Perhaps I am a strange kind or an exception, nevertheless in the last years I dedicated a good chunk of my free time to this hobby, not only as a programmer, but also participating in the forums and reading and writing posts and private email correspondence with many of you, nevertheless this ICGA never influenced even minimally my activities and their chief, Mr. Levy, I even didn't know who he was before this big fanfare.
OTH I very quickly came to know the existence of Rybka and his author and both where well high in the hit parade of the forum both gossip-wise and technical-wise.
So I am wondering, from all this hype who gain most in terms of visibility and advertising ?
I really don't know the reason why _now_ after many years all this come out, when, if I have read correctly, the gain between the first Rybka and the post fruit version was already many hundreds ELO points (achieved in a very short time) and so the hints of something strange where already there.
I only say that from a pure marketing / advertising point of view this Mr. Levy is really brilliant: now everybody talks about this ICGA, someone (like the author of Houdini) has promptly candidate its engine to participate in the next tournament in another brilliant move to offer ICGA another boost of visibility and get its "ethic blessing" in reward. Nice !
Really brilliant marketing people here in the chess community !
