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Alpha Zero's "Immortal Zugzwang Game" against Stockfish

agadmator's Chess Channel · 1.7M views · 2017-12-07 · 15:37

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Overview

agadmator walks through a game in which DeepMind's AlphaZero beat Stockfish, ending in a famous zugzwang that leaves the engine helpless. He gives commentary on the moves.

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HN recommends it as a striking, well-explained example of AlphaZero's play and of zugzwang.

Recommended by 2 HN people across 2 months · HN mentions 2019–2025

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What people said

lawrenceyan · 2019-12 · Strong recommendation

A great example I love showing people is Alpha Zero's infamous "Immortal Zugzwang Game" against Stockfish [0]. Stockfish gets utterly annihilated in a trap that seemingly springs out of nowhere, though of course the reality is that Alpha Zero was actually really in control the entire time. [0] [VIDEO]

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mrleiter · 2019-10 · Recommendation

Anyone who's interested to see how brilliant AlphaZero played against the best chess computer (then), with solid explanations: [VIDEO]

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yunwal · 2025-11 · Reference

Here’s a chess stackexchange of positions that stump engines [LINK] It basically comes down to “ideas that are rare enough that they were never programmed into a chess engine”. Blockades or positions where no progress is possible are a common theme. Engines will often keep tree searching where a human sees an obvious repeating pattern. Here’s also an example where 2 engines are playing, and deep mind finds a move that I think would be obvious to most grandmasters, yet stockfish misses it [VIDEO] That being said, I’m not sure that this necessarily correlates with brilliancy. There are a few of these that I would probably get in classical time and I’m not a particularly brilliant player.

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Sources

Video by agadmator's Chess Channel, played through YouTube.

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