World Computer Chess Championship ?

[Rebel]

This whole discussion is a non-discussion anyway. The WCCC is the real World Championship in computer Chess, because it is open to all.

As you know last year the Dutch became world champion baseball. For Americans that's a joke, and right they are.

[AdminX]

It seems you are totally off base. Do you have any proof that ICGA receives support from commercial Chess-program vendors at all, (like having seen their financial reports), or are you just shooting off your mouth?

AFAIK ICGA is funded by members, (like me), who pay a membership fee and a subscription fee for the ICGA Journal. For the events (WCCC / Olympiad, the conference) there usually are sponsors (well advertized, and usually scientific institutes / local authorities) that sponsor mostly by providing acomodations. In years where there are no sponsors the event is held locally at the university where the person that organises it works, so it can be cheap. Participants pay a significant registration fee, which in effect means the WCCC is mostly funded by participants to the Computer Olympiad. (E.g. although 80% of the event in Tilburg was Chess, people participating to both WCCC and WSCC payed only half from what I payed to participate in two one-afternoon 3-player competitions for Xiangqi and Shogi.)

This whole discussion is a non-discussion anyway. The WCCC is the real World Championship in computer Chess, because it is open to all. Like in any World Championship, willingness to participate (and motivation to win) is one of the essential traits on which a champion is selected. This thread is just a shameful display of cry-babies that are unwilling to perform, but want to be called champion anyway!

Opening theory is considered an essential part of the art of Chess, and the suggestion that it should be eliminated from the contest is outright ridiculous. If you don't like opening theory, go to a Chess960 contest... (Or better yet, play Spartan Chess! )

+1

[hgm]

As you know last year the Dutch became world champion baseball. For Americans that's a joke, and right they are.

But that is an amateur World Championship, right? And everyone knows that. The best Dutch players were also not participating in the Dutch team, because they play as professionals in the U.S. (Btw, the U.S. professional baseball championship is called the 'World Series', which is a real joke, as only North American teams participate...)

Note that in the WCCC there is no such limitation; professionals (commercial engines) and amateurs can both participate. The commercials just pay a somewhat larger entry fee. But that is actually to their advantage, because it means that amateurs with no chance of winning still pay for part of the costs of the event.

[Rebel]

As you know last year the Dutch became world champion baseball. For Americans that's a joke, and right they are.

But that is an amateur World Championship, right? And everyone knows that. The best Dutch players were also not participating in the Dutch team, because they play as professionals in the U.S. (Btw, the U.S. professional baseball championship is called the 'World Series', which is a real joke, as only North American teams participate...)

Note that in the WCCC there is no such limitation; professionals (commercial engines) and amateurs can both participate. The commercials just pay a somewhat larger entry fee. But that is actually to their advantage, because it means that amateurs with no chance of winning still pay for part of the costs of the event.

A world championship is only a world champion if the best players (teams) participate. Occasionally it may happen some players (teams) are absent but when it becomes chronic the title loses its value. A world champion soccer tournament without Brazil, Argentina, Germany, Italy and Spain is no world championship.

The ICGA made a fundamental choice, whether you agree with that choice or not the yearly WCCC is now a second division tournament not worthy to be called a world championship. And they knew that when they made that fundamental choice.

[Don]

I don't think the ICGA is obligated to change the name of a tournament to thwart what other people do, that seems like a really silly idea. I agree that chessbase gets carried away with marketing, but doing away with the title is not a reasonable solution and since when is it ICGA's business to be the chessbase police?

Oh c'mon, ICGA is business related ! Did you see who are the first 3 engines of 2011 ? Do you think ICGA lives out of love ? Even you highlighted that to run these events ICGA needs money !

C'mon Don, do you think here we are all so naive to don't see that ICGA is backed up by commercial engines and their editors ?

The only one real reason why ICGA will never give up to that void name "World Computer Chess Championship" is because that (faked) "Wold Champion" title is what is needed by marketing people of organizations that support ICGA !!! This is even more than an elephat in the room, this is an entire zoo !

When you make an assertion like that you need to back it up with a lot more than just conjecture.

The content of a lot of these posts against the ICGA is just like this one, full of suppositions about secret motives and such, but nothing substantial.

[bob]

......There is a procedure to determine who the world champion is and there is. It should not be open the cheaters and copiers and it isn't......

How would you know that unless every engine was put under the same scrutiny as the chosen few?

Every engine? The way this works is that there has to be an accusation by one of the authors that someone is plagiarizing their work - in this case it was Fabien who made the accusation. The ICGA did NOT make the accusation.

It's ridiculously impractical for the ICGA to just launch a thorough investigation of every program in every tournament every time, taking a kind of paranoid (McCarthyism) stance that everyone must be guilty.

I don't known how things work in your part of the world but it would be pretty horrible to be around a culture like the one you suggest, that everyone should be investigated just in case they might be doing something wrong.

Isn't random drug testing like that? Perhaps they should randomly select two participating engines to scrutinise each year, with a rider that it can't be the same engine twice in a three year period.

