Answers.Body: <p>Engine competitions don't use contempt to make games more interesting because engines that have high contempt are weaker than ones with low contempt. Put Stockfish (with handcrafted eval) with c = 100 against Stockfish with c = 0, and the latter Stockfish is likely to win. Therefore, if you force all competitors to use high contempt, then you don't actually have the strongest engines playing, and you cannot call your competition the &quot;Top&quot; chess engine championship.</p>
  
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2022-11-23T04:10:55.130Z
Answers.LastActivityDate: 2022-11-23T04:10:55.130Z
Answers.UserDisplayName: Allure
Body: <p>Chess is believed to be a theoretical draw. So top chess engines, which are not too far off from theoretical optimum, tend to reach drawn positions, which are not too exciting.</p>
  <p>My understanding is that to combat this, engine tournaments like TCEC force an &quot;interesting&quot; opening on the engines.</p>
  <p>What I don't understand is why this should be necessary, when there is a seemingly more natural way to reach the desired effect - which is to use a contempt factor, i.e. a lower score for draws, for both players.</p>
  <p>With high enough contempt, both engines will strive for complex, tactical, interesting positions for which neither is sure who will win, but are unlikely to result in a draw.</p>
  <p>With the advent of ML-based engines like Alpha Zero and LC Zero, this is even more natural - the contempt can be baked into the training, so the engine doesn't just avoid draws in-game, the learned network treats drawish positions as inferior.</p>
  <p>But I've not seen references to contempt being used that way - rather it appears to be a tool to maximize the traditional scoring, when there is reason to believe a difference in level between the engine and its opponent. Its goal is not to make games more interesting for us human observers.</p>
  <p>So - am I correct that contempt is not currently an accepted way to make engine games more interesting? And if so, why not?</p>
  
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2022-11-22T09:31:49.267Z
Comments.Text: How do you know that "top chess engines . . .  are not too far off from theoretical opeimum? How could anyone know that, unless chess has been solved?
Comments.UserDisplayName: bof
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2022-11-23T10:16:03.560Z
Comments.Text: "...which are not too exciting." Objection, Your Honor :-) Just fix the first moves to 1.e4 e5 2.Nc3 Bc5 3.Na4 Bxf2+ so we finally find the truth about Hamppe-Meitner. Or take *any* (good) draw study.
Comments.UserDisplayName: Hauke Reddmann
Tags: <engines><draw>
Title: Is contempt factor used as a way to make engine games more interesting?
ThreadText: # Is contempt factor used as a way to make engine games more interesting?
  
  (Asked by: username_0 on 2022-11-21)
  
  Chess is believed to be a theoretical draw. So top chess engines, which are not too far off from theoretical optimum, tend to reach drawn positions, which are not too exciting.
  
  My understanding is that to combat this, engine tournaments like TCEC force an "interesting" opening on the engines.
  
  What I don't understand is why this should be necessary, when there is a seemingly more natural way to reach the desired effect - which is to use a contempt factor, i.e. a lower score for draws, for both players.
  
  With high enough contempt, both engines will strive for complex, tactical, interesting positions for which neither is sure who will win, but are unlikely to result in a draw.
  
  With the advent of ML-based engines like Alpha Zero and LC Zero, this is even more natural - the contempt can be baked into the training, so the engine doesn't just avoid draws in-game, the learned network treats drawish positions as inferior.
  
  But I've not seen references to contempt being used that way - rather it appears to be a tool to maximize the traditional scoring, when there is reason to believe a difference in level between the engine and its opponent. Its goal is not to make games more interesting for us human observers.
  
  So - am I correct that contempt is not currently an accepted way to make engine games more interesting? And if so, why not?
  
  **Tags:** engines, draw
  
  > **Comments:**
  > **username_1**: How do you know that "top chess engines . . .  are not too far off from theoretical opeimum? How could anyone know that, unless chess has been solved?  
  > **username_2**: "...which are not too exciting." Objection, Your Honor :-) Just fix the first moves to 1.e4 e5 2.Nc3 Bc5 3.Na4 Bxf2+ so we finally find the truth about Hamppe-Meitner. Or take *any* (good) draw study.  
  
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  ## 1 answers
  
  ### Answer by username_3 on 2022-11-23. Score: 2
  
  Engine competitions don't use contempt to make games more interesting because engines that have high contempt are weaker than ones with low contempt. Put Stockfish (with handcrafted eval) with c = 100 against Stockfish with c = 0, and the latter Stockfish is likely to win. Therefore, if you force all competitors to use high contempt, then you don't actually have the strongest engines playing, and you cannot call your competition the "Top" chess engine championship.
  
  
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