Rybka disqualified and banned from World Computer Chess Cham

[kinderchocolate]

http://www.chessvibes.com/reports/rybka ... pionships/

In case people haven't read that.

[Jimmy Huggins]

A sad day for the chess computer world regardless of what side you are on.

[kinderchocolate]

Actually I think it's not a sad day. We should be happy that there is still justice.

[Jimmy Huggins]

That is fine we will all have our opinions. Im not going to press my opinion one way or another.

[Chan Rasjid]

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If the Rybka=Fruit/Crafty connection is so strong and the evidence so damning, then why did this take over 5 years to unearth? Five and a half years since December 2005! It should be noted , for whatever it’s worth , that a huge majority of the panel members who investigated and condemned Rajlich are his direct competitors, ie, authors of rival programs. These same competitors wonder why Rajlich did not give up the Rybka source code for their perusal.

As a layperson in computer matters (I am an attorney), I don’t get this at all. There is no Rybka source code to compare, so apparently various circumstantial evidence is cited. Fruit was the strongest engine. Then Rybka was the strongest engine. And yet their evaluation functions were found to overlap by 64%. Call the police! The panel points out that weaker engines had less overlap as compared to the 2 strongest engines (Fruit and Rybka). Naturally, engines that are closer to the “chess truth” will overlap more. I don’t see how an evaluation overlap of 64% is “nearly identical”. Geneticists claim that human beings share 96% of the same DNA (aka “source code”) with chimpanzees. Perhaps the ICGA will ban God from claiming that Human Beings are uniquely in His image since the ALmighty seems to have plagiarized the source code for chimpanzees when coding humans..

[Reply]

[Dann Corbit]

Thumb up 2 Thumb down 1

If the Rybka=Fruit/Crafty connection is so strong and the evidence so damning, then why did this take over 5 years to unearth? Five and a half years since December 2005! It should be noted , for whatever it’s worth , that a huge majority of the panel members who investigated and condemned Rajlich are his direct competitors, ie, authors of rival programs. These same competitors wonder why Rajlich did not give up the Rybka source code for their perusal.

As a layperson in computer matters (I am an attorney), I don’t get this at all. There is no Rybka source code to compare, so apparently various circumstantial evidence is cited. Fruit was the strongest engine. Then Rybka was the strongest engine. And yet their evaluation functions were found to overlap by 64%. Call the police! The panel points out that weaker engines had less overlap as compared to the 2 strongest engines (Fruit and Rybka). Naturally, engines that are closer to the “chess truth” will overlap more. I don’t see how an evaluation overlap of 64% is “nearly identical”. Geneticists claim that human beings share 96% of the same DNA (aka “source code”) with chimpanzees. Perhaps the ICGA will ban God from claiming that Human Beings are uniquely in His image since the ALmighty seems to have plagiarized the source code for chimpanzees when coding humans..

[Reply]

The similarity in search and eval are not very condemnatory in my view.

The duplication of errors and dead code is.

I do not think that it has been demonstrated that Rybka has broken the law. But it seems to me that their finding is not unreasonable as far as breaking the conditions of the contest. While he does cite the named programs as sources of information, I find that things like initializations that only have purpose for Steven J. Edwards tablebase files being duplicated should make everyone uneasy about it.

IMO-YMMV

I downloaded all the documents and printed them. I am reading them now.

[Chan Rasjid]

Chess programming is becoming a dangerous pastime. We must only write 'original' codes as original as our own DNA; if luck runs out and things get similar and overlap somehow with someone else's code or DNA, possibly through the Will of God (one can only pray!), then we may be sued for prize monies we earned and splurged at Las Vegas or we sell our house.

Better don't get involved!

Rasjid.

[geots]

http://www.chessvibes.com/reports/rybka ... pionships/

In case people haven't read that.

I suppose people like Bob, Theron and Zach are happy. They managed to help get rid of competition they were never smart enough to beat. On the way out, 2 things: 1. If i wanted a world champion engine, I would never be stupid enough to get anything from Crafty. Thats's like copying from VWagen to improve a Rolls Royce. Nobody is that fucking stupid. 2. Concerning the picture in the post with Karpov and the horse.... and the explanation of the one on the "left" and the one on the "right" would have been crucial if it had been a picture of Hyatt, Zach or Christophe and the horse was turned around. One would wonder if mods are brave enough to leave this thread. My money is on chicken-shit. Rest of my money would ride on "I don't give a rats ass."

[JuLieN]

I too feel it's a sad day. But as a jurist I believe this decision was adequate, considering Vasik's constant refusal to present any defense. Dura lex, sed lex.

Our chess programming community is on the brinks to division, with bitter camps. Hopefully this tough ruling by David Levy and the ICGA will bring back some honesty, and clones and cloners will be ignored.

Someone on ChessVibes managed to make me smile anyway, with this comment:

I feel bad for Topalov’s team. Even the software they used involved cheating ..
, and now Danailov will accuse Rajlich of Cheating too ?… LOL
( sorry could not resist )

[JuLieN]

I suppose people like Bob, Theron and Zach are happy. They managed to help get rid of competition they were never smart enough to beat.

You are wrong, it doesn't take a genius anymore to make a 3000+ engine, nowadays: it takes a slow but constant decrease in moral values. Everybody can get a >3000 Elo engine by copy/pasting from public codesource. The people you named don't do that. And it takes a lot more genius to bring a genuine engine to circa 2800 all by oneself than patching together sources from various strong engine.