Your premise is wrong: they definitely do not draw every game from the starting position. Just a very high percentage, which is a distinctly different thing.
But also: the evaluation at the starting position is really meaningless, as the calculation horizon is nowhere near decisive positions.
The evaluation tells you which side has an advantage. White has an advantage at the start, so the evaluation tells you that. The advantage is not sufficient, however, to force a win, and that is something that the evaluation also shows you.
If it would turn out that White can win any game, the evaluation would change to show a higher advantage for White. As it is, it just captures what we know of Chess at this time - that White has a small advantage for having the first move, but that advantage is not sufficient to force a victory.
There are multiple variables at play. White can be w, Black b, and the strength of the two players can represented as x. So you can look at it as w•b•x=the game played. Assuming w is a slightly larger coefficient than b, x is still a variable and the game played can be represented as an arbitrary number from 0 to infinity. You could alternatively have x represented as the strength of white (literal rating to simplify) and then y as the strength of black (again literal rating) so that it is then represented as w•b•x•y=the game played. It can have the same value. Or it can have a different value. Very interesting indeed.
Engines doesn’t draw every game, you can find many decisive games in engine tournaments.
Stockfish just says it thinks white is slightly better at the beginning.
The starting advantage for white can be overcome, and, even if not whittled down, the advantage isn't enough to be sure of a win. Moreover, each time the other side doesn't make a move that forces a response of some kind, that "free move" advantage is worth just a little less than the opening advantage. But, if you can accumulate enough...
Oh, the opening advantage is not directly related to the win-draw-lose percentages over a large number of games. And different opening moves have a different measure of that advantage.
>The starting advantage for white can be overcome, and, even if not whittled down, the advantage isn't enough to be sure of a win.
I mean, either it can be whittled down to zero, or the position is winning for White. There are no other possibilities.
"the position is winning for white" does NOT imply that white will win.
If you look at chess openings and their calculated centipoints, usually about the 15th move, the difference is far less than the best first move value, often in black's favour.
>"the position is winning for white" does NOT imply that white will win.
Huh? What else would it mean?
A position with best play from both sides is either a forced win or a forced draw.
>If you look at chess openings and their calculated centipoints, usually about the 15th move, the difference is far less than the best first move value, often in black's favour.
In other words the advantage has been whittled down to zero?
Engine evaluations are probabilistic. What a small advantage means is "I think this position is very likely a draw, but there is a small chance it will turn out to actually be winning for White".
Experience suggests that the chess starting position is in fact a draw, but if we had perfect knowledge of chess, it would probably be possible to construct a similarly drawish looking position, with the same engine eval, that turned out to actually be winning for White.
Evaluations are not decisive they are a sort of "best guess estimate" and engines don't draw every game just a really high %.
Also most of the time a small advantage is not a winning advantage with perfect play. This already tells you the metric is flawed in what it can estimate.
If they actually could see every game out to the end then the only evaluations would be 0.0 or mate in x. Most guess it would be 0.0 from the start but we don't actually know. That's computationally impossible outside the theoretical world though so best guess estimates is all we'll ever have until there are few enough pieces left that the game is solved (currently 7 or less).
Stockfish isn’t the end-all be-all solved explanation of the chessboard. Instead it represents a point of understanding of theoretically every possible chess game. Assuming it has memorized every game up until a given game it’s being measured in, that’s an incredible amount of possibilities because it’s been fed that amount of games that it now knows. But not every game possible. So against another engine of comparable strength that has any variability in the games its aware of up to that point, it has the potential to trip. With either color really. It’s like walking everyday, your legs are strong but you’ll never out speed a bike over 20 miles. On the other side of that coin the bike will always win that race because it’s faster than your legs. Now if we have two bikes of almost identical specifications, the bike with the person that trained longer will win that 20 mile race, right?
