Komodo and WCCC

[Lyudmil Tsvetkov]

check the ratings, not more than 100 elo, so basically nothing substantial.

currently, SF beats Rybka by more than 85%.

if VR was a genius, what would you say about the authors of SF?

I do not understand why a so-called 'genius' would need to copy parts of other engines' code, geniuses usually do not copy, but are the ones whose ideas are copied.

the train of thought that VR(pity that we should spoil that thread with unsubstantial names and events) was at the root of later engines' success is completely made-up.

with what did he contribute to SF?
with what did he contribute to Komodo?

and, when he went back with Fritz 15, how much stronger he was able to make it?

50 elo, that is it, far below SF, far below Komodo.

if he was such of a genius, why was not he able to compete with SF and Komodo again?

VR contributed at an early stage of engine development, when engines almost completely lacked any positional chess knowledge.

as a relatively good chess played, he added some knowledge, and that was sufficient to top the rating lists for some time.

that is all, nothing more, nothing less.

If someone added some knowledge, he was Larry Kaufman, not V.R. You have some confusion. Rybka search routines made Rybka the strongest. He copied evaluation and move generator, it seems.

You can think what you want. It seems your opinion has nothing to do with facts. You cannot remember a post by Marco Costalba, writing his doubts about what was the difference between taking ideas and taking code. You cannot remember because you weren't here.

BTW, only honest people always put themselves in doubt.

The fact is, every top engine programmer studied each line of Robbolito to improve their engines. And those lines were from Rybka. Before Ippolit "revolution", other engines were much weaker. Every programmer can confirm it.

And I think this post is going very off topic. I'd like to stop talking about these old things.

it is you who started the thread, you who mentioned VR and lead the discussion this way, and now you want to stop it...

move generators are easy to write, nothing special in there, if your engine is 15% or 50% slower, does not matter that much in the long run.

it does not make sense that he copied evaluation and improved search, it is mostly quite the opposite; VR is a relatively good chess player, so that is where he could be of use, and that is what he did.

precisely because of better eval, and not search, is why R became very strong for a while.

you can easily deduce that even by the extremely low nps of the engine, only thing that can substantially slow down an engine is significantly bigger number of calculations, i.e. calculations related to specific knowledge.

search is not able to quite achieve a slowdown of 500% or so, no matter how intricate it is.

to tell you the truth, I am very bad programming newbie, but have still read Robbolito code and the codes of some 30 engines more, I do not see what is so elaborate there about Robbolito search, apart from splitting down some major routines.

by studying code and possibly implementing some new ideas, one can add 10, 30, maybe 100 elo, but not more, as there are considerable incompatibilities between codes.

only way to go rigth to the top is by complete copy, to be fully compatible.

studied, studied, studied..., if they studied so much, why not a single engine surpassed R substantially in the next 5 years?

only Houdini, SF and Komodo seem to be competely different branches.

[Evert]

I wanted to understand why such an indifference about WCCC, and it's deriving away. Since now, I'll ignore everything off topic.

Well,

1. From an academic (AI/computer science) standpoint, computer chess isn't so hot anymore. Most improvements now are not due to better science, but due to better engineering. Sure, there are some types of problems that are still interesting (deep mates, help mates, retrograde problems, issues dealing with chess variants; hell, even what determines the relative value of chess pieces) but none of it is of wide general interest. I always assumed that WCCC had a computer science conference attached to it, but that seems to not (no longer?) be the case.
2. From a commercial standpoint, computer chess is dead, at least when it comes to playing strength. The average human consumer has no chance to draw, let alone win, at all against a strong chess program at full strength (neither does a professional chess player, but that's a niche market anyway). So if I have a program that is much better than I am already, why do I need to buy a new one? Not for playing strength. Perhaps for GUI features or analysis capabilities. Those things are not even considered in WCCC. All of that is before considering that there are a host of really strong free chess engines.
3. From the point of view of those obsessed with the relative ranking of chess engines, the number of games is too short. There's the mistaken belief that the "champion" is the "strongest" rather than the "winner of the championship". The championship is not about figuring out which engine is the strongest (although the strongest engine clearly has the best chance to win the championship), it's also (mainly) about interesting and exciting games - and there is no shortage of those to be had elsewhere. Hell, if you wanted to, you could run a match between strong engines on your laptop and watch exciting games that way.

