Dann Corbit wrote:First some history and my opinions pasted to it:
The chess engine Rybka came onto the scene with version 1.0 and it was a stunning world beater.
Sometime later, some enterprising souls did some reverse engineering of Rybka and came to the conclusion that it had striking similarities to fruit.
Here are some links to the analysis:
{analysis links removed}
The inescapable conclusion is that Rybka 1.0 is heavily influenced by Fruit.
wow that's interesting stuff. I don't know if I remember well, but I think before "Rybka 1.0", Vas had already a weaker version right? so he later changed the evaluation then maybe? why would one semicopy an evaluation? including things that may look caprichous, I don't think that's even something that's going to give you too much elo and feels kind of cheap. Was changing the eval an elo-boost? is that Fruit eval specially strong at all?? and would an international master prefer to base heavily its eval in another eval instead of try to write it by himself?
Actually I don't want to "acuse" no one of nothing. I wrote just with my first impression. Taking that aside, I repeat it is a bit strange, coming from an international master one would expect an eval much more complex than an average one. But it's ok. I remember also a webpage where the author did a theory about rybka strength and talk about the better calculation of the potential of the pieces or something like that, pure ilusion?.
Rybka was a lot stronger than Fruit, right off the bat.
Rybka is a bitboard engine so the architecture is different than fruit which does not use bitboards.
Rybka uses the idea of material imbalance in the evaluation as pioneered by Larry Kaufman.
Actually Vas already said: that he looked in Fruit source and took many things. That words alone are at least as strong or stronger than the similarities shown here. So no dishonesty in the first place. Also as the code was probably written from scratch... (partly because it is written in bitboards) you cannot say there is anything illegal. So the data in this comparison may be of some interest but not to acuse Vas of doing anything illegal.
Anyway now I know, that rybka 2 plays Nh6 a bit too easily not because of some deep concept but maybe because it's eval is simply not that good. Also if I read well there we see it doesn't penalize doubled pawns in the openning? so it simply doesn't see them, there is no corner cases or whatever. It's a tactical monster.
I'd only add that the release of several very strong open source engines over the past few years (Stockfish/Glaurung especially deserve mention) show that there is more than one way to write a very strong chess program.
So the fact that an engine is strong does not mean it's an unauthorized derivative of something else. But I have no reason to doubt that the recently published sources are in large part a reverse engineering of Rybka. If Vas says they are and the authors say they are, why would I doubt it?
Btw. also in all the heat over this issue I haven't seen any substantive discussion of the now revealed algorithms. Whatever your legal or moral qualms about the source release, these are now "out in the wild", much as recursive null pruning was revealed many years ago after having been used in a commercial program.
jdart wrote:I think that's more or less my take also.
I'd only add that the release of several very strong open source engines over the past few years (Stockfish/Glaurung especially deserve mention) show that there is more than one way to write a very strong chess program.
So the fact that an engine is strong does not mean it's an unauthorized derivative of something else. But I have no reason to doubt that the recently published sources are in large part a reverse engineering of Rybka. If Vas says they are and the authors say they are, why would I doubt it?
Btw. also in all the heat over this issue I haven't seen any substantive discussion of the now revealed algorithms. Whatever your legal or moral qualms about the source release, these are now "out in the wild", much as recursive null pruning was revealed many years ago after having been used in a commercial program.
Based on the comments here, what the hell does Vas and the authors know about chess and clones? And who wrote what? etc.
"opinions are like assholes, everybody has one, nobody wants to look at anyone else's." -- famous unix "obscene" fortune cookie.
Well, this “ thing “ deserves a better definition to describe what it really means to me.
As a casual observer of this site interested in the evolution of chess theory and thus keeping an eye on the progress of chess engine developments to outplay humans at GM level.
It really amazes me to see mathematician like Larker’s double pawn theory attempting to solve chess.
My observation of computer chess bring to mind Botwinik the chess expert of practical application with basic computer knowledge and then Hyatt the computer language genius who was successful in combining science with art forging out a product reaching the GM level playing strength. With the now ever faster computer speed and growing chess knowledge base it looks inevitable that chess will be solved maybe not in my life time but soon after.
My point is to create an awareness that computer chess is evolving in a very fast pace which is a product of all the various components of contributions via chess engines designs and chess knowledge accumulation available to all parties of interests.
Why attempt to stop progress of evolution of a product which rightfully belongs to all contributors regardless of the degree or incremental values of their input in the final product capable of solving chess.
Therefore let’s assign a proper definition to this” thing” which I compare to the “big bang” stage of evolution.
My sincere appreciation to all contributors keeping computer chess an interesting and fascinating lifelong pastime for me.
kurt wrote:Well, this “ thing “ deserves a better definition to describe what it really means to me.
As a casual observer of this site interested in the evolution of chess theory and thus keeping an eye on the progress of chess engine developments to outplay humans at GM level.
It really amazes me to see mathematician like Larker’s double pawn theory attempting to solve chess.
My observation of computer chess bring to mind Botwinik the chess expert of practical application with basic computer knowledge and then Hyatt the computer language genius who was successful in combining science with art forging out a product reaching the GM level playing strength. With the now ever faster computer speed and growing chess knowledge base it looks inevitable that chess will be solved maybe not in my life time but soon after.
