What Squares Do Stockfish And Leela Focus On?
Before we go to this week’s newsletter I will just let you know that I have created a newsletter for The Chess Gym this week. We will share updates about what is happening inside the gym and what we are working on, so sign up if you are interested.
What squares do Stockfish and Leela focus on?
This week I just want to share an interesting article I passed by. It is called ‘Information based explanation methods for deep learning agents – with applications on large open-source chess models’.
The authors introduced a new kind of visual tool called "Information Importance Maps" to help us understand how chess engines like Leela and Stockfish think about positions.
It is like heat maps for a chessboard that show what squares and pieces the engine is focusing on. Imagine being able to see what parts of the board are most important for any given position according to a super-strong engine.
It might also help us understand why an engine like Leela can play at grandmaster level at a relatively low depth since it knows what squares and pieces are important.
It is quite interesting to play around with the editor where you can insert a FEN position: https://patrik-ha.github.io/ii-map/
Let me know what you think if you try it out.
Have a nice weekend!
/Martin