bob wrote: WCC does NOT necessarily mean the best player in the world, never has... never will...
Does WCC mean a match among a sensible representatives of best players of the year ?
Should something called "World Computer Chess Championship" mean a tournament among a sensible representatives of chess engines available that year ?
Suppose for the next "World Computer Chess Championship" do apply the 11 weakest (original) engines in the CEGT list (this is not the case, but just as an example). The winner is the "Word Champion" ?
Written by Amir Ban and Shay Bushinsky, Junior has won multiple World Computer Chess Championships, and now, in version 12, its playing strength has been further increased – by around 200 Elo points
The strength description is associated textually with WCCC (spelled and not abbreviated).
Deep Junior 13 UCI chess engine
The World Computer Chess Champion chess engine for PC MS Windows
Suitable for all players including the World Chess Champion
Platform: PC MS Windows™ 98, ME, 2000, XP, Vista and Windows 7 (all versions including 32&64 bit)
Playing ability: World Chess Championship strength (3200+ Elo)†
Engine authors: Amir Ban and Shay Bushinsky, Opening book author: GM Alon Greenfeld
Here the association is direct, "Playing ability: World Chess Championship strength (3200+ Elo)†". Really, rename that crap called WCCC.
Kai
Keep in mind that these are not the ICGA's words, they are ChessBase advertisements.
It makes me wonder why people think Chessbase is the better organization to represent fairness and justice. I have no issue against Chessbase but they are a company for profit - nothng wrong with that, but ICGA is an association which tries to look out for the interests of computer chess - and I think succeeds.
Capital punishment would be more effective as a preventive measure if it were administered prior to the crime.
mcostalba wrote:Ok this arrogant and fossilized organization called ICGA really made me get angry and I looked a bit in their site to know a bit more about them. Apart that it really seems "dead and buried", last interesting content is years ago old, I was really impressed by what they call: "World Computer Chess Championship" , the last edition of this farsa was in 2011 and below the list of participants:
Now the first question that comes to my mind is to what "world" they refer in the title of the event ? Mars ? Underwater world ? Surely not chess engines landscape in 2011, this is clear even to the dumbest. So how they have the presumption to call this marketing event, for the only benefit of legacy commercial engines, "World Computer Chess Championship" ? Because of historical reasons ? Sorry, this is not enough IMHO.
... I am not talking of the engine authors (which I respect all) but of the organization that shameless call itself "computer chess world" !
Amen to that brother.
I couldn't write a better script if I tried. Vas will be out with Rybka 5 and Robert will be out with Houdini 3. My guess is the sales of both versions will break all previous records for most sold. Vas will be competing in tournaments- the WCCC is so useless now it struggles to get even 1 really strong program- the idiotic ICGA has lost its prestige- if it ever had any to lose to begin with.
Written by Amir Ban and Shay Bushinsky, Junior has won multiple World Computer Chess Championships, and now, in version 12, its playing strength has been further increased – by around 200 Elo points
The strength description is associated textually with WCCC (spelled and not abbreviated).
Deep Junior 13 UCI chess engine
The World Computer Chess Champion chess engine for PC MS Windows
Suitable for all players including the World Chess Champion
Platform: PC MS Windows™ 98, ME, 2000, XP, Vista and Windows 7 (all versions including 32&64 bit)
Playing ability: World Chess Championship strength (3200+ Elo)†
Engine authors: Amir Ban and Shay Bushinsky, Opening book author: GM Alon Greenfeld
Here the association is direct, "Playing ability: World Chess Championship strength (3200+ Elo)†". Really, rename that crap called WCCC.
Kai
Keep in mind that these are not the ICGA's words, they are ChessBase advertisements.
It makes me wonder why people think Chessbase is the better organization to represent fairness and justice. I have no issue against Chessbase but they are a company for profit - nothng wrong with that, but ICGA is an association which tries to look out for the interests of computer chess - and I think succeeds.
No, I wasn't saying that ChessBase represents better "fairness and justice", nor in the Rybka affair, where they showed themselves as just biased marketers. I have not much against ICGA generally, even WCCC could be fun because of the needed book preparation and hardware differences (besides the sometimes entertaining hazard), but just rename it or specify that engines are chosen by ICGA and in no way represent all the best engines.
bob wrote: WCC does NOT necessarily mean the best player in the world, never has... never will...
Does WCC mean a match among a sensible representatives of best players of the year ?
Should something called "World Computer Chess Championship" mean a tournament among a sensible representatives of chess engines available that year ?
Suppose for the next "World Computer Chess Championship" do apply the 11 weakest (original) engines in the CEGT list (this is not the case, but just as an example). The winner is the "Word Champion" ?
Can you see the elephant in the room ?
Of course he can see the elephant. But he will always act like he doesn't. Because so goes WCCC- then so goes the reputation of ICGA- which then so goes the reputation of Dr. Robert Hyatt.
