Competition for stockfish by stockfish derivative is needed

[Uri Blass]

I agree the attitude and tone towards you as a person often seems not appropriate. You are a well known member of the computer chess scene since many years and you (correct me if im wrong) are mathematician, so you are somebody with a background in science at least, but even if you were not, there would be no reason for such a treatment.
[Two sentences deleted upon Moderation request because they touch political issues that are offtopic in this forum]

Thanks
I am not sure if it is correct to define me as a mathematician but
I clearly have a mathematical background and I think that my talent
for mathematics is better than 99.99% of the people and I won prizes in competitions in mathematics when I was a child.

My B.sc is formally in mathematics
My M.sc is in statistics
My Phd is not formally in mathematics but on engineering but it is practically on mathematical problems.

Note that I left university many years ago after I completed my phd and here is a link for a list of my articles

http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley ... /Blass:Uri

[lucasart]

I do not agree with marco (the leader of stockfish) about a lot of things and one of the problems is that he seems to be too careful not to lose elo and even reject simplifications that are not proved to be bad because of unproved fear that they are 1 elo loss.


I wonder if it is possible to have a different leader with testers who support him to compete against stockfish of marco and accept changes relative to marco's version based on different rules.

1)Simplifications are accepted if they pass twice sprt(-4,0) in first try
and removing one line of if condition is certainly a simplification.

In order to accept other changes they need to pass SPRT(-1.5,4.5) at some time control and SPRT(0,6) at slower time control when the slower time control is not faster than 1 minute per game.

It may be possible also to use lower margin than 6 but the bottom line in the second test needs to be 0.

It does not mean that changes are going to be accepted if they pass and the leader has the freedom not to accept changes(for example if something similar was already tried many times) but tests that pass without being accepted may get a second chance(for example if some patch failed SPRT(0.6) and passed SPRT(0,4) at the same time control then it may be accepted if it pass again SPRT(0.4) without failures with SPRT(0,4))

2)People who commit patches have the freedom to push every patch that they want at every time control that they want and with the number of games that they want or with the SPRT parameters that they want.

3)People who give their machine for testing have the option to decide
which patch to test(they can choose default that is the option that the leader suggest but also can choose to increase or to reduce priority of every candidate to test when priority below -5 means not testing it even if there are no other tests) and I guess that if somebody give obviously bad patches that interest nobody then people including the leader may put them with priority below -5 so no waste of computer time on them.

You can create your own SF derivative, and be the team leader, and use whatever commit rules you want. But you're forgetting two very important things:
1/ how will all the testing be performed ? are you going to create your own fishtest equivalent ?
2/ how will you attract intelligent people to work with you ? generally smart people want to work with smart people, and that's why many of them like to work with Marco.

[Milos]

2/ how will you attract intelligent people to work with you ? generally smart people want to work with smart people, and that's why many of them like to work with Marco.

With all due respect to Marco, this is not true. They like to work with Marco because SF is successful, and Marco is the main author. Nothing attracts ppl as success.
If SF was fourth or fifth engine by strength it wouldn't have even one tenth of the attention and support it now has.

[Michel]

If SF was fourth or fifth engine by strength it wouldn't have even one tenth of the attention and support it now has.

You cannot know that since the SF development model has not been tried before.

The SF development model seems much more attractive to me than the previous most succesful model which consists in taking the ippolit or ivanhoe source and tweaking it.

[mcostalba]

"Please don't commit new patches. you should be the last one to commit patches"

This is a gross and wrong extrapolation.

I have no problem to confirm that I consider some of your patches useless, nevertheless I have never forbid you to submit new patches, nor I will do in the future. Not only because I cannot do this (fishtest is not my toy), but because even if I could I won't do it.

The reason why sometime I am a bit rude with you is that it seems to me that you completely miss what is called "common sense" and this is a problem when you work in a team, because "common sense" is a kind of self-limitation tool that a man uses to stop itself at the first small signs he needs to stop. But because you miss it (is not your fault, may be you are just like this), you simply don't get "small signs" and so I tend to escalate to "big signs".

On a personal level, I again confirm, I have nothing against you. Speaking _loud_ is just a way for me to make you get my message, because when speaking soft I noticed in several occasion my message didn't get through.

