World Computer Chess Championship ?

[hgm]

A world championship is only a world champion if the best players (teams) participate. Occasionally it may happen some players (teams) are absent but when it becomes chronic the title loses its value. A world champion soccer tournament without Brazil, Argentina, Germany, Italy and Spain is no world championship.

That is just nonsense. A World Championship is a World Championship because it is open to everyone without restriction on place of origin, and because it was agreed to be the World Championship. Whether people choose to not participate is irrelevant. Unwillingness to play counts just as much against your quality as a player as any other form of incompetence. It just means that sometimes it is easier to become World Champion than other times, because the opposition really sucks.

The ICGA made a fundamental choice, whether you agree with that choice or not the yearly WCCC is now a second division tournament not worthy to be called a world championship. And they knew that when they made that fundamental choice.

I think this is a gross distortion of the facts that only exists in your mind. You might as well say that the Olympics is not worth being called Olympics because Ben Johnson was disqualified and suspended. And that the strongest engines do not wish to participate is not due to any decision of the ICGA. It is a decision of the engine authors.

[Laskos]

I do not follow your reasoning. Just because Rybka got caught as a derivative of Fruit and was disqualified, the WCCC is no longer the WCCC? The ICGA STARTED the WCCC. It is their event.

Even 10 years ago WCCC was inadequate for its pretensions, it already was mainly book preparation and hardware, only 4-5 strong engines, 3-4 games of relevance for each engine, many crap engines, but still, most of the strongest engines did participate. Nowadays there are 3-4 second-tier engines which are 200 points behind the leading bunch, the rest being some crap engines. WCCC recently became a total joke.

Kai

A joke because it won't allow ippoli* derivatives? Or any derivatives at all? Seems like a "good joke" IMHO, the alternative is certainly not very useful.

Would not allow crap engines. Probably Crafty is too weak too to be allowed.

Kai

[bob]

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?

Oh c'mon, ICGA is business related ! Did you see who are the first 3 engines of 2011 ? Do you think ICGA lives out of love ? Even you highlighted that to run these events ICGA needs money !

C'mon Don, do you think here we are all so naive to don't see that ICGA is backed up by commercial engines and their editors ?

The only one real reason why ICGA will never give up to that void name "World Computer Chess Championship" is because that (faked) "Wold Champion" title is what is needed by marketing people of organizations that support ICGA !!! This is even more than an elephat in the room, this is an entire zoo !

When you make an assertion like that you need to back it up with a lot more than just conjecture.

The content of a lot of these posts against the ICGA is just like this one, full of suppositions about secret motives and such, but nothing substantial.

Quite a few of the comments are simply insipid. There are vallid grounds on which to criticize the ICGA's tournament.

1. The original charter required that every other WCCC be held in North America. It was quietly changed to remove that.

2. The events are, and have been for many years, too long. Originally they were 5 rounds, with 2 on the first day, and held in conjunction with a major conference such as the annual ACM conference, or IFIPS or whatever.

3. Some criticize the unlimited hardware, even though uniform-platform events have disappeared due to lack of interest. But the non-programmers still criticize this annually, not knowing that it was done and nobody was interested in competing.

But to criticize the ICGA as biased for or against any single program is simply stupid. It would be in the ICGA's best interest to not have such scandals become public. It harms computer chess in general. And that does NOT help the ICGA in any way...

[Adam Hair]

I do not follow your reasoning. Just because Rybka got caught as a derivative of Fruit and was disqualified, the WCCC is no longer the WCCC? The ICGA STARTED the WCCC. It is their event.

Even 10 years ago WCCC was inadequate for its pretensions, it already was mainly book preparation and hardware, only 4-5 strong engines, 3-4 games of relevance for each engine, many crap engines, but still, most of the strongest engines did participate. Nowadays there are 3-4 second-tier engines which are 200 points behind the leading bunch, the rest being some crap engines. WCCC recently became a total joke.

Kai

Is it possible to conduct this discussion without insulting anyone? Even if an engine is not one of the strongest, that does not mean it is "crap".

Those that have not actually written an engine have no idea how difficult the process actually is, and they show their ignorance with statements like that.

That is exactly the conclusion that I have reached also. Every person that I have seen denigrate an engine simply because it is not in the top 5 have something in common. They have never taken the time to try to write a chess engine. As someone who also has not attempted to do so, I find it ludicrous that others like me in that regard call anybody's engine "crap".

[hgm]

And the thing that makes this totally laughable is that they then base this on a tiny rating difference like 200 Elo, like being 200 Elo better as your opponents would guarantee a win in any tournament. That is of course why they are also pushing to have a tournament of several hundred games, so that they can already call engines that are 20 Elo weaker than their favorite 'second-rate crap engines'.

[Rebel]

As you know last year the Dutch became world champion baseball. For Americans that's a joke, and right they are.

But that is an amateur World Championship, right? And everyone knows that. The best Dutch players were also not participating in the Dutch team, because they play as professionals in the U.S. (Btw, the U.S. professional baseball championship is called the 'World Series', which is a real joke, as only North American teams participate...)

