Crafty accused of copying Fruit PST

[Graham Banks]

is crafty a commercial program ?

What does that have to do with things?

[tpetzke]

And sources in china reported that a sack of rice has fallen over.

So 32 numbers (because the table is symmetric) are the same with 32 numbers from another program. For such easy stuff like psq tables this is not unusual, because the table represents a rough estimation of good and bad squares of a piece (e.g. a bishop).

A bishop in the corner is bad, at the edge it is slightly better but still bad. Towards the center it gets better and squares towards the opponent are a bit better than towards you. You scale that somehow between corner, edge and center.

This is just common knowledge and if you apply that most of the piece square tables even if you take them out of thin air will look similar.

Thomas...

BTW I don't think piece square tables are that useful anyway. Their contribution is redundant with mobility in the best case. In the most cases they just introduce noise into the evaluation just what history heuristics do with move ordering.

[geots]

Why do you say that?

Because 'accusing' someone is cheap, and every idiot can do it (and unfortunately does...). Interesting would be announcement like "ICGA launches investigation against Crafty", or "ICGA has banned Crafty from WCCC"...

As for accusations against Crafty, they are especially ridiculous, since Crafty is open source, and the history of its PST can be traced back in time into minute detail.

Yes it can be traced back and has. It seems that at one point some of Fruit's PST values were copied by Crafty and tuned with a constant. While that may seem reasonable and part of a tuning process, this is exactly what Vas has been accused of. The thing is why is it reasonable and acceptable when Bob does it, and "plagiarims" when Vas does it. Also if this was overlooked by all the investigators at the ICGA with an open source program such as Crafty, how much of similar things are in the other closed source engines that participated in the ICGA tourney. It just seems that the rules are being applied unfairly.

Well one thing is for sure, and that is Bob will stand up like a man and defend himself against these accusations or stand up and admit that they are true. Unlike others he does not need a mouth piece to speak for him.

Who exactly has mouthpieces speaking for him? Vas?- Then why don't you call him by name? Just say it out loud. V_A_S. See, that wasn't hard, was it?

[geots]

Why do you say that?

Because 'accusing' someone is cheap, and every idiot can do it (and unfortunately does...). Interesting would be announcement like "ICGA launches investigation against Crafty", or "ICGA has banned Crafty from WCCC"...

As for accusations against Crafty, they are especially ridiculous, since Crafty is open source, and the history of its PST can be traced back in time into minute detail.

Let me be sure I have this right? You are conceding credibility to ICGA? Because if............. oh the hell with it.

[JuLieN]

It seems that at one point some of Fruit's PST values were copied by Crafty and tuned with a constant. While that may seem reasonable and part of a tuning process, this is exactly what Vas has been accused of.

Not at all. Vas has been accused (and proven guilty) of copying large chunks of other programs, including both algorithms and data structures, to the point that it became obvious that rybka 1.0 was just a tuned version of Fruit's sources with chunks of Crafty in it.

Here, what the zealots at rybkaforum are trying to accomplish is to desperately throw suspicion above Bob and Crafty. What they found was one single data structure: the bishop PST. As I don't know if Crafty got it from Fruit, or by Bob's team own research, or if, at the contrary, Fruit got it from Crafty, I won't comment this. What I'll say anyway is that it is NOT at all what Vas did, not in spirit, nor in scale. So your statement "this is what Vas did" can't stand, not even taking into account your "exactly"...

[M ANSARI]

Well for one, the PST values have been the "smoking gun" in the ICGA report which claimed that Vas had violated rule 2 of their guideline. I do agree that PST values are not valuable in claiming "plagiarism" and I don't want this to sound that I consider the values in Crafty as being cloned from Fruit. All I am trying to say is that if the rules are applied equally to all participants, things would be much different. I am pretty sure if all participants were to open their source code, and have their code analyzed in the same zeal and bias that Rybka code was exposed to ... there would be some surprises.

Also this is what Bob posted regarding PST values ... so maybe he should retract this statement.

"To suggest that two different programmers wrote two different pieces of code, independently of each other, without having a set of target values to work toward, and end up with the same set of PST values is, without a doubt, one of the most ridiculous statements I have ever read."