Anyway, that's my €0,02 for what that's worth.

[Lyudmil Tsvetkov]

Let the holywar begin ))

No, please, no....

I wanted to understand why such an indifference about WCCC, and it's deriving away. Since now, I'll ignore everything off topic.

because the 4th-strongest chess engine, Shredder, became software chamipon, the real title, of course, while an engine using some 100x less computing power, Komodo, became the hardware champ.

that is why, because everything happens the wrong way and makes completely no sense with just 5 games played, and custom-made books used.

also, to add another inaccuracy to this thread, you wanted us to congratulate Komodo, while you should have insisted with congratulating Shredder and SMK.

[hgm]

you can easily deduce that even by the extremely low nps of the engine, only thing that can substantially slow down an engine is significantly bigger number of calculations, i.e. calculations related to specific knowledge.

search is not able to quite achieve a slowdown of 500% or so, no matter how intricate it is.

So Vas fooled you too, and you are slow to catch on, while the rest of the world already caught on many years ago. Rybka had extremely high nps. But it disguised that by lying about it, and reporting a much lower number.

[Lyudmil Tsvetkov]

I wanted to understand why such an indifference about WCCC, and it's deriving away. Since now, I'll ignore everything off topic.

Well,

1. From an academic (AI/computer science) standpoint, computer chess isn't so hot anymore. Most improvements now are not due to better science, but due to better engineering. Sure, there are some types of problems that are still interesting (deep mates, help mates, retrograde problems, issues dealing with chess variants; hell, even what determines the relative value of chess pieces) but none of it is of wide general interest. I always assumed that WCCC had a computer science conference attached to it, but that seems to not (no longer?) be the case.
2. From a commercial standpoint, computer chess is dead, at least when it comes to playing strength. The average human consumer has no chance to draw, let alone win, at all against a strong chess program at full strength (neither does a professional chess player, but that's a niche market anyway). So if I have a program that is much better than I am already, why do I need to buy a new one? Not for playing strength. Perhaps for GUI features or analysis capabilities. Those things are not even considered in WCCC. All of that is before considering that there are a host of really strong free chess engines.
3. From the point of view of those obsessed with the relative ranking of chess engines, the number of games is too short. There's the mistaken belief that the "champion" is the "strongest" rather than the "winner of the championship". The championship is not about figuring out which engine is the strongest (although the strongest engine clearly has the best chance to win the championship), it's also (mainly) about interesting and exciting games - and there is no shortage of those to be had elsewhere. Hell, if you wanted to, you could run a match between strong engines on your laptop and watch exciting games that way.

Anyway, that's my €0,02 for what that's worth.

what is the difference between science and engineering?

how can having a ready-made better replayable PV not be useful to users?

[Evert]

precisely because of better eval, and not search, is why R became very strong for a while.

Where "better eval" specifically means "better tuned eval".

you can easily deduce that even by the extremely low nps of the engine, only thing that can substantially slow down an engine is significantly bigger number of calculations, i.e. calculations related to specific knowledge.

search is not able to quite achieve a slowdown of 500% or so, no matter how intricate it is.

As far as I know, Rybka obfuscates its node counts so that it appears to run slower than it actually does (or to put a more positive spin on that, it doesn't count nodes in the very selective part of the search near the tips of the tree, reporting only "full width nodes per second" rather than "nodes per second"). Someone more invested in that discussion can comment on whether I remembered that correctly or not.

I do not see what is so elaborate there about Robbolito search, apart from splitting down some major routines.

Nothing, to the best of my knowledge. The same is true of Fruit: there is nothing particularly novel in there, it's just very well written and bug-free code. Fruit, of course, was never the strongest engine around, but it was very strong and basically came out of nowhere.

only way to go rigth to the top is by complete copy, to be fully compatible.