My point is to create an awareness that computer chess is evolving in a very fast pace which is a product of all the various components of contributions via chess engines designs and chess knowledge accumulation available to all parties of interests.
Why attempt to stop progress of evolution of a product which rightfully belongs to all contributors regardless of the degree or incremental values of their input in the final product capable of solving chess.
Therefore let’s assign a proper definition to this” thing” which I compare to the “big bang” stage of evolution.
My sincere appreciation to all contributors keeping computer chess an interesting and fascinating lifelong pastime for me.
Correction: Larker above should read " Lasker " (world champion & mathematician without computers)
sorry.
BTW should "Opening Novelties" remain the property of the discovery and
not allowed to be used without consent? Or should the users be tagged
as a cloner or a copier of novelties?
kurt wrote:Well, this “ thing “ deserves a better definition to describe what it really means to me.
As a casual observer of this site interested in the evolution of chess theory and thus keeping an eye on the progress of chess engine developments to outplay humans at GM level.
It really amazes me to see mathematician like Larker’s double pawn theory attempting to solve chess.
My observation of computer chess bring to mind Botwinik the chess expert of practical application with basic computer knowledge and then Hyatt the computer language genius who was successful in combining science with art forging out a product reaching the GM level playing strength. With the now ever faster computer speed and growing chess knowledge base it looks inevitable that chess will be solved maybe not in my life time but soon after.
My point is to create an awareness that computer chess is evolving in a very fast pace which is a product of all the various components of contributions via chess engines designs and chess knowledge accumulation available to all parties of interests.
Why attempt to stop progress of evolution of a product which rightfully belongs to all contributors regardless of the degree or incremental values of their input in the final product capable of solving chess.
Therefore let’s assign a proper definition to this” thing” which I compare to the “big bang” stage of evolution.
My sincere appreciation to all contributors keeping computer chess an interesting and fascinating lifelong pastime for me.
My only comment is with respect to "Pioneer" (Botvinnik's program). It was a fraud, pure and simple, and could not play a game of chess, nor even solve many of the test positions that were claimed to be solved. Berliner debunked this quite carefully in the JICCA a few years back.
kurt wrote:Well, this “ thing “ deserves a better definition to describe what it really means to me.
As a casual observer of this site interested in the evolution of chess theory and thus keeping an eye on the progress of chess engine developments to outplay humans at GM level.
It really amazes me to see mathematician like Larker’s double pawn theory attempting to solve chess.
My observation of computer chess bring to mind Botwinik the chess expert of practical application with basic computer knowledge and then Hyatt the computer language genius who was successful in combining science with art forging out a product reaching the GM level playing strength. With the now ever faster computer speed and growing chess knowledge base it looks inevitable that chess will be solved maybe not in my life time but soon after.
My point is to create an awareness that computer chess is evolving in a very fast pace which is a product of all the various components of contributions via chess engines designs and chess knowledge accumulation available to all parties of interests.
Why attempt to stop progress of evolution of a product which rightfully belongs to all contributors regardless of the degree or incremental values of their input in the final product capable of solving chess.
Therefore let’s assign a proper definition to this” thing” which I compare to the “big bang” stage of evolution.
My sincere appreciation to all contributors keeping computer chess an interesting and fascinating lifelong pastime for me.
Correction: Larker above should read " Lasker " (world champion & mathematician without computers)
sorry.
BTW should "Opening Novelties" remain the property of the discovery and
not allowed to be used without consent? Or should the users be tagged
as a cloner or a copier of novelties?
kurt wrote:Well, this “ thing “ deserves a better definition to describe what it really means to me.
As a casual observer of this site interested in the evolution of chess theory and thus keeping an eye on the progress of chess engine developments to outplay humans at GM level.
It really amazes me to see mathematician like Larker’s double pawn theory attempting to solve chess.
My observation of computer chess bring to mind Botwinik the chess expert of practical application with basic computer knowledge and then Hyatt the computer language genius who was successful in combining science with art forging out a product reaching the GM level playing strength. With the now ever faster computer speed and growing chess knowledge base it looks inevitable that chess will be solved maybe not in my life time but soon after.
My point is to create an awareness that computer chess is evolving in a very fast pace which is a product of all the various components of contributions via chess engines designs and chess knowledge accumulation available to all parties of interests.
Why attempt to stop progress of evolution of a product which rightfully belongs to all contributors regardless of the degree or incremental values of their input in the final product capable of solving chess.
Therefore let’s assign a proper definition to this” thing” which I compare to the “big bang” stage of evolution.
My sincere appreciation to all contributors keeping computer chess an interesting and fascinating lifelong pastime for me.
My only comment is with respect to "Pioneer" (Botvinnik's program). It was a fraud, pure and simple, and could not play a game of chess, nor even solve many of the test positions that were claimed to be solved. Berliner debunked this quite carefully in the JICCA a few years back.
we should give him some credit for trying - he was quite successful
with his prodigy Kasparov. IMO he was a very good position assessor
and theoretician and thus should be considered a valuable contributor
for advancing chess knowledge.
and would an international master prefer to base heavily its eval in another eval instead of try to write it by himself?