[JuLieN]

Well for one, the PST values have been the "smoking gun" in the ICGA report which claimed that Vas had violated rule 2 of their guideline. I do agree that PST values are not valuable in claiming "plagiarism" and I don't want this to sound that I consider the values in Crafty as being cloned from Fruit. All I am trying to say is that if the rules are applied equally to all participants, things would be much different. I am pretty sure if all participants were to open their source code, and have their code analyzed in the same zeal and bias that Rybka code was exposed to ... there would be some surprises.

Are you sure you read the ICGA's report? I don't think so. Here's the report:
http://www.chessvibes.com/plaatjes/rybk ... gation.pdf
You'll see that the PST is just one of the 6 points taken into account (just for comparing the evaluation!), and that ALL of those PST were copied or derived. Again, your "that's exactly what Vas did" is purely the product of your will: it just simply contradicts the facts.

[M ANSARI]

Well the report seems to use a lot of statistcal math analysis that some things are highly improbable and thus Rybka is guilty. Personally I think things like Rybka managed more ELO gain per certain period than is usual for a chess program as pure BS ... how this be claimed to be a valid criteria by anyone is remarkable, especially when that same person duplicates the ELO gain in later releases. If you take the same system of using statistical analysis as a marker for guilt, then the PST bishop table would categorize Crafty as being guilty as hell.

[JuLieN]

Well the report seems to use a lot of statistcal math analysis that some things are highly improbable and thus Rybka is guilty. Personally I think things like Rybka managed more ELO gain per certain period than is usual for a chess program as pure BS ... how this be claimed to be a valid criteria by anyone is remarkable, especially when that same person duplicates the ELO gain in later releases. If you take the same system of using statistical analysis as a marker for guilt, then the PST bishop table would categorize Crafty as being guilty as hell.

You won't get away so easily with this kind of exaggerations. The suspicious Elo boost is JUST one small points out of many. 8 small lines out of a 14 pages long document. What would have been a nonsense would have been NOT to mention it.

As a jurist, I can tell you that taking 8 anecdotical lines out of a 14 pages long document full of much more important points and basing your defense on them will just lead to the exasperation of the judge faced with such intellectual dishonesty.

Rybka 1.0 was totally disassembled to give Strelka, where everyone recognized Fruit. It was, again, partially disassembled, for its critical parts, by the ICGA. Extensive elements were gathered that plain and simply proved that Rybka was a rip-off of Fruit with some chunks of Crafty.

This has just NOTHING to do with one similar PST. Will you say that a bicycle is similar to a Ferrari F40 because they both have paint? No, you won't. But if you see a car that has the same shape, the same engine, the same paint, the same seats (and so on) than a Ferrari F40 then you're likely to conclude that this car is also a Ferrari F40.

What you and the zealots at Rybka Forum are trying to accomplish is trying to make your young nephew's bicycle look like a Ferrari F40. Who are you trying to fool?

[AdminX]

Why do you say that?

Because 'accusing' someone is cheap, and every idiot can do it (and unfortunately does...). Interesting would be announcement like "ICGA launches investigation against Crafty", or "ICGA has banned Crafty from WCCC"...

As for accusations against Crafty, they are especially ridiculous, since Crafty is open source, and the history of its PST can be traced back in time into minute detail.

Yes it can be traced back and has. It seems that at one point some of Fruit's PST values were copied by Crafty and tuned with a constant. While that may seem reasonable and part of a tuning process, this is exactly what Vas has been accused of. The thing is why is it reasonable and acceptable when Bob does it, and "plagiarims" when Vas does it. Also if this was overlooked by all the investigators at the ICGA with an open source program such as Crafty, how much of similar things are in the other closed source engines that participated in the ICGA tourney. It just seems that the rules are being applied unfairly.

Well one thing is for sure, and that is Bob will stand up like a man and defend himself against these accusations or stand up and admit that they are true. Unlike others he does not need a mouth piece to speak for him.

Who exactly has mouthpieces speaking for him? Vas?- Then why don't you call him by name? Just say it out loud. V_A_S. See, that wasn't hard, was it?

I didn't have to, Those that know ..., you get the point!