8 games, 60 minutes + 30 second increment for Benjamin, i.e. classical TC though a bit quicker than some. Benjamin gets N odds in all games. Leela will play at bullet speed. The hardware is not specified in the thread I linked. Leela will apparently be running a network specially trained to play with knight odds. Match will be livestreamed on Youtube with GM Matthew Sadler commentating. It will take place over 3 days, January 25 through 27th.
For those not familiar, Leela is a neural net chess engine inspired by Alpha Chess Zero. GM Sadler is a co-author of “Game Changer”, a book analyzing a bunch of games of Alpha Chess Zero, so he’s just about an ideal commentator for this event. It should be interesting.
Added: official page about match: https://lczero.org/blog/2025/01/leela-vs-gm-joel-benjamin/
Results of first 5 rounds: 0-1, 0-1, .5-.5, .5-.5, 1-0. Leela has white in all games so this means Benjamin won the first two, drew the next two, then lost one (game 6 now in progress). Maybe he is getting tired. He said after the first day that he was “knackered”.
Youtube livecast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRTfG_JM3Bs
Lichess livecast: https://lichess.org/broadcast/leela-knight-odds-vs-gm-joel-benjamin/game-1/vzQHuqnK
This is really cool! BTW, if you haven’t tried playing Leela with queen odds, I highly recommend it. It’s insanely hard and eye opening.
There is a bot in Lichess that allows you to play it. No setup required.
I might try that but I lose to in-browser Stockfish at queen odds all the time. IDK if Leela is likely to be much different. I’ve also lost some to Leela with no search, just one node evaluation per move. Tldr, I suck at chess.