Obviously false by induction.

[hgm]

I always assumed that WCCC had a computer science conference attached to it, but that seems to not (no longer?) be the case.

The ICGA event consists of a scientific conference, some Chess championships, and the Computer Olympiad for other games than Chess. (This year there were Chinese Chess, Shogi, Go, Draughts, Othello, Hex, NoGo, Dark Chinese Chess, Einstein Wuerfelt Nicht, Amazons, and Breakthrough tournaments, and then I probably forgot some.)

The conference lasts 3 days, also this year, and attracted some 40-50 participants (my guestimate, I did not actually count, and not everyone might have been present in the room when I took a peek anyway). About 30 people came over from Taiwan alone, where games programming seems to be a thriving research area. Most tournaments last one or two days. Most conference participants also participate in some game tournaments.

[Evert]

what is the difference between science and engineering?

Science is the generation of ideas and knowledge. Engineering is the practical application of that knowledge to a (in this case consumer) product.

Using an electro-magnet to figure out how particles accelerate in a magnetic field is science. Building the LHC is engineering.

how can having a ready-made better replayable PV not be useful to users?

Define "better replayable PV". It also depends on how much more useful it is compared to what you have already whether it's worth any sort of investment.

[Evert]

I always assumed that WCCC had a computer science conference attached to it, but that seems to not (no longer?) be the case.

The ICGA event consists of a scientific conference, some Chess championships, and the Computer Olympiad for other games than Chess. (This year there were Chinese Chess, Shogi, Go, Draughts, Othello, Hex, NoGo, Dark Chinese Chess, Einstein Wuerfelt Nicht, Amazons, and Breakthrough tournaments, and then I probably forgot some.)

The conference lasts 3 days, also this year, and attracted some 40-50 participants (my guestimate, I did not actually count, and not everyone might have been present in the room when I took a peek anyway). About 30 people came over from Taiwan alone, where games programming seems to be a thriving research area. Most tournaments last one or two days. Most conference participants also participate in some game tournaments.

Ah, right.
Still, this makes the point: Chess is just one game in the list. There is no conference simply dedicated to computer Chess, and computer Chess is not the highlight. Honestly, I don't think that's an issue (I dare say some of those games present more interesting problems than Chess), but if you look at it with a Chess-centric bias interest seems to have waned.

[Rodolfo Leoni]

Apparently reading comprehension has reached an all-time low. Stockfish CAN participate if the authors want. The only ICGA rule preventing them from participating is that the AUTHORS have to either participate directly, or agree to allow someone else to operate the program. So the only thing preventing Stockfish from competing is the authors. And there is NO rule the ICGA can create that would be able to force them to participate if they don't want to.

Pretty simple, pretty concise. You are barking up the wrong tree...

I'd rather say... lack of knowledge about rules.

It was more important for me to understand people perception of the event. It's clear enough, now, that ICGA has to change several things for WCCC survival. While I consider Komodo deserves the title as the team is not guilty for Stockfish absence, I'm understanding this event is commercial-driven. Out of 4 participants, 3 were commercial. Organizers tried to justify Chiron presence because of its top ranking, but some free engines are stronger than Chiron.

I still have my attention here:

I was there on Friday afternoon last week to see playoffs. Almost no visitors there. But other games had already finished in days before. Operators liked it better that 'stupid visitors' keep quiet. So maybe best to watch games only via internet.

A wrong attitude towards public is a potential nuclear explosion. If some media operator could have such an impression that'd have been the worst advertising for computer chess.

CC fans are already bored of events like WCCC. I guess this one could represent opinion on many:

I am very, very grateful for the work of team Stockfish.

What this people are doing is the greatest gift in the world for all chessplayers.

As an chessenthusisast i don´t need a WCCC.

All i need is a project of chessprogramming like team Stockfish is doing.

Leave me alone with the marketing stuff of all these businesspeople.

Do cooperate projects like team Stockfish is doing and the world is a better place.

Thx for your attention.