Houdini 2 Aquarium released

[kgburcham]

My opinion is that commercial authors should be allowed to inform about the release of their products. I'd myself like to hear about new products too.
In the other hand, this means that a good balance should be found between blatant advertising and an informative post. A few rules should be followed:
- respecting some loyalty regarding ChessUSA's business (don't "inform" about competing sellers that could hurt Talkchess' host's business).
- respecting the forum's readers by refraining yourself from using too emphasized lines (like: "this is the best product in the world" ...)
- clearly mentioning the price of the product in the post.
My two cents.

Good point about possibly competing with Talkchess host business.
best product does not bother me.
Mentioning the price does not bother me, but I have not looked at the charter to see what it says about this.

thanks Julien
kgburcham

[tomgdrums]

One thing that we have to recognize to Vas (and all the other commercial engines authors) is that when they want to advertise their product they have the sensibility to use their own forum.

Times have changed it seems.

No one chastized the Chess Tiger guy for advertising hi Iphone release here on this forum. This forum has no product affiliation so an announcement of a commercial release should just be looked at as news in my opinion.

[tomgdrums]

All advertizement is informations. That the product is available, what it does, how it is improved, what its strong suites are, how much customer support will be included, what it costs, how you can order it... That's all information.

The current post is rather thin with information that does not have commercial relevance. "Some minor bugfixes and Nalimov support." If that had been the only sentence, it would indeed have been acceptable. But all the rest is quite irrelevant from the viewpoint of an update on the engine info, and only serves commercial purposes.

Then take that up with the Chess Tiger guy as well.

[tomgdrums]

ChessOK has now released the Houdini 2 Aquarium product family, see http://chessok.com/?p=25808 .
It was a logical step to combine the best GUI (Aquarium) with the strongest engine (Houdini), Houdini Aquarium is the result.

The package includes Houdini 2.0b, this is an update to Houdini 2 containing some minor bug fixes and Nalimov EGTB support. This update will also be made available to all current Houdini 2 users, e-mails will be sent in the following week.

Houdini Aquarium is available at a (in my opinion) very attractive price, I know of no no other hobby in which you can obtain the world's best for so little money.

Cheers,
Robert

Hi Robert,

Does the Houdini update still support Gaviota Tablebases?

[Houdini]

Hi Robert,

Does the Houdini update still support Gaviota Tablebases?

Yes, you can continue to use the Gaviota EGTB, the Nalimov support is just an extra.

Robert

[JuLieN]

My opinion is that commercial authors should be allowed to inform about the release of their products. I'd myself like to hear about new products too.
In the other hand, this means that a good balance should be found between blatant advertising and an informative post. A few rules should be followed:
- respecting some loyalty regarding ChessUSA's business (don't "inform" about competing sellers that could hurt Talkchess' host's business).
- respecting the forum's readers by refraining yourself from using too emphasized lines (like: "this is the best product in the world" ...)
- clearly mentioning the price of the product in the post.
My two cents.

Good point about possibly competing with Talkchess host business.
best product does not bother me.
Mentioning the price does not bother me, but I have not looked at the charter to see what it says about this.

The thing is, the charter's no-commercial advert prohibition is probably addressing two concerns :
- the risk of hurting Talkchess' host's business
- the annoyance it would be for the users to get their forum spammed by adverts.

IMHO those two points are important, and any informative post from a commercial engine author should respect the prohibition if not doing it is a risk for any of them.

About the "no price", I myself always feel a bit tricked when I follow a link en then discover that the software is not free. I wouldn't if the price was mentioned.

thanks Julien
kgburcham

Thanks

[Houdini]

Robert,

you are correct, I am not interested in Houdini or Aquarium, and I didn't post because of Houdini, if Shredder, Rybka, Hiarcs or any other commercial engine author had written a post like yours I had probably replied in the same way. Is not a post against Houdini, but against a certain way to use a public forum.

Robert, you are not providing some factual information, you are advertising your new bundle with Aquarium: I try to answer you in a serious and respectful (for your intelligence) way, please be so kind to do the same.

Thanks
Marco

Marco,

Where was your outrage when about 10 days ago the commercial release of Chiron was announced on this forum (see "Chiron 1.0 available for preorder")? Please point us to your intervention about this blatantly commercial announcement.

So maybe is it possible that your reaction has more to do with "Houdini" than with "commercial engines" in general?

Let me repeat again that I don't have the slightest intent to abuse this forum for commercial purposes, but that sometimes the degree of misinformation or nonsense is that high that I have no other choice than to react.

Cheers,
Robert

[Alexander Schmidt]

It was a logical step to combine the best GUI (Aquarium) with the strongest engine (Houdini), Houdini Aquarium is the result.

I am sorry, I must inform you that Houdini isn't the strongest Engine anymore.

Since some days I work on my own engine: Airhead 1.0. It is inspired by Ivanhoe. Based on my own tests it is 250 ELO better than Ivanhoe, but beside this I added many new features and improvements:

Improved name
Improved default Hashtable settings
Implemented some adjustable parameters which do not have any influence on the style or strength
Added Openingbook support (via Bookthinker)
Added Winboard support (via polyglot)

It is based on Ivanhoe but every line is rewritten (try to evidence the opposite)

I accept offers from 50$ and decide from case to case if I sell it or not. The more you pay, the better is your chance to get Airhead 1.0.



Best wishes,
Alex

[Steve B]

Actually Julien you have that just about right

the specific charter provision prohibits threads that are ..
4. " flagrant commercial exhortations "

this was intended by the forum founders to protect the forum from being spammed by endless posts to buy computer chess related products
a single thread announcing a new computer chess product has always been allowed here

the engine author can easily work around the deletion of a single announcement thread by simply asking another member(not in any way connected to the product)to make the announcement instead of himself so one thread has always been permitted

Former Moderator Regards
Steve

[Damir]

It was a logical step to combine the best GUI (Aquarium) with the strongest engine (Houdini), Houdini Aquarium is the result.

I am sorry, I must inform you that Houdini isn't the strongest Engine anymore.

Since some days I work on my own engine: Airhead 1.0. It is inspired by Ivanhoe. Based on my own tests it is 250 ELO better than Ivanhoe, but beside this I added many new features and improvements:

Improved name
Improved default Hashtable settings
Implemented some adjustable parameters which do not have any influence on the style or strength
Added Openingbook support (via Bookthinker)
Added Winboard support (via polyglot)

It is based on Ivanhoe but every line is rewritten (try to evidence the opposite)

I accept offers from 50$ and decide from case to case if I sell it or not. The more you pay, the better is your chance to get Airhead 1.0.



Best wishes,
Alex

Alex,

You have my support, but can you please send me your engine, and than I will decide, whether or not, I will send you 50 $ or more. The more Airhead 1.0 updates you send to me, the bigger the chance for you is to get some money from me...