesting observation! The reason could be that an eval is based on the final position of a line of analysis, and Stockfish is actually giving you the evals for two different positions. Here are screenshots for Stockfish's analysis of your first pair of positions. The settings are the same for both: 1 line of analysis with a time limit of 30sec. Despite this, Stockfish stops analysing at different depths and the final positions (when reflected) are completely different. Indeed the two lines deviate very early: 3.e4 vs 3...Nc6. So the question becomes, why does Stockfish like these different moves in exactly the same situation?

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Avatar of RookSacrifice_OLD
RedGirlZ wrote:

Playing the exact same variation but switching colors will never be equal, there's too many variables, ie white having the first move, openings, tempo, etc. Computers have no bias whatsoever. 

Re-read the post. The same player (position-wise) has the move; the positions are fully identical.

Avatar of drmrboss

Since 2018, stockfish programmers introduced contempt. 

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This is the latest version of stockfish , whereas you can see contempt of "21" on top left coner.

Which means, in exactly equal position, stockfish in white will analyse as  +0.21 evaluation as white and -0.21 as black. (Making a difference of up to 0.42 evaluation from different views) 

 

Seemed wired! In fact the main reason was that in TCEC season 11, stockfish missed TCEC championship final , even though stockfish did not lose any game in premier division but drew a lot , (whereas Houdini and Komodo won too many games against weaker engines)

 

If you are really serious about those evaluation numbers, you can manually reset to "zero".

 

In earlier version of stockfish from in 2018 , up to a few months ago, the contempt was only "12"

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If you use stockfish version in 2017, contempt was zero.

 

 

However, even though without contempt, engines evaluation will differ in depth, use of hash memory , use of table base etc. 

Alternatively, you can set up position and see how stockfish evaluate position in middle game and endgame, by using these evaluation tables.

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Avatar of Preggo_Basashi
drmrboss wrote:

Since 2018, stockfish programmers introduce contempt. 

If chess.com's auto analysis has contempt on... oh man...

Just another reason I don't use website engines.

Avatar of chesspuzzlerjunior

Thanks LMPlayer Rocky and Rook sacrifice. But RedGirl why should eval be different. It is same position, same player to move except somebody came along with a paintbrush.