Diep?

[Zatarra]

Ive worked with Vincent for over a decade but in the past I didnt want my name tossed out

[BubbaTough]

No , Vincent got angry and lost his cool once diep was forfeited and removed from tournament, not before. Of course that would upset you. No comments were made prior to that. Yeah it became personal after that, but removing him and forfeiting him was a bit over the top considering the reasons why diep doesnt kibitz during tourneys.(see below)

I stand corrected. I was pretty sure he was lost before his game ended, but it is quite possible that the tirade happened after his removal from the tournament not before. Due to time-zone issues I observed the whole thing through a cloud of lack-of-sleep and may not have picked up on it when he removed from the tournament. As you pointed out, rule 2a1 is a tough one to follow!

-Sam

[michiguel]

No , Vincent got angry and lost his cool once diep was forfeited and removed from tournament, not before. Of course that would upset you. No comments were made prior to that. Yeah it became personal after that, but removing him and forfeiting him was a bit over the top considering the reasons why diep doesnt kibitz during tourneys.(see below)

No comments were made prior to that. And at the point the 'adjudication' occured, yes hiarcs had an advantage, but it wasnt over yet.

In CCT11 we were playing against a *new* engine and author, and it was playing amazingly well, and beating us. Oddly though we noticed every single move we kibitzed PV- it played the same exact line. thats statistically improbable over the course of 20 moves (but ok maybe it could happen). The very same move we switched from kib-->whisper the moves began to deviate and continued to deviate and diep went on to win the match.

Now you might say, "you dont have proof he *somehow* used the kibitzed info to assist him" and you are correct because the only way i could get proof is to get ahold of his code and hope it was the *same* code he played with, of course. So we gave up on that and decided the best manner is to whisper.

All the same information is there- and we moved this tourney to FICS because of the free accounts right? So anyone can make a 2nd account and observe the match and see all the evals. We were hiding nothing- just not handing any info to the opponent engine.

Considering the dubious nature of so much of the chess arena in todays programming circle- this is NOT a far fetched crazy plan as some might have you believe. Do you think someone who would copy rybka would hesitate to modify some code to read kibs? And while im not saying anyone there copied rybka- these people DO exist, we CAN agree on that right? And if they do exist, eventually they find their way into these tourneys- period.

The lack of enforcement of rule 2a1 and I quote:

"2a1. The author must be online during the tournament to participate in discussions in channel 64, and in the event there is an issue with their program they can provide real time support to their operator."

does not at all meet with the methods of enforcement imposed on Diep.

Also in games prior, we requested other engines whisper their eval - and this fell on deaf ears. But when its time to drop the hammer on Diep, man lets do it!

Im not a conspiracy theorist, but this wasnt handled on a level playing field for all participants. And now you have robbed points from anyone who drew/lost to diep in the first few rounds. Like Sjengx, who almost lost!

And again, pete removed him from the tourney and forfeited the game at the same time. This is what sparked the arguing.

As with many other things, this is not black or white. Vincent had some points but he loses his temper in a way that it not acceptable, no matter how you look at it. But I do not want to comment on that because it has been said already. It is sad because his contributions are always valuable and he is one of the experienced programmers (and player) who put a lot of passion on this and work hard on all the details.

What I want to say is this: None of this would happen if all of us were more understanding. That include seasoned programmers who could do a better job at abiding by the rules. i.e. Kibitzing properly is not that difficult and if you just can't do it or do not want to do it, or do not give a s**t about it, then plug the engine to winboard, with polyglot if necessary (in case of UCI). Do not put you operator in a a lot of stress and terribly uncomfortable positions. Not to mention all the extra work that the TDs have to face. I played two pros, one did not kibitz at all for technical reasons an the other did not kibitz on ponder hits or easy moves. I did not complain, but I certainly could have enjoyed the games better if I followed the scores and PVs. It is not only to prove no cheating, proper kibitzing enhances the experience of the tournament. Let's make a deal: I will try to understand if you have a technical problem as long as you try to understand that other people really care about it.

Miguel

[Graham Banks]

Ive worked with Vincent for over a decade but in the past I didnt want my name tossed out

Cheers. Welcome to the forum.
My biggest wish is that one day Vincent releases a public version of Diep.

Regards,
Graham.

PS - sorry that CCT wasn't a positive experience for you.

[Peter Skinner]

Well I guess I should post my reasonings for last night..

In round two, several people complained that Diep was whispering information, and not kibitzing. They also complained that Ktulu wasn't as well, but I was working with Edwin to get it working.

So as per the rules I asked him to change to a kibitz rather than a whisper out of respect for the rules and the other participants that did (or in the case of Ktulu was willing to try to. I will go into this more later).

He refused based on something that happened in an ACCA event where he states someone used his kibitz information in a game to either win/draw. I stated that was an ACCA matter, not a CCT matter and for him to comply with the rules. He again refused.

In round 4, it was again brought up that he wasn't kibitzing. I asked several time in channel 64 for him to comply , which he blatantly ignored. So his game vs Hiarcs was set 0-1 by TD.

