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Engine-Test Experiment on Lichess

Posted: Sat Nov 04, 2023 12:57 am
by Solista
4. Nov 2023: Engine-Test Experiment on Lichess:

As a human, I have been playing Lichess for many years. I have been playing with engines there since July 2021. It has now become easy to achieve a high Elo with engines. In 2021, I only managed an Elo of around 2700 with engines. Most engines at that time had much fewer Elo points than they do today. If my own Elo is 600 points higher than that of my opponent, then I have to win several games so that I only get +1 Elo. With 2700 Elo in 2021, I reached the limit where no Elo improvement was possible. That's why I stopped playing Lichess for a year. What does it look like today? The so-called bot elite currently has around 3200 Elo. This elite is led by several ProteusSF accounts. There are more Proteus SF accounts (a private engine by A. Alessandro) on Lichess than others with more than 3000 Elo points. Anyone who looks at ProteusSF games will see that they have played thousands of games against weak engines. To gain just 100 Elo he had to play thousands of games and win against opponents with up to 2600 Elo. But there are only a few much stronger opponents. If you don't want to wait minutes or hours until a new game against strong opponents takes place, you are forced to play against weak opponents. I also challenged ProteusSF yesterday, but he doesn't accept offers from strong opponents. He's just bragging like he does on PlayChess.

The day before yesterday I therefore started an experiment on Lichess. I created a new bot account and wanted to see how quickly I could get a high Elo rating. But that is not all! I wanted to see how many Elo points I could get with just half core on my 24 thread computer. Half a core = 1 thread. I loaded my engine Light 9.0 and the engine ran on one thread and only 1000 kns. The book I used was my Solista Polyglot book. How many Elo points could I achieve after just 2 days? See for yourself --> picture:

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I needed less than 150 games (far from thousands of games). Only in the Bullet did the engine play with more cores. Go to Lichess and see if you see a bot account (apart from ProteusSF) that has more Elo points. You won't find any! Most of the bots I played against had an Elo of 2390 to 2840. It's pretty easy to defeat bots up to Elo 2600. Stockfish is enough for this with just 1000 kns and a solid book. I can also play against the other few bots with more than 2900 Elo on PlayChess.com, they are the same, and I don't have to wait long. I find Lichess interesting, especially because there are a lot of amateur engines playing there. It was fun playing against them too. However, if I have an Elo of over 3000, then it no longer makes sense. I only lost two games due to disconnects with my EdoBot.

More here:
https://solistachess.jimdosite.com/solista-news/

Re: Engine-Test Experiment on Lichess

Posted: Sat Nov 04, 2023 2:20 pm
by massimilianogoi
Could you describe how to legally play on Lichess with computes, please? Maybe I could move from the paid Playchess...
Solista wrote: Sat Nov 04, 2023 12:57 am 4. Nov 2023: Engine-Test Experiment on Lichess:

As a human, I have been playing Lichess for many years. I have been playing with engines there since July 2021. It has now become easy to achieve a high Elo with engines. In 2021, I only managed an Elo of around 2700 with engines. Most engines at that time had much fewer Elo points than they do today. If my own Elo is 600 points higher than that of my opponent, then I have to win several games so that I only get +1 Elo. With 2700 Elo in 2021, I reached the limit where no Elo improvement was possible. That's why I stopped playing Lichess for a year. What does it look like today? The so-called bot elite currently has around 3200 Elo. This elite is led by several ProteusSF accounts. There are more Proteus SF accounts (a private engine by A. Alessandro) on Lichess than others with more than 3000 Elo points. Anyone who looks at ProteusSF games will see that they have played thousands of games against weak engines. To gain just 100 Elo he had to play thousands of games and win against opponents with up to 2600 Elo. But there are only a few much stronger opponents. If you don't want to wait minutes or hours until a new game against strong opponents takes place, you are forced to play against weak opponents. I also challenged ProteusSF yesterday, but he doesn't accept offers from strong opponents. He's just bragging like he does on PlayChess.

The day before yesterday I therefore started an experiment on Lichess. I created a new bot account and wanted to see how quickly I could get a high Elo rating. But that is not all! I wanted to see how many Elo points I could get with just half core on my 24 thread computer. Half a core = 1 thread. I loaded my engine Light 9.0 and the engine ran on one thread and only 1000 kns. The book I used was my Solista Polyglot book. How many Elo points could I achieve after just 2 days? See for yourself --> picture:

Image

I needed less than 150 games (far from thousands of games). Only in the Bullet did the engine play with more cores. Go to Lichess and see if you see a bot account (apart from ProteusSF) that has more Elo points. You won't find any! Most of the bots I played against had an Elo of 2390 to 2840. It's pretty easy to defeat bots up to Elo 2600. Stockfish is enough for this with just 1000 kns and a solid book. I can also play against the other few bots with more than 2900 Elo on PlayChess.com, they are the same, and I don't have to wait long. I find Lichess interesting, especially because there are a lot of amateur engines playing there. It was fun playing against them too. However, if I have an Elo of over 3000, then it no longer makes sense. I only lost two games due to disconnects with my EdoBot.

