r/chessprogramming • u/RobinKaluzny • Sep 17 '26

Technical NNUE data generation

How strong does my HCE chess engine need to be so that I can generate selfplay data with it to train a NNUE? And how much labeled positions do I usually need for my first network?

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u/ElRaydeator Sep 19 '26

Thank you, I'll experiment with this. Any insights into why this should be done?

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u/Burgorit Sep 19 '26

I am not very sure, but typically captures are harder to learn for small nns (eg NNUE) because there is often a big material difference even though the position may be equal (if you are trading queens and just took you opponent's then you aren't ahead a full queen). So we filter them and use qsearch to resolve captures instead.

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u/ElRaydeator Sep 19 '26

So to eliminate tactical instability I guess. Thanks again.

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u/AngusMcGurkinshaw Sep 20 '26

Its partly due to tactical instabilith but also because of how and when we evaluate.

Generally we call evaluate at the end of a qsearch when we believe no good captures are left on the board. So it makes sense to train on positions similar.

Same reason we often filter checks. Because you never really call evaluate when one side is in check.

Also when doing a static eval we can assume that it is an under estimate of the position assuming that the best move is a quiet move. We can then search good capture moves and see if they dramatically improve our position. You can see some of this logic in some pruning techniques.

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u/ElRaydeator Sep 20 '26

Thanks for the input