Vincent was understandably upset, and went into a tirade into my personal life, my TD skills, and how I favour this or that program. Up until this point, I was hoping Vincent would cool off a bit, conform to the rules, and play on.

This didn't happen. I let him verbally abuse me for 30+ minutes, and at this point I would still have let him play on. When he started stating there were 3 Rybka clones in the event, and that "I knew about them and did nothing), or that the Hiarcs team was an "untrusted" team, I felt I had no other option but to completely remove him from the event. It had went past the point of no return by him publicly accusing other participants. I am used to Vincent's tirades against me, so really it didn't bother me. Tirades against an event and the participants that WERE complying to the rules was beyond my control.

With the Ktulu situation, Edwin was having a horrible time getting Ktulu to work with the latest Winboard version and the latest Polyglot. Over 5 rounds Edwin must have tried 20+ different combinations fo Winboard + Polyglot and configuration files that I was sending him. (We he downloaded them from my site as GMail will not accept an exe file even if zipped.) I must apologize to some of Edwin's opponents, as I was specifically asking him to disconnect during games to try one or two different settings to get kibitzing to work. In round 5, we finally hit the jackpot, and Ktulu was kibitzing normally, and operating well.

So we had two situations. 1 person wouldn't conform to the given rules, and 1 that was really working his butt off to conform. In my time doing the CCT's, I have never seen someone try so hard to conform to the rules as Edwin did.

In the end, I am sorry that Vincent was withdrawn. I do offer my apologies to him (My intention was to get him to just follow the rules and play on. He did finish the game with Hiarcs before I even posted anything to the website), but I was trying to get _everyone_ this year to really abide by the rules set out.

And Daniel Shawul owes me BIG TIME. He was late for Round 1, and in using the mamer bot I couldn't add him after the fact. So instead of removing him completely, I offered to run the enter event manually, which of course everyone agreed to in the spirit of sportsmanship.

It was a busy night. Some good chess was to be had. Overall, I think Day 1 was great

Peter Skinner
CCT TD

PS - If Vincent would like to continue tonight, I would be happy to have him back. We have 4 rounds to go and the blitz event to which I am extending him an invitation. I hold no personal grudge over what happened last night, and many participants would like to see him continue. I leave that ball in his court.

PS2 - I have asked 4 programs to supply me with exe and source prior/during the event. Three were checked against the known clones out there and some from the past, and I can say all three passed. Thus the reason they were allowed to participate or keep participating. Due to respect of the tournament rules that state these issues will be held privately to avoid hurting someone's reputation, they will remain private. One is still pending, as the author and I are working out some confidentiality issues, but I fully expect it to pass as well. He is a well known member here and throughout computer chess, and has never come under speculation until just prior to the event.

[Stephan Vermeire (Brutus)]

Again the cloning business and cheating is taking over computerchess! Sad to notice but I am affraid we have to accept reality here.
How should we deal with this? I think the only option would be to take the following rule very strictly:

2. No manually operated programs, and all programs must kibitz their evaluation, and book moves/TB hits if possible. Providing as much information as possible for the viewers and participants is key. It should also be noted that 1-3 lines of text is sufficient. No need to scroll out an entire page.

If an engine can't kibitz due too technical reasons, it just looses the game. Tough, but that will be the only way to preserve a fair tournament. Programmers/operators have to be held responsible for the lack of kibitzing by this severe penalty.

Personaly I just can't imagine why someone would temper with kibitzing-output. Someone who does that is just fooling himself and spoiling the fun of others. Reality is: these people exist these days and unfortunately precautions must be made. Lets deal with it and focus on the things that it is all about: chess. I am sure that no-one is really happy about what happened today.

Stephan

[Highendman]

Peter thanks for this post. I really enjoyed watching the games and look forward to round two.

[garybelton]

We he downloaded them from my site as GMail will not accept an exe file even if zipped

Fyi this is not a problem if you use 7-zip which is available from http://www.7-zip.org/ , gmail does not look for exe files inside of 7-zip archives. Also the compression rate with 7-zip is a lot better than winzip or winrar.

[Peter Skinner]

We he downloaded them from my site as GMail will not accept an exe file even if zipped

Fyi this is not a problem if you use 7-zip which is available from http://www.7-zip.org/ , gmail does not look for exe files inside of 7-zip archives. Also the compression rate with 7-zip is a lot better than winzip or winrar.

I did not know that. I already use 7-zip as my archiving program. I will 7-zip everything from now on when emailing Gmail.

Thanks

Peter

[frankp]

First of all thank you very much for the time and effort running this event.

The response to such an unambiguous rule should not depend on personalities or how individuals respond when challenged. In this case, it appears that not kibitzing should result in automatic, instant game forfeit or ejection from the competition, applied equally to all without discussion of the reasons why it is not happening.

BTW I have sympathy with the point about the potential for using kib info. (having suffered from this in the past), however the rules were known well in advance, which is the point when entrants make a decision - or get the rule changed for all.