Written by Amir Ban and Shay Bushinsky, Junior has won multiple World Computer Chess Championships, and now, in version 12, its playing strength has been further increased – by around 200 Elo points
The strength description is associated textually with WCCC (spelled and not abbreviated).
Deep Junior 13 UCI chess engine
The World Computer Chess Champion chess engine for PC MS Windows
Suitable for all players including the World Chess Champion
Platform: PC MS Windows™ 98, ME, 2000, XP, Vista and Windows 7 (all versions including 32&64 bit)
Playing ability: World Chess Championship strength (3200+ Elo)†
Engine authors: Amir Ban and Shay Bushinsky, Opening book author: GM Alon Greenfeld
Here the association is direct, "Playing ability: World Chess Championship strength (3200+ Elo)†". Really, rename that crap called WCCC.
Kai
Keep in mind that these are not the ICGA's words, they are ChessBase advertisements.
It makes me wonder why people think Chessbase is the better organization to represent fairness and justice. I have no issue against Chessbase but they are a company for profit - nothng wrong with that, but ICGA is an association which tries to look out for the interests of computer chess - and I think succeeds.
No, I wasn't saying that ChessBase represents better "fairness and justice", nor in the Rybka affair, where they showed themselves as just biased marketers. I have not much against ICGA generally, even WCCC could be fun because of the needed book preparation and hardware differences (besides the sometimes entertaining hazard), but just rename it or specify that engines are chosen by ICGA and in no way represent all the best engines.
Kai
The ICGA isn't perfect but as has already been commented on, a world championship does not have to represent the best. The guy on steroids may be the very best weightlifter in the world, but he should not be praised and honored for artificially enhancing himself. What would be next, a bionic arm?
And what if the worlds best player just doesn't want to come? When Karpov first become world champion Fischer claimed HE was world champion because Karpov didn't have to play him. Is that your mentality here? Karpov WAS the world champion because he showed up and also because Fischer didn't prove he was better.
There is one issue that I have trouble with, but I don't think I can blame it on the ICGA - and that is the huge expense and time involved in competing at these events. That is what keeps participation so low. Now I would be considered a professional which makes it more expensive and also for the same reason I can afford it even less! I don't have a general solution for this and money does not grow on tree's for the ICGA or us, they have to go out and find sponsors and in today's financial climate it's probably even more difficult than normal. But it does highlight the issues. There is very little prestige in computer chess (and only minimal prestige in chess in general) so the top people have to pay their own way into tournaments and the ICGA has to beg for money just to have a prestigious tournament.
This is why I am offended by a super critical post that makes it sound like the ICGA is incompetent or out of touch. You don't think they understand these same issues? To me the solution is certainly not to rely on the rating lists as has been proposed as the new "enlightened" modern way. That is like accepting defeat, we can all do this in our underwear sitting in front of our computer monitors. The wave of the future.
Capital punishment would be more effective as a preventive measure if it were administered prior to the crime.
Written by Amir Ban and Shay Bushinsky, Junior has won multiple World Computer Chess Championships, and now, in version 12, its playing strength has been further increased – by around 200 Elo points
The strength description is associated textually with WCCC (spelled and not abbreviated).
Deep Junior 13 UCI chess engine
The World Computer Chess Champion chess engine for PC MS Windows
Suitable for all players including the World Chess Champion
Platform: PC MS Windows™ 98, ME, 2000, XP, Vista and Windows 7 (all versions including 32&64 bit)
Playing ability: World Chess Championship strength (3200+ Elo)†
Engine authors: Amir Ban and Shay Bushinsky, Opening book author: GM Alon Greenfeld
Here the association is direct, "Playing ability: World Chess Championship strength (3200+ Elo)†". Really, rename that crap called WCCC.
Kai
Keep in mind that these are not the ICGA's words, they are ChessBase advertisements.
It makes me wonder why people think Chessbase is the better organization to represent fairness and justice. I have no issue against Chessbase but they are a company for profit - nothng wrong with that, but ICGA is an association which tries to look out for the interests of computer chess - and I think succeeds.
No, I wasn't saying that ChessBase represents better "fairness and justice", nor in the Rybka affair, where they showed themselves as just biased marketers. I have not much against ICGA generally, even WCCC could be fun because of the needed book preparation and hardware differences (besides the sometimes entertaining hazard), but just rename it or specify that engines are chosen by ICGA and in no way represent all the best engines.
Kai
The ICGA isn't perfect but as has already been commented on, a world championship does not have to represent the best. The guy on steroids may be the very best weightlifter in the world, but he should not be praised and honored for artificially enhancing himself. What would be next, a bionic arm?
And what if the worlds best player just doesn't want to come? When Karpov first become world champion Fischer claimed HE was world champion because Karpov didn't have to play him. Is that your mentality here? Karpov WAS the world champion because he showed up and also because Fischer didn't prove he was better.