They could do something like that, but I don't believe it would come out the way you think it would. By your implication you may have bought in to the argument that everyone is guilty but only a couple of people got caught. The computer chess community is pretty sharp and it's almost impossible to get away with this for very long. To underscore this principle the players in the online chess club can tell pretty quickly if you are using a computer to cheat and you will get flagged.

But this is a lot like life, we generally wait for an accusation before launching investigations and it's usually up the victim to take some interest in the process even though that is usually not a hard and fast requirement. In a scenario like you describe the victim could be every competitor in the tournament but I believe there should at least be a viable complaint of some kind before launching investigations, otherwise the ICGA becomes the oppressive tyrannical organization that a few extremists are accusing them of.

I don't think that all are guilty by any means Don. I'm interested in the perception of fairness, that the perception of some programmers being above scrutiny is got rid of.
By doing random drug tests, do we automatically assume that all competitors are guilty?

How about pointing out WHICH "programmers are above scrutiny?"

ME?

I was accused of cheating in 1986 and was thoroughly investigated, as most everyone knows. We were completely exonerated, after a thorough investigation that included several people looking at the CB source, running CB on the same machine we used in the 1986 WCCC event, using an executable Cray Research restored for the investigation from a regular system backup made during the event. So WHO exactly is "above scrutiny"???

Certainly does not apply to me.

No Bob - my post was not directed at anybody in particular, more at any engine that has never been "looked at" in a similar fashion to Rybka, Loop and Thinker.

That's silly thinking. If the FBI spends a couple of million bucks investigating "X" for some crime, are the ones they did not investigate somehow magically above scrutiny? Even though no evidence nor accusation has been filed against them?

Logic says investigate those people, or programs, or bridges, or drug manufacturers where there is an accusation, and credible evidence supporting that accusation...

[Don]

That's silly thinking. If the FBI spends a couple of million bucks investigating "X" for some crime, are the ones they did not investigate somehow magically above scrutiny? Even though no evidence nor accusation has been filed against them?

Logic says investigate those people, or programs, or bridges, or drug manufacturers where there is an accusation, and credible evidence supporting that accusation...

I get the sense that some people here advocate some sort of "police state", they want everyone investigated without any due process, accusation or anything whatsoever. And somehow this is going to drive attendance to these event up?

[bob]

As you know last year the Dutch became world champion baseball. For Americans that's a joke, and right they are.

But that is an amateur World Championship, right? And everyone knows that. The best Dutch players were also not participating in the Dutch team, because they play as professionals in the U.S. (Btw, the U.S. professional baseball championship is called the 'World Series', which is a real joke, as only North American teams participate...)

Note that in the WCCC there is no such limitation; professionals (commercial engines) and amateurs can both participate. The commercials just pay a somewhat larger entry fee. But that is actually to their advantage, because it means that amateurs with no chance of winning still pay for part of the costs of the event.

A world championship is only a world champion if the best players (teams) participate. Occasionally it may happen some players (teams) are absent but when it becomes chronic the title loses its value. A world champion soccer tournament without Brazil, Argentina, Germany, Italy and Spain is no world championship.

The ICGA made a fundamental choice, whether you agree with that choice or not the yearly WCCC is now a second division tournament not worthy to be called a world championship. And they knew that when they made that fundamental choice.

Does ANYBODY really believe that the winner of ANY tournament, whether it be a world championship tournament or not, is REALLY the best player in the world? If so, I have some ocean-front property in Kansas I'd like to sell to him as a beach vacation home. The best player in the world is discovered by performance over a period of time. #1 tennis player. #1 golfer. #1 on FIDE list. Anyone that doesn't understand that is REALLY misleading themselves...

[bob]

I do not follow your reasoning. Just because Rybka got caught as a derivative of Fruit and was disqualified, the WCCC is no longer the WCCC? The ICGA STARTED the WCCC. It is their event.

Even 10 years ago WCCC was inadequate for its pretensions, it already was mainly book preparation and hardware, only 4-5 strong engines, 3-4 games of relevance for each engine, many crap engines, but still, most of the strongest engines did participate. Nowadays there are 3-4 second-tier engines which are 200 points behind the leading bunch, the rest being some crap engines. WCCC recently became a total joke.

Kai

A joke because it won't allow ippoli* derivatives? Or any derivatives at all? Seems like a "good joke" IMHO, the alternative is certainly not very useful.

[bob]

I do not follow your reasoning. Just because Rybka got caught as a derivative of Fruit and was disqualified, the WCCC is no longer the WCCC? The ICGA STARTED the WCCC. It is their event.

Even 10 years ago WCCC was inadequate for its pretensions, it already was mainly book preparation and hardware, only 4-5 strong engines, 3-4 games of relevance for each engine, many crap engines, but still, most of the strongest engines did participate. Nowadays there are 3-4 second-tier engines which are 200 points behind the leading bunch, the rest being some crap engines. WCCC recently became a total joke.

Kai

Is it possible to conduct this discussion without insulting anyone? Even if an engine is not one of the strongest, that does not mean it is "crap".

Those that have not actually written an engine have no idea how difficult the process actually is, and they show their ignorance with statements like that.