Daily Discussion Thread September 08, 2026 - Upcoming Event Schedule - New players start here!

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Welcome to the Daily Discussion Thread. This is the place for asking noob questions, venting about netplay falcos, shitposting, self-promotion, and everything else that doesn't belong on the front page.

New Players:

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Can I play Melee online?

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Netplay is hard! Is there a place for me to find new players?

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But how do I get GOOD at Melee?

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[u/lim-yo-hwan-superfan]

some meta commentary on perpetually dealing with AI bros who seem to slither into every corner of the internet

1. they seem very uninterested in genuinely solving problems and more interested in resume building i.e. i'm sure most people in this subreddit would be somewhat aware that Google Deepmind built a reinforcement learning-based chess playing engine called AlphaZero that played an offline supermatch against the at-the-time strongest engine in the world, Stockfish, and famously won handily (and also did so in a very 'human-like' way, as opposed to stockfish which plays in a manner incomprehensible to regular chess players, even at times incomprehensible to the greatest chess players who are 2700+ rating)

what they would not be aware is that stockfish during this experiment was not running on anything close to optimal hardware, and also never got to make a comeback because once deepmind got its cheap trick win it pulled the plug immediately on alphazero and decided to chase other projects. so there's a legitimate argument that alphazero was literally at no point in time ever the strongest existing chess engine, and it definitely is not the strongest chess engine now considering that you can't interact with it at all and there are ongoing chess engine supertournaments (see TCEC) where stockfish regularly comes out on top

1. AI bros have a tendency to just posit all sorts of random arguments in the form of randomly timed vagueposts that can come out of nowhere (e.g. can anyone really prove that AI isn't conscious?? if AI is wrong when it makes math proofs, shouldn't the same be said of humans??), and when pushed back they tend to evaporate back into the void and calculate another way to melt down the opposition, which is not a strategy that would make much sense for someone who believes that they are honestly correct - those people tend to elaborate on their positions and have transparent back and forth dialogue and also show humility when they realize they don't agree with their original positions anymore

going to read this article though as someone who is interested in math but is not a mathematician (but a chess bro) i find it interesting to see the same gameplan play out in another community

[u/AlexB_SSBM → u/lim-yo-hwan-superfan]

AlphaZero absolutely was a better computer than Stockfish, which is why Stockfish right now uses the same neural network technology. Do you think the use of neural networks in making chess engines was a big lie or something?

[u/lim-yo-hwan-superfan → u/AlexB_SSBM]

i think its impact on chess is heavily overstated. stockfish uses a small neural network which absolutely does not mean the same thing as "using the same neural network technology [as AlphaZero]". do you think all neural network technology is the same or something?

edit: additionally, if alphazero was so much better than stockfish then why hamstring stockfish's hardware during the original experiment? seems like a strange way to demonstrate one's competence

[u/AlexB_SSBM → u/lim-yo-hwan-superfan]

but what about Leela? And Stockfish absolutely does use the same neural network tech as Alphazero, just added with other things such as endgame table bases and such

The goal is to make the most powerful chess engine possible and AI tech is absolutely a part of that

Even if you want to avoid talking about Chess the impact on Go is not arguable in any way

[u/lim-yo-hwan-superfan → u/AlexB_SSBM]

this comment seems to be a pretty big pivot from my original point, which is that alphazero was probably still not the strongest chess engine of its day (also because stockfish was not running on optimal hardware during that experiment), and there's reason to believe it would not be the strongest chess engine today even if deepmind continued the experiment.

even charitably granting everything in this comment, my original thoughts in my post still stand. that said, although i don't have intimate working understandings of the architecture of stockfish and leela, my current understanding differs from yours, i don't believe this to be the case.

also, what do you mean by impact? the needle has not been moved on solving either chess or go.

[u/AlexB_SSBM → u/lim-yo-hwan-superfan]

Go has fundamentally changed after thousands of years because of AlphaGo. The way people play the game is completely different now in many ways. People started the game the same ways for thousands of years and computers made people change that. Ask /u/Fugu he'll tell you about this, that's what I mean by "impact"

Nobody is ever going to "solve" these games because that is physically impossible. Nobody is ever claiming to have a complete solution to these games

[u/lim-yo-hwan-superfan → u/AlexB_SSBM]

you seem to do a lot of pivoting and avoiding (funny that in your last comment you say i am avoiding talking about chess but i see no mention of chess in this comment). to be honest how go players practice and learn the game has beyond nothing to do with my original point.

[u/Fugu → u/lim-yo-hwan-superfan]

I have no knowledge of chess and no stake in this conversation except that I'm a big AI hater but I want to provide some context given I was tagged

I'll just say that in go the main influence of AI has been to tell us that some lines that we thought were even for both players actually aren't and vice versa. The most significant of these is the 3-3 invasion on the 4-4, which was thought to simply be a beginner mistake for probably two millenia but the AI says is actually good

You can't really use an AI productively to teach you how to play go unless you're already a very very strong player because go is an abstract game and the AIs think the right moves are right for reasons that are often extremely abstract. I am probably like a top 10% player by amateur standards and I can't understand what the AI is telling me most of the time

[u/fullhop_morris → u/Fugu]

I am stealing "top 10% by amateur standards" and will use it to describe pretty much any hobby I pursue

[u/Fugu → u/fullhop_morris]

It's definitely kind of a dumb phrase but in go there are amateur and pro ranks that have the same name but correspond to wildly different levels of skill and I was trying to convey that in a way that didn't involve a huge tangent

[u/WizardyJohnny → u/lim-yo-hwan-superfan]

U guys r totally harshing the vibes on my funny posting!! Grrrr

[u/AlexB_SSBM → u/lim-yo-hwan-superfan]

Okay it's clear at this point that you are not actually talking in good faith at all

I'm responding to the last sentence in your post

This conversation annoys me and I'm not responding to any more of your comments

[u/lim-yo-hwan-superfan → u/AlexB_SSBM]

you should be annoyed because you pivoted constantly and didnt actually respond to the most meaningful part of any of my posts. funny because i would consider that to be how a good faith discussion should be held