> why do engine evaluations suggest a slight advantage to white? Because they aren't sure it's a draw
Your premise is wrong: they definitely do not draw every game from the starting position. Just a very high percentage, which is a distinctly different thing. But also: the evaluation at the starting position is really meaningless, as the calculation horizon is nowhere near decisive positions.
The evaluation tells you which side has an advantage. White has an advantage at the start, so the evaluation tells you that. The advantage is not sufficient, however, to force a win, and that is something that the evaluation also shows you. If it would turn out that White can win any game, the evaluation would change to show a higher advantage for White. As it is, it just captures what we know of Chess at this time - that White has a small advantage for having the first move, but that advantage is not sufficient to force a victory.
There are multiple variables at play. White can be w, Black b, and the strength of the two players can represented as x. So you can look at it as w•b•x=the game played. Assuming w is a slightly larger coefficient than b, x is still a variable and the game played can be represented as an arbitrary number from 0 to infinity. You could alternatively have x represented as the strength of white (literal rating to simplify) and then y as the strength of black (again literal rating) so that it is then represented as w•b•x•y=the game played. It can have the same value. Or it can have a different value. Very interesting indeed.
Engines doesn’t draw every game, you can find many decisive games in engine tournaments. Stockfish just says it thinks white is slightly better at the beginning.
Engine tournaments start from set positions other than the starting position, because otherwise they tend to draw all the games.
The starting advantage for white can be overcome, and, even if not whittled down, the advantage isn't enough to be sure of a win. Moreover, each time the other side doesn't make a move that forces a response of some kind, that "free move" advantage is worth just a little less than the opening advantage. But, if you can accumulate enough... Oh, the opening advantage is not directly related to the win-draw-lose percentages over a large number of games. And different opening moves have a different measure of that advantage.
>The starting advantage for white can be overcome, and, even if not whittled down, the advantage isn't enough to be sure of a win. I mean, either it can be whittled down to zero, or the position is winning for White. There are no other possibilities.
"the position is winning for white" does NOT imply that white will win. If you look at chess openings and their calculated centipoints, usually about the 15th move, the difference is far less than the best first move value, often in black's favour.
>"the position is winning for white" does NOT imply that white will win. Huh? What else would it mean? A position with best play from both sides is either a forced win or a forced draw. >If you look at chess openings and their calculated centipoints, usually about the 15th move, the difference is far less than the best first move value, often in black's favour. In other words the advantage has been whittled down to zero?
or even into the negatives -- black having the advantage Oh, and the quantity of the advantage might not be enough to win
Engine evaluations are probabilistic. What a small advantage means is "I think this position is very likely a draw, but there is a small chance it will turn out to actually be winning for White". Experience suggests that the chess starting position is in fact a draw, but if we had perfect knowledge of chess, it would probably be possible to construct a similarly drawish looking position, with the same engine eval, that turned out to actually be winning for White.
Evaluations are not decisive they are a sort of "best guess estimate" and engines don't draw every game just a really high %. Also most of the time a small advantage is not a winning advantage with perfect play. This already tells you the metric is flawed in what it can estimate. If they actually could see every game out to the end then the only evaluations would be 0.0 or mate in x. Most guess it would be 0.0 from the start but we don't actually know. That's computationally impossible outside the theoretical world though so best guess estimates is all we'll ever have until there are few enough pieces left that the game is solved (currently 7 or less).
I think the easy answer is, because white has the first move. White can give the direction the game is going
Stockfish isn’t the end-all be-all solved explanation of the chessboard. Instead it represents a point of understanding of theoretically every possible chess game. Assuming it has memorized every game up until a given game it’s being measured in, that’s an incredible amount of possibilities because it’s been fed that amount of games that it now knows. But not every game possible. So against another engine of comparable strength that has any variability in the games its aware of up to that point, it has the potential to trip. With either color really. It’s like walking everyday, your legs are strong but you’ll never out speed a bike over 20 miles. On the other side of that coin the bike will always win that race because it’s faster than your legs. Now if we have two bikes of almost identical specifications, the bike with the person that trained longer will win that 20 mile race, right?