I don't like these sports analogies, not even Karpov-Fischer analogy, the reason WCCC must change its name and specify what competition it is is the marketing one, as I clearly showed. The main venues of selling chess engines are using this W(Crap)CC to sell their engines, associating the result in WCCC with absolute strength, which is plain cheating, encouraged by the spelling given to WCCC by ICGA.
There is one issue that I have trouble with, but I don't think I can blame it on the ICGA - and that is the huge expense and time involved in competing at these events. That is what keeps participation so low. Now I would be considered a professional which makes it more expensive and also for the same reason I can afford it even less! I don't have a general solution for this and money does not grow on tree's for the ICGA or us, they have to go out and find sponsors and in today's financial climate it's probably even more difficult than normal. But it does highlight the issues. There is very little prestige in computer chess (and only minimal prestige in chess in general) so the top people have to pay their own way into tournaments and the ICGA has to beg for money just to have a prestigious tournament.
This is why I am offended by a super critical post that makes it sound like the ICGA is incompetent or out of touch. You don't think they understand these same issues? To me the solution is certainly not to rely on the rating lists as has been proposed as the new "enlightened" modern way. That is like accepting defeat, we can all do this in our underwear sitting in front of our computer monitors. The wave of the future.
Written by Amir Ban and Shay Bushinsky, Junior has won multiple World Computer Chess Championships, and now, in version 12, its playing strength has been further increased – by around 200 Elo points
The strength description is associated textually with WCCC (spelled and not abbreviated).
Deep Junior 13 UCI chess engine
The World Computer Chess Champion chess engine for PC MS Windows
Suitable for all players including the World Chess Champion
Platform: PC MS Windows™ 98, ME, 2000, XP, Vista and Windows 7 (all versions including 32&64 bit)
Playing ability: World Chess Championship strength (3200+ Elo)†
Engine authors: Amir Ban and Shay Bushinsky, Opening book author: GM Alon Greenfeld
Here the association is direct, "Playing ability: World Chess Championship strength (3200+ Elo)†". Really, rename that crap called WCCC.
Kai
Keep in mind that these are not the ICGA's words, they are ChessBase advertisements.
It makes me wonder why people think Chessbase is the better organization to represent fairness and justice. I have no issue against Chessbase but they are a company for profit - nothng wrong with that, but ICGA is an association which tries to look out for the interests of computer chess - and I think succeeds.
No, I wasn't saying that ChessBase represents better "fairness and justice", nor in the Rybka affair, where they showed themselves as just biased marketers. I have not much against ICGA generally, even WCCC could be fun because of the needed book preparation and hardware differences (besides the sometimes entertaining hazard), but just rename it or specify that engines are chosen by ICGA and in no way represent all the best engines.
Kai
The ICGA isn't perfect but as has already been commented on, a world championship does not have to represent the best. The guy on steroids may be the very best weightlifter in the world, but he should not be praised and honored for artificially enhancing himself. What would be next, a bionic arm?
And what if the worlds best player just doesn't want to come? When Karpov first become world champion Fischer claimed HE was world champion because Karpov didn't have to play him. Is that your mentality here? Karpov WAS the world champion because he showed up and also because Fischer didn't prove he was better.
I don't like these sports analogies, not even Karpov-Fischer analogy, the reason WCCC must change its name and specify what competition it is is the marketing one, as I clearly showed.
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?
The main venues of selling chess engines are using this W(Crap)CC to sell their engines, associating the result in WCCC with absolute strength, which is plain cheating, encouraged by the spelling given to WCCC by ICGA.
You are not going to stop them no matter what you do - they are in business and they are going to market just like any other business. If the ICGA called this the "Great Championship of Computer Chess" you don't think they would find a way to take advantage of that?
There is one issue that I have trouble with, but I don't think I can blame it on the ICGA - and that is the huge expense and time involved in competing at these events. That is what keeps participation so low. Now I would be considered a professional which makes it more expensive and also for the same reason I can afford it even less! I don't have a general solution for this and money does not grow on tree's for the ICGA or us, they have to go out and find sponsors and in today's financial climate it's probably even more difficult than normal. But it does highlight the issues. There is very little prestige in computer chess (and only minimal prestige in chess in general) so the top people have to pay their own way into tournaments and the ICGA has to beg for money just to have a prestigious tournament.
This is why I am offended by a super critical post that makes it sound like the ICGA is incompetent or out of touch. You don't think they understand these same issues? To me the solution is certainly not to rely on the rating lists as has been proposed as the new "enlightened" modern way. That is like accepting defeat, we can all do this in our underwear sitting in front of our computer monitors. The wave of the future.
Capital punishment would be more effective as a preventive measure if it were administered prior to the crime.
Don wrote:......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"???
