Komodo and WCCC

[Guenther]

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.

You have no clue as usual - this is just another ruined thread after you jumped in.

Probably you are the only person in this forum, who doesn't know about Rybkas depth obfuscation to simulate a 'slow searcher' for the 'superior knowledge' hype a decade ago.

And saying Houdini started a completely different branch is hilarious, after it started as a nearly 1:1 copy of Robbolito...

[Rodolfo Leoni]

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.

You have no clue as usual - this is just another ruined thread after you jumped in.
Probably you are the only person in this forum, who doesn't know about Rybkas depth obfuscation to simulate a 'slow searcher' for the 'superior knowledge' hype a decade ago.

Don't waste your time, Guenther... He doesn't even know Houdini started as a modified Robbo...

[Guenther]

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.

You have no clue as usual - this is just another ruined thread after you jumped in.
Probably you are the only person in this forum, who doesn't know about Rybkas depth obfuscation to simulate a 'slow searcher' for the 'superior knowledge' hype a decade ago.

Don't waste your time, Guenther... He doesn't even know Houdini started as a modified Robbo...
:lol:

Well I was still editing my post ;-)

[Rodolfo Leoni]

And saying Houdini started a completely different branch is hilarious, after it started as a nearly 1:1 copy of Robbolito...

Well I was still editing my post

I see. I've been too fast with my reply.

[hgm]

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.

Indeed. I don't think there were any papers presented at the conference related to Chess. I did not register for the conference, but I sometimes had to squat there waiting for opponents. And the talks I saw were about virtual curling, or finding algorithms to have programs learn to play old Atari games (like Private Eye) by just looking at the pixels on the screen.

It is sort of ridiculous that there is so much emphasis on Chess (WCCC, WCSC, blitz) in the event. There is no interest in Chess amongst conference participants, there is no interest in Chess amongst potential sponsors. (Recent sponsors of the event have been virtually all Asian; there is a good chance next year the meeting will be in Taiwan. They don't give a hoot for 'International Chess'.) Chess is a 'done deal'. A few programs that for practical purposes are equally strong, work through virtual identical algorithms, just tuned a little bit differently... Who cares?

[Laskos]

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

That's not very good analogy. "To figure out how particles accelerate in a magnetic field" is just translated for LHC in "to figure out the new underlying features of a theoretical model of particle physics". Electro-magnet and LHC are tools. That LHC didn't come up with anything new is irrelevant.

Maybe better analogy is "building the first transistor is science, few nanometer transistor technology is engineering".

[hgm]

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 think this is a wrong perception. Last year there were many more non-commercial participants. Chiron was there because he was willing to come; if one of those 'stronger free engines' would have been willing to come, I am sure they would have been more than welcome.

Note that the WCCC primarily is set up as an event for programmers. Catering to the wishes of 'the public' has never been a goal in itself. It only appears on the agenda when it proves helpful for generating an income for ICGA, who can then use it to pay for the organizing costs, and distribute the surplus to the participants as prize money or travel reimbursement. But there is no paying audience. It is pretty amazing that people who do not contribute a single cent have the audacity to demand the event should be reshaped to suit their amusement... Having a large audience isn't even helpful for generating indirect income, through sponsors that want to reach the audience as a market for their products.

The problem is that having Chess programs battle it out is not a spectator sport anymore. Nothing there you could not do at home for a few dimes of electricity, 100 times more intensely. The days that strong computers were as rare as human super-GMs are long behind us. The only justification to have a special event for this is when the participants use hardware so powerful that no one can afford it at home. This is arguably what has been happening at WCCC, but in fact it turns out a deterrent rather than an attractor of public interest: people are no longer interested in things they cannot do at home themselves. I guess part of the problem is that even for strong Chess players there is no perceptible difference between a game played by 3300-Elo programs, and one played between 3500-Elo programs; it is way over their head either way.

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.

Only if you are dependent on that public for revenues. Which is not the case here. The only people paying used to be the participants. As it is now, it seems the conference and Olympiad participants are paying the Chess participants, which seems pretty outrageous.

And I think you are too hard on the participants: The playoffs were played at progressively faster TC, where operator speed and attention start to play a significant rule. So obviously distractions are unwelcome. Have you ever tried to have a chat with Carlson, while he was playing a game, or with Quintana while he was cycling in the Giro? If not, would you also say that these disrespect their audience?

[Henk]

Also I think some operators were tired on the last day. They don't just play moves but also tried to understand PV and to find out if their position was better or not.

[Henk]

It is still not shown that a deep learning algorithm is able to play the best chess. So chess is still important for computer science for it demonstrates that deep learning is not always the best way to go for these type of problems.

[Milos]

And I think you are too hard on the participants: The playoffs were played at progressively faster TC, where operator speed and attention start to play a significant rule. So obviously distractions are unwelcome. Have you ever tried to have a chat with Carlson, while he was playing a game, or with Quintana while he was cycling in the Giro? If not, would you also say that these disrespect their audience?

Talking about dinosaurs, what is the purpose of operator? By the end of second decade of 21. century when AI is flourishing you need a human to enter the moves??? How retarded is that?