Leela – AlphaZero’s “spiritual successor” – displayed the same aptitude for the opening phase and with the introduction of NNUE technology (neural net technology though different to AlphaZero and Leela Zero) first into Stockfish and then into a plethora of other engines – such as Komodo Dragon which is the focal point of this first series – we saw the same quantum leap in strength in all the other engines. Just like human players, it was looking to MAKE THINGS HAPPEN from the earliest moment which was reflected in its discovery and espousal of some super-sharp lines against Stockfish 8’s favourite Queen’s Indian. There were many impressive facets to AlphaZero’s play, but especially its opening play was on a different level to anything else in the engine world. ![]() Of course some gems of insight were buried within these lines but it was an intensive and sometimes distressing experience to extract them! This all changed for me in early 2018 when I got to witness AlphaZero’s games against Stockfish 8. ![]() Setting engines of that period on an opening position for 6 hours was to produce a mass of difficult-to-understand variations, many of which contained strange and unexplainable tempo losses. In essence they lacked the URGENCY that strong human players have in the opening phase: the sense that development should be completed as efficiently as possible, the sense of opportunities to complicate that arise while both sides are still mobilising. Engines like Stockfish Classical and Komodo Classical were of disappointing value in openings where tactics were not the primary feature. This was especially true of opening play. Until late 2017, strong human players could still claim ascendancy over the best engines in a few areas of the game. ![]() Introduction to the opening play of engines This article provides an overview of Komodo Dragon’s main openings for more detail take a look at the video series! This article supplements a series of videos about Komodo Dragon’s opening repertoire which appeared on the “Silicon Road to Chess Improvement” YouTube site ( ) on 10 th July 2022.
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