Houdini is getting some wider press. Congratulations!

[Dr.Wael Deeb]

Houdini wiped out Rybka 4 today, totally outplaying it.

Houdini is so much stronger than Rybka 4 that it is downright scary. Scary if you're a Rybka fanboy, that is.

I'm certinly not and will declare it officially if necessary

[Dr.Wael Deeb]

Houdini wiped out Rybka 4 today, totally outplaying it.

Houdini is so much stronger than Rybka 4 that it is downright scary. Scary if you're a Rybka fanboy, that is.

The Rybka 4 fish is "BESMIRCHED"

[Tom Barrister]

Exactly who appointed CCRL or any of the others the "official" status? Vas Rajlich? Garry Kasparov? The ghost of Bobby Fischer?

Does FIDE recognize any of these as official?

Do any national chess federations recognize any of these as official?

Is there an official, accredited Computer Chess Society?

I don't know the answers to any of the above, but I suspect that the answer to most of them is "no, "nobody" or "none"/"few".

As near as I can tell, a few people who have appointed themselves the official Computer Chess Geeks of the World have decided which organizations are official and which are not.

I doubt if IPON is cheating. Since Rybka's supposed big advantage is at long-time-control chess, and since IPON uses ponder=on, it would seem that Rybka would have everything its way. If Houdini is trouncing Rybka, then Houdini is the better chess engine.

Next topic: Who decides how many games are enough to be a "true" test? How many games does it take? 100? 1,000? 10,000,000?

My idea for this "true test"---and I'm sure many others have suggested it before---- would be to take an opening book of, about 12-16 moves (e.g. to Black's 12th-16th move), in which two conditions are met:

1) The positions at the end of the "book" are widely divergent, which would mean that they probably would come from a large variety of different openings.

2) Each position evaluates within a certain range (perhaps +- 1.50), as evaluated by a neutral engine that isn't in the top 10 or so, but is at least respectably strong (Spike, for example).

Now out of those 100/1,000/5,000/however-many positions, have each pair of engines play a match of twice as many games as positions, so that each engine gets to play each side of the opening against the other.

This would give the engines a chance to actually fight it out in many different situations, rather than giving them a series of test suite positions in which the "best" move may be arbitrary.

That's my opinion, and as usual, some won't agree.

[mwyoung]

Houdini 1.5 leads TCEC with perfect score!

Press:
http://www.chessdom.com/news-2011/houdini-chess-engine


TCEC:
http://www.tcec-chess.org/

Fascinating, and an incredible blunder by ChessDom. It isn't to besmirch Houdini BTW, as that is not the problem. It is the fact they are promoting a small private computer chess tournament, with no official recognition, on their front page as the main article, after only three rounds, which is the sort of reporting reserved for major international chess tournaments.... It is amazingly bad judgment, and beyond stupid.

Of course, I'm happy for Martin, but this changes nothing.

Looks like ChessDom does not agree with your "Beyond Stupid" rant. And is now giving round by round results of Houdini 1.5.

Latest Headline on ChessDom

Houdini 1.5 stays perfect, destroys Rybka 4 with black.

http://reports.chessdom.com/news-2011/h ... t-score-r4

[George Tsavdaris]

3) Would your reaction have been the same if Rybka was dominating the tournament, or if the article was written by Chessbase?

It's sad that even you add to this nonsense. That if someone says something, even a tiny good word about Rybka, or doesn't say with big and bold letters that Houdini and Ippolit family are the best of the best of the best, then he immediately becomes a Rybka fanboy.

This has become annoying.

[George Tsavdaris]

Do your paid job in dedicated to your paid work forums. Here you are UNWELCOMED.

Kai

All gone crazy here?

No, but the craziness is increasing.

Nowadays in CCC you normally won't dare to speak about Rybka because you will get attacked by several people prosecuting you of being a fanboy or that Vas is paying you to do this.
I wonder how rich is Vasik, since he has to pay some minions in CCC to promote Rybka, but also pay CCRL and CEGT to keep Rybka on top of their lists. But i forgot. It is Chessbase behind all this right?

I have never seen this in CCC happening all these years. There were some individuals who where posting radical things and creating problems, but now it's like an organized thing.

[Albert Silver]

Houdini 1.5 leads TCEC with perfect score!

Press:
http://www.chessdom.com/news-2011/houdini-chess-engine


TCEC:
http://www.tcec-chess.org/

Fascinating, and an incredible blunder by ChessDom. It isn't to besmirch Houdini BTW, as that is not the problem. It is the fact they are promoting a small private computer chess tournament, with no official recognition, on their front page as the main article, after only three rounds, which is the sort of reporting reserved for major international chess tournaments.... It is amazingly bad judgment, and beyond stupid.

Of course, I'm happy for Martin, but this changes nothing.

Looks like ChessDom does not agree with your "Beyond Stupid" rant. And is now giving round by round results of Houdini 1.5.

Latest Headline on ChessDom

Houdini 1.5 stays perfect, destroys Rybka 4 with black.

http://reports.chessdom.com/news-2011/h ... t-score-r4

[Father]

...then...Is Houdini 1.5. the new King? all this is incredible

[Graham Banks]

Nowadays in CCC you normally won't dare to speak about Rybka because you will get attacked by several people prosecuting you of being a fanboy or that Vas is paying you to do this.
I wonder how rich is Vasik, since he has to pay some minions in CCC to promote Rybka, but also pay CCRL and CEGT to keep Rybka on top of their lists. But i forgot. It is Chessbase behind all this right?

I have never seen this in CCC happening all these years. There were some individuals who where posting radical things and creating problems, but now it's like an organized thing.

Yes, it's quite obvious isn't it? I wonder how many are actually the same people using multiple accounts through proxy servers?

[Houdini]

This has become annoying.

I agree.