Calculation versus Intuition

The top computer chess programs (or engines) are much higher rated than the strongest humans. Top chess engines can play some very interesting games. This is a collection of about 40 annotated games from games between the very strong Stockfish and Leela chess engines. Games are from one of their matches in the Top Chess Engine Championship (TCEC). They are annotated by Bill Jordan, a chess coach, Fide Master and national senior champion. Notes are written in the style of notes for games between humans. Games can be played through with or without a board and set. Players of any level can learn from them or they can be played through just for fun.

There are only decisive games. Draws are not included.

To prevent games being repeated, openings are fixed. Each engine plays both white and black in each fixed opening position. Some openings are risky and dubious. In some cases both engines lost when playing one colour.

A wide variety of openings has been selected, including gambits and some leading to highly unbalanced positions.

Stockfish plays good solid chess, relying on a deep and fast search and good positional evaluation. Stockfish represents calculation.

Leela generally plays well strategically, especially for an engine. However it often does not mind sacrificing material for piece activity. Leela searches deeply with it’s Monte Carlo Tree Search, but does not search as many positions as StockFish. The contrast of styles makes for interesting chess. Leela represents intuition.

While Stockfish was the overall winner, Leela won it’s share of games.