Alpha Zero is a self-learning AI developed by DeepMind, trained itself within 6 hours for the game of chess.It was provided only the basic move of each piece and the rules and that is it.

After 6 hours, it was ready to play against Stockfish which is one of the strongest chess engines in the world. Alpha Zero defeated Stockfish in a 100 game match without losing a single game!

In most of the games, we could see it does not care about the material that much. It cares about the position and pieces’ activity. Its game look more attacking. Even with the black pieces, it sacrifices a few pawns to get open files and develops its pieces properly.

We, as humans, think that Material matters more in chess. We know the position also matters, but instead of creating attacking unbalanced games in the middle game, we tend to exchange pieces, gain some advantage and look forward to the endgame.

Even chess engines have the priority of the pieces hard-coded in them. Chess engines also play better positional chess. Also, the priority of the pieces varies according to the position. None of the chess engines would sacrifice any material if there is not a sureshot advantage.

Alpha Zero reminds everyone of the 18 century chess, Where grandmasters of the past would sacrifice material to open files, gain amazing magical attacks and win the game. It plays in the style of the legendary Paul Morphy who was famous for sacrificing everything for the activity and the attack. It feels much more human than other normal engines!

What makes Alpha Zero unique?

The thing about alphazero, It doesn’t mind going for unclear position. The way it sacrifices pawns and exchanges for an attack is maniac yet extremely artisitic. In the following game Alpha zero destroyed Stockfish by sacrificing alot of material to have a bishop pair from hell on board. You can see the game here where white after move 22 is down 2 pawns, yet he has an unstoppable attack! »>

Will the Implmentation of AI make a revolution to chess?

AI has changed many aspects of our lives, we are expecting a huge change in the player’s attitude over the board. In fact, AI confirmed that the grandmasters of the past were extremely talented and that the aggressive chess is the best way to win games.

Positional play will always be there, However, we can see the rise of young and extremelly aggressive players such as Sam savian from USA and many others. These players tend to go into unclear positions with huge attacking potential which gurantees for them a win once their opponent makes a tiny mistake!

For the chess spectators, this is a good news! we are going to enjoy many attacking games in the future tournaments full of excitment and chess beauty!

Latest Chess Engine News!

Developers of Stockfish worked so hard in the last few years to develop the Stockfish capability. They are confident that they will be able to punish AlphaZero next match together.

There is a rumor that they are going to organise another match between the two engines to see how far AI can go! for us mere humans it means we are going to see chess from a different dimension. We hope it would be as entertaining as the last match played by both engines!

Conclusion

We can conclude that Alpha Zero is much different than all other engines.It prefers attacking chess over positional play and would sacrifice material for an unclear game with open lines and diagonals just for the attack.

The approach Alpha Zero is taking toward chess is the same approach as the Top Grandmasters of the 18th and 19th centuries and it will have a positive effect on the aggressive chess style in the next years!