More here:
https://solistachess.jimdosite.com/solista-news/

Re: Engine-Test Experiment on Lichess

Posted: Sun Nov 05, 2023 6:32 pm
by Solista
On Youtube is a Video with Banksia GUI:

https://youtu.be/LCvQPM4VgkY?si=5nITO05vs35XXGp-

I'll describe how to create an account with token on Lichess later here when I'm at the computer.

Re: Engine-Test Experiment on Lichess

Posted: Sun Nov 05, 2023 7:06 pm
by Solista
Create a normal new account on Lichess (only one account is allowed for playing as human, this does not apply for bots).

1. Go to Settings of your account. Select API here:
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2. Here you can now create an API key:
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3. Select in the Banksia GUI --> connects --> Lichess bots
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4. In the Bot panel you can now enter the token (key) under "Token" (double click). If the key is correct, OK appears. Now you can connect Banksia to Lichess using “Go online”. You must first install your engine in the Banksia GUI and select an engine here under Bots:
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Banksia GUI offers its own options to configure the GUI so that games start automatically, how to do this is shown in the YouTube video.

Alternatively, you can now go at Lichess via Browser (parallel to Banksia) with the normal password that you created.

On Lichess under Community --> Players --> Online Bots --> you can see a list of all current online bots.

You can challenge them. The game is visible in the browser as well as in the Banksia GUI. It is possible that nothing is displayed during the first game under Banksia. You now wait until the first game is over. Then close Banksia and restart the GUI so that the new configuration is applied. In the second game everything should be visible in the Banaksia GUI:

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Re: Engine-Test Experiment on Lichess

Posted: Mon Nov 06, 2023 7:06 am
by Solista
For people who create books professionally, Lichess is not a good choice. Unfortunately, I had to discover that with book killer variants, the winning games for the Elo rating does not count if the variant is repeated. Here is an example (you can also win with this killer variant on PlayChess). I just won twice in a row on Lichess, but the second win didn't count for the Elo rating. :thinking: This is a joke!

This rewards people who are too lazy to developing opening books. I don't know what that's supposed to be, but it's not tournament chess. I want to play tournament chess with books and not play Muppet show!

Here two wins in a row, but the second win didn't count for the Elo rating. I merged the games:


Re: Engine-Test Experiment on Lichess

Posted: Mon Nov 06, 2023 10:38 am
by Solista
By the way: My opponent, who lost the second game with the same variation, remained at his rating. I won but the display said +/- 0 Elo. My opponent who lost also got +/- 0 Elo.

In the two games after my move 18. h3!: If opponents engine is so stupid to take the pawn, is it my fault? :happy-jumpeveryone:

And the points system on Lichess is strange too. There are only a few bot account much stronger than 2840 Elo!

I had 3070 Elo when I started my games against blundar_bot (2840 Elo).

Game 1: (against 2840 Elo) I win. Elo gain +4, Elo opponent -3 Elo.
Game 2: I play a draw with Black. -4 Elo and my opponent gets +3 Elo.
Game 3: I win with the same variation (up to move 22) as in game 1, I get zero Elo and my opponent loses zero Elo. :angry-banghead:
Game 4: I play a draw with Black again. -5 Elo again and my opponent gets +4 Elo.

Guys, if that's how it goes then I'll stop playing on lichess.

Re: Engine-Test Experiment on Lichess

Posted: Mon Nov 06, 2023 11:29 am
by Solista
Here is an excerpt from the duel, live pictures on lichess.

At the bottom: I only play a draw with Black against Elo 2847, -4 Elo, opponent +3 Elo
In the middle: I win for the second time with the variation mentioned, but I don't get a single point for it, and the loser can laugh because he stays at 2850 Elo. This is an absolute joke! :rotfl:
At the top: I'm playing draw with black again, -4 Elo and my opponent gets +3 Elo.

Overall, my opponent gains 6 Elo and I lose 8 Elo even though I won once and played draw twice with Black against a strong opponent:

Image

One thing can be said: Lichess does not follow the general rules of chess. I can play whatever I want on the board, a win is a win everywhere, and is rewarded except at Lichess.