[Uri Blass]

I do not agree with marco (the leader of stockfish) about a lot of things and one of the problems is that he seems to be too careful not to lose elo and even reject simplifications that are not proved to be bad because of unproved fear that they are 1 elo loss.


I wonder if it is possible to have a different leader with testers who support him to compete against stockfish of marco and accept changes relative to marco's version based on different rules.

1)Simplifications are accepted if they pass twice sprt(-4,0) in first try
and removing one line of if condition is certainly a simplification.

In order to accept other changes they need to pass SPRT(-1.5,4.5) at some time control and SPRT(0,6) at slower time control when the slower time control is not faster than 1 minute per game.

It may be possible also to use lower margin than 6 but the bottom line in the second test needs to be 0.

It does not mean that changes are going to be accepted if they pass and the leader has the freedom not to accept changes(for example if something similar was already tried many times) but tests that pass without being accepted may get a second chance(for example if some patch failed SPRT(0.6) and passed SPRT(0,4) at the same time control then it may be accepted if it pass again SPRT(0.4) without failures with SPRT(0,4))

2)People who commit patches have the freedom to push every patch that they want at every time control that they want and with the number of games that they want or with the SPRT parameters that they want.

3)People who give their machine for testing have the option to decide
which patch to test(they can choose default that is the option that the leader suggest but also can choose to increase or to reduce priority of every candidate to test when priority below -5 means not testing it even if there are no other tests) and I guess that if somebody give obviously bad patches that interest nobody then people including the leader may put them with priority below -5 so no waste of computer time on them.

You can create your own SF derivative, and be the team leader, and use whatever commit rules you want. But you're forgetting two very important things:
1/ how will all the testing be performed ? are you going to create your own fishtest equivalent ?
2/ how will you attract intelligent people to work with you ? generally smart people want to work with smart people, and that's why many of them like to work with Marco.

Note that I did not suggest myself as the leader for a reason.
The main problems is programming knowledge in order to create my own fishtest equivalent and a server running 24 hours a day (like Gary's one for the fishtest) that is mentioned as a problem by other people.

I also agree that people want to work with marco only because stockfish is the top freeware program and not because marco is smart.

marco with no doubt know more than me about programming but I doubt if he is more intelligent than me and I can see that he makes obviously wrong claims more than once.

Here is one example from the stockfish page:
http://abrok.eu/stockfish/

Author: Marco Costalba
Date: Wed Feb 12 14:16:21 2014 +0100
Timestamp: 1392210981



"Revert "Retire null search verification"

Although does not change ELO level, it seems
verification is useful in many zugzwang positions
as reported by many sources."

This is obviously wrong.
There is no proof that removing null search verification does not change elo level.

passing SPRT(-4,0) twice only shows no significant regression and does not show no improvement.

so the claim of marco is obviously wrong because no regression is not equivalent to no change.

Note that it is possible to justify the revert by other words(for example that playing strength is not the only important thing) but marco did not do it.

I do not think that a person who justifies his decisions by wrong claims in more than one case is smarter than me.

[syzygy]

Author: Marco Costalba
Date: Wed Feb 12 14:16:21 2014 +0100
Timestamp: 1392210981



"Revert "Retire null search verification"

Although does not change ELO level, it seems
verification is useful in many zugzwang positions
as reported by many sources."

This is obviously wrong.
There is no proof that removing null search verification does not change elo level.

But most people will understand Marco's intention: null search verification does not seem to help in terms of Elo, but it is useful enough that it is worth keeping it.

The ability to be extremely precise can be very useful, but one should know when to apply it and when not.

[sicilianquake87]

As a Stockfish user I appreciated this reversion and I agree with it. Although I know the general dislike of adding more UCI parameters available to the user I think that adding this possibility like in Komodo options could be a worthy idea...
My two cents.

[Ryan Benitez]

You cannot know that since the SF development model has not been tried before.

Using the GPL as intended has never been tried before?

[syzygy]

You cannot know that since the SF development model has not been tried before.

Using the GPL as intended has never been tried before?

The GPL is just a license, not a development model.