Note that in the WCCC there is no such limitation; professionals (commercial engines) and amateurs can both participate. The commercials just pay a somewhat larger entry fee. But that is actually to their advantage, because it means that amateurs with no chance of winning still pay for part of the costs of the event.

A world championship is only a world champion if the best players (teams) participate. Occasionally it may happen some players (teams) are absent but when it becomes chronic the title loses its value. A world champion soccer tournament without Brazil, Argentina, Germany, Italy and Spain is no world championship.

The ICGA made a fundamental choice, whether you agree with that choice or not the yearly WCCC is now a second division tournament not worthy to be called a world championship. And they knew that when they made that fundamental choice.

Does ANYBODY really believe that the winner of ANY tournament, whether it be a world championship tournament or not, is REALLY the best player in the world? If so, I have some ocean-front property in Kansas I'd like to sell to him as a beach vacation home. The best player in the world is discovered by performance over a period of time. #1 tennis player. #1 golfer. #1 on FIDE list. Anyone that doesn't understand that is REALLY misleading themselves...

Pretend as much as you want as if nothing has happened and it's business as usual, it isn't.

[bhlangonijr]

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?

Oh c'mon, ICGA is business related ! Did you see who are the first 3 engines of 2011 ? Do you think ICGA lives out of love ? Even you highlighted that to run these events ICGA needs money !

C'mon Don, do you think here we are all so naive to don't see that ICGA is backed up by commercial engines and their editors ?

The only one real reason why ICGA will never give up to that void name "World Computer Chess Championship" is because that (faked) "Wold Champion" title is what is needed by marketing people of organizations that support ICGA !!! This is even more than an elephat in the room, this is an entire zoo !

I think your energy is a lot better spent in computer chess programming rather than ranting in the general forum like a mad oldtimer.

There _exists_ an organization and people surrounding it who really engage themselves to create a tournament which yearly offers the WCC title. The ICGA chess tournament is indeed without much prestige and attendance nowadays, but it's actually result of a bad fortune IMO. Maybe because computer chess itself is lacking interest of people in general. It's really silly to suggest they should change the name of the title because of that (all this fuss because of that??). Do you know why 3 commercial programs ended up in the top in the last WCCC edition? Because they showed up. Simply. You (Stockfish) could have beat them if you had showed up.

Following that kind of reasoning I'd suggest in the recent years change the name of this place to TalkCrap, instead of TalkChess.

Please, move on....

[Don]

As you know last year the Dutch became world champion baseball. For Americans that's a joke, and right they are.

But that is an amateur World Championship, right? And everyone knows that. The best Dutch players were also not participating in the Dutch team, because they play as professionals in the U.S. (Btw, the U.S. professional baseball championship is called the 'World Series', which is a real joke, as only North American teams participate...)

Note that in the WCCC there is no such limitation; professionals (commercial engines) and amateurs can both participate. The commercials just pay a somewhat larger entry fee. But that is actually to their advantage, because it means that amateurs with no chance of winning still pay for part of the costs of the event.

A world championship is only a world champion if the best players (teams) participate. Occasionally it may happen some players (teams) are absent but when it becomes chronic the title loses its value. A world champion soccer tournament without Brazil, Argentina, Germany, Italy and Spain is no world championship.

The ICGA made a fundamental choice, whether you agree with that choice or not the yearly WCCC is now a second division tournament not worthy to be called a world championship. And they knew that when they made that fundamental choice.

The ICGA DID indeed make a fundamental choice, one that earned my respect and many others as a result. Look at what their 2 fundamental choices were:

1. Deny Fabien Letouzey fair recourse out of fear and cowardice of losing their top draw in these events.

2. Maintain high standards of integrity by not showing favoritism even though it may have unpleasant consequences.


Maybe point 2 is "old fashioned" to you, but not to me. I believe in being yielding and making compromises when it doesn't matter and it helps people come together, but I don't believe in making compromises like this which involve trading off integrity out of fear and cowardice. I also believe that in the long run they have not given up anything.

Yes, I know that Vas was a superstar but it's sad that anyone feels that should give him a pass or special treatment and that the needs of Fabien Letouzey should be sacrificed for their personal benefit.

[Laskos]

And the thing that makes this totally laughable is that they then base this on a tiny rating difference like 200 Elo, like being 200 Elo better as your opponents would guarantee a win in any tournament. That is of course why they are also pushing to have a tournament of several hundred games, so that they can already call engines that are 20 Elo weaker than their favorite 'second-rate crap engines'.

I bet Joker can become 5th engine in the world according to WCCC. Nevertheless, Joker cannot become The World Champion even in this laughable WCCC. That's a feat

Kai

[Don]

And the thing that makes this totally laughable is that they then base this on a tiny rating difference like 200 Elo, like being 200 Elo better as your opponents would guarantee a win in any tournament. That is of course why they are also pushing to have a tournament of several hundred games, so that they can already call engines that are 20 Elo weaker than their favorite 'second-rate crap engines'.

I bet Joker can become 5th engine in the world according to WCCC. Nevertheless, Joker cannot become The World Champion even in this laughable WCCC. That's a feat

Kai

This is exactly the type of thing that makes you less than convincing. What is this supposed to accomplish?

Don