Re: Engine-Test Experiment on Lichess

Posted: Mon Nov 06, 2023 12:12 pm
by IbaiBuR
Solista wrote: Mon Nov 06, 2023 11:29 am Here is an excerpt from the duel, live pictures on lichess.

At the bottom: I only play a draw with Black against Elo 2847, -4 Elo, opponent +3 Elo
In the middle: I win for the second time with the variation mentioned, but I don't get a single point for it, and the loser can laugh because he stays at 2850 Elo. This is an absolute joke! :rotfl:
At the top: I'm playing draw with black again, -4 Elo and my opponent gets +3 Elo.

Overall, my opponent gains 6 Elo and I lose 8 Elo even though I won once and played draw twice with Black against a strong opponent:
Lichess rating system has nothing to do with PlayChess rating system. It depends in the number of games you have played in the variant, which determines your rating deviation. The more games you play, the more accurate your rating deviation is and consequently the more accurate your rating is.

Some insight about the rating system Lichess uses here.

You have to play a lot of games for this.

If your rating deviation is high (usually over 60-65), you will lose a lot of elo points when drawing/losing against weaker opponents, but you will gain a lot of elo points when drawing/winning against higher rated opponents. Best rating deviation is 45 I believe.

Nonetheless, the "not getting a single elo point after winning 2 times in a row against the same opponent bug" you mention has been happening for years already (I created my first bot account in 2020 so I can assure this). I dont know why it happens actually.

There is actually a good number of bots over 2840, playing with different engines too, even some original ones, not only Stockfishes as you may expect, and for sure Stockfish derivatives as expected. But maybe you were not able to find them, I dont know...

I use BotLi with automatic matchmaking (much better than Banksia GUI, at least for now), and it finds strong opponents automatically. You can even settle a low max_rating_diff in your config file in order to only play against strong opponents, but thats your choice really.

Some people play with online books, some with private books, some with public books, etc...

There is a great variety of engines to play.

Regards,

Ibai

Re: Engine-Test Experiment on Lichess

Posted: Mon Nov 06, 2023 1:50 pm
by Solista
The fact is that this is not acceptable, when if I have a very nice victory with a great tactical variant that I've known for years (not since yesterday), I won't be given a single Elo point. The photo is original from Lichess and is proof! I no longer feel like playing Lichess under these conditions.

Regarding the bots: I know that there are thousands of bots on Lichess. But most of them are almost always offline. There are around 100 bots online every day. Only a few of them with Elo higher than 2800!

The fact is that I tried in vain to play against the best bots today. Every time my challenge was rejected. Some bots say: I play Bullet from 1/2 minute. When I challenged this bot, the message come up "I don't play this time control". I also challenged ResoluteBot, but no game has materialized yet. ProteusSF plays with 6 accounts and just brags! Of course I challenged him too but he doesn't accept a challenge (a Friend told me the same thing).

Lichess is not better than PlayChess, on the contrary! If I want to play against players as strong as myself, then I can't do that on Lichess because almost no one has more than 2900 Elo (ResoluteBot is currently at 2890 Elo). If I want to play constantly, I have to accept weak opponents. This isn't fun for me in the long run either.

Re: Engine-Test Experiment on Lichess

Posted: Mon Nov 06, 2023 2:13 pm
by IbaiBuR
Well, then dont play, there is no problem with that.

If you are so mad about it you can open an issue here, Lichess Developers will hear you and maybe fix the bug you mention or explain you why it is like that, as simple as that.

What client are you using? Again, Banksia GUI is not good for Lichess, it is quite buggy currently and its way of finding opponents is not efficient.

I find strong opponents with my BOTs rating or more quite easily, and in terms of a minute! (my matchmaking delay is 60 seconds).

If you want to check for strong opponents you can also look at this rating list, or at this one which is my own rating list (updated every 20 minutes for online bots, every 6 hours for standard ratings). There you can find strong bots in case you want to play against them.

You can check the games of some of my bots, and you'll see that I am not lying:
And it is true that sometimes it is difficult to find an strong opponent and you are forced to play a weaker one, but I dont see a problem with that either, again, with BotLi it is very easy to avoid that, I just dont do it (I set max_rating_diff to 400 usually for my bot accounts).

Ha! It is way better than PlayChess, it is completely free, it requires a lot less resources to run, engine performance is better (if you use good clients like BotLi or Lichess Bot) since the engines will not need a GUI, more engines to challenge in terms of variety, and it has way less bugs!

Look, if you want me to help you to setup BotLi so you only play with strong opponents, I'll help you, if you dont, its fine too, just do whatever you enjoy basically :)

Regards,

Ibai