Silicon Road: Leela gives Knight Odds! Piece up? Have another pawn!

In July 2023, the Leela team introduced a feature called WDL (Win/Draw/Loss) Contempt. Behind this austere technical name, there's something amazingly cool! Leela is able to play in a risky and aggressive style, unbalancing positions to maximise its winning chances. One of the cool side-efects of this ability is an amazing strength at odds (handicap) chess, where Leela gives the opponent a knight's start!
Somehow in this game, Leela achieves equality already by move 12 - by sacrificing a pawn on top of the handicap piece! - and then a winning position by move 17! The detail is a brilliant rook sacrifice on move 23 that rips apart Black's position!

I’m grandmaster Matthew Sadler, a 2-times British Champion, and ranked in the world’s top 50 for many years. I’m also a prolific author. My latest book "Re-Engineering the Chess Classics" appeared in May 2023. It uses the techniques described in "The Silicon Road to Chess Improvement" to analyse afresh thirty-five of the most fascinating and complex chess games ever played by World Champions and other top grandmasters.

"Re-Engineering the Chess Classics" is available from here:

"The Silicon Road to Chess Improvement" – which came out in October 2021 is, just like this channel, all about learning from and training with engines. My previous book, the award-winning Game Changer – written together with Natasha Regan – brought the amazing chess games of DeepMind’s AlphaZero to the world.

The Silicon Road to Chess Improvement is available from here:

"Game Changer" came out on 20th January 2019 and won the prestigious ECF Book of the Year and FIDE Book of the Year prizes for 2019! The Game Changer chess book is available in print and digital versions from these links:

#siliconroad
#matthewsadler
#tcec

[SiliconRoadChess]

Somehow in this game, Leela achieves equality already by move 12 - by sacrificing a pawn on top of the handicap piece! - and then a winning position by move 17! The detail is a brilliant rook sacrifice on move 23 that rips apart Black's position!

[allanbeardsworth]

I doubt I would ever find Bg5-Rc7 combination. Excellent once again Matthew.

[loosehorsemedia]

Love how Leela makes sense of the improved development she has on account of the missing horse :) would love to see her have a go with rook odds too …

[sorenzollamas]

The Rc7 idea reminds me to always consider moves that look impossible

[healthy]

Didn't expect Rc7! I was trying to make Qxe5 haha

[PSModelling]

Rc7 is a beautiful idea, really need to be very paranoid playing these strong engines. Limit complications as much as possible.

[EvanLandry]

Playing this bot is so much different than even running into cheaters running stockfish move for move. There its like being unceremoniously put in a hydraulic press but Leela feels so much more like being attacked by grizzly bear.

[mrpizza]

I managed to be the first person to beat it in 1+0(and still no one else has beaten it in this time control to this day)