To what extent (if at all) is the new Komodo 13 MCTS an AlphaZero Lite? The new Komodo 13 MCTS has been announced with the claim that:


  Komodo 13 MCTS thinks like no other chess engine in the world.
  Inspired by the ideas of AlphaZero and Leela, Larry and Mark set out
  to reinvent Komodo. What they came up with was Komodo 13 MCTS - a
  engine which searches for candidate moves in an incredible new way,
  and finds moves no other engine can


They are clearly trying to cash in on the publicity behind AlphaZero and LeelaZero. But is the hype justified? 

There seems to be no mention of an AlphaZero like database of training results. Is the use of MCTS on its own enough to produce worthwhile improvements? More detailed information seems to be hard to find (possibly for commercial reasons).
Komodo MCTS isn't a neural-network based engine. It just uses a different search algorithm, in particular MCTS instead of AB. Alphazero also used MCTS, so KMCTS is an "Alphazero lite" in that sense; however a distinguishing factor of Alphzero is that it uses a neural network to perform the evaluation, and KMCTS does not do that.

Is MCTS "better" than AB? Yes and no. From what I've seen, MCTS is exceptionally better when you want multiple PVs (because they effectively get it for free, while AB engines need to spend computational power). However MCTS loses firepower in tactical shoot-outs, and it's also really bad at winning a technical position. For example I remember seeing a KMCTS game in TCEC where its eval read "I have a forced checkmate" one move and then "wait, I don't, I only have a very large advantage" another, and then back to "I have a forced checkmate", etc.

Having said all that, KMCTS eliminated regular Komodo from the latest TCEC cup, so it's absolutely a respectable engine. In a straight-up game against another engine, it's not as strong as Stockfish or Leela, but it's comparable to everything else.