Junior is World Computer Chess Champion!

[Adam Hair]

Junior is funny tournament winner not world champion. The world championship without Houdini is only non-sense tournament.

Without Houdini, Rybka, Stockfish, Critter and many others.

They can't force people to attend, but they can certainly cease calling it something that it is not. So they should stop calling a world championship.

Ray, in your opinion what should the conditions be to call an ICGA championship a world championship? Please be specific, you can't decide it every time individually whether it qualifies or not.

Even if you can come up with some definition, imagine you travel to Yokohama, and at arriving they tell you that it is not going to be called a World Championship because a top engine withdrew its nomination in the last minute.

I concur with Gábor.

The ICGA has been conducting a tournament that was considered the "World Championship" by engine authors at its inception. At no point has there been any tournament that has supplanted the ICGA's tournament. Thus, the winner of the ICGA tournament should still be considered the "World Champion", regardless of which engines actually compete in it.

If some other tournament is established that has superior support from the engine authors, then it should be considered the "World Championship". At the moment, there is no such tournament.

[kgburcham]

Junior is World Computer Chess Champion again. Draw versus Jonny!
Congrats to Amir Ban, Shay Bushinsky!

Who??
Oh Wait!
It is coming back to me, I think.
Oh Wait!!
Oh I remember now!
Let me go look in my closet, be back in an hour.
Ok I am back, yes I remember now, the Junior program.
Junior would not recognize me now, I have gray hair.
Someone needs to tell these guys it is 2013 and the top programs on strong hardware are rated at maybe 3000.
Now can any of the programs in that tournament play at a 3000 level?

Sure if someone wants to, they can hold a tournament with all 2000 elo programs, and call the winner a world champion, but you cant fool the chess world.

Yawn

[JuLieN]

Junior is World Computer Chess Champion again. Draw versus Jonny!
Congrats to Amir Ban, Shay Bushinsky!

Who??
Oh Wait!
It is coming back to me, I think.
Oh Wait!!
Oh I remember now!
Let me go look in my closet, be back in an hour.
Ok I am back, yes I remember now, the Junior program.
Junior would not recognize me now, I have gray hair.
Someone needs to tell these guys it is 2013 and the top programs on strong hardware are rated at maybe 3000.
Now can any of the programs in that tournament play at a 3000 level?

Sure if someone wants to, they can hold a tournament with all 2000 elo programs, and call the winner a world champion, but you cant fool the chess world.

Yawn

There's another way to look at it: considering that HIARCS is a circa 3000 ELO program and that it's version running in Japan was probably a stronger beta version, then Junior and Shredder have made big progress and I wouldn't be surprised if they are very close to the top five engines. This is good news.

[kgburcham]

Junior is World Computer Chess Champion again. Draw versus Jonny!
Congrats to Amir Ban, Shay Bushinsky!

Who??
Oh Wait!
It is coming back to me, I think.
Oh Wait!!
Oh I remember now!
Let me go look in my closet, be back in an hour.
Ok I am back, yes I remember now, the Junior program.
Junior would not recognize me now, I have gray hair.
Someone needs to tell these guys it is 2013 and the top programs on strong hardware are rated at maybe 3000.
Now can any of the programs in that tournament play at a 3000 level?

Sure if someone wants to, they can hold a tournament with all 2000 elo programs, and call the winner a world champion, but you cant fool the chess world.

Yawn

There's another way to look at it: considering that HIARCS is a circa 3000 ELO program and that it's version running in Japan was probably a stronger beta version, then Junior and Shredder have made big progress and I wouldn't be surprised if they are very close to the top five engines. This is good news.

Thanks Julien
Interesting info.
I wonder how much of the Ippo code, Rybka, code, Fruit code, is in Shredder, Junior, Hiarcs??
There are a lot of people that think if you are playing and winning at the very top level, then you have super tuned Ippo/Fruit/Rybka code

[jdart]

I wonder how much of the Ippo code, Rybka, code, Fruit code, is in Shredder, Junior, Hiarcs??

You can suppose that but IMO there is no reason to think so.

These were strong programs before even Fruit was released. Furthermore there are now a number of very strong open source programs that are not derived from Rybka/Fruit/Ippolit.

--Jon

[Modern Times]

I wonder how much of the Ippo code, Rybka, code, Fruit code, is in Shredder, Junior, Hiarcs??

A very valid question. Would any of those authors publicly deny that they have studied the code of those engines and not taken ideas at the very least ? There is a lot of hypocrisy in computer chess unfortunately.

[Modern Times]

The ICGA has been conducting a tournament that was considered the "World Championship" by engine authors at its inception. At no point has there been any tournament that has supplanted the ICGA's tournament. Thus, the winner of the ICGA tournament should still be considered the "World Champion", regardless of which engines actually compete in it.

If some other tournament is established that has superior support from the engine authors, then it should be considered the "World Championship". At the moment, there is no such tournament.

ICGA was the first, but for sure there are other far better tournaments now - all online - that are more deserving of the title. But as I said, anyone including the ICGA can run a tournament and call it the World Championship. Others are dong it already, so there are multiple world champions. The enthusiasts among us know that the ICGA world champion is almost certainly not among the top 10 in the world. Enough said !

nTCEC is in a totally different league to the ICGA tournaments. That is 100 times more deserving of a World Championship title than anything else. But Martin is somewhat more modest than the ICGA, and doesn't call it as such.

ICGA tournaments have a place in bring programmers together to chat, but that is it these days, nothing more.

[Harvey Williamson]

Now can any of the programs in that tournament play at a 3000 level?

Yawn

Against humans they are all 3000+ except Merlin. Dont forget Hiarcs on a pocket pc played in a GM tournament 2 years in a row in Argentina. It got 2 GM norms and a 2931 rating. This was in 2008/9

[Modern Times]

I thought ICGA was recognized to be the organization to award world championship titles. Just like FIFA is the official federation to award world championship titles in football. Others may call their championships world championships but that does not make their championships world championships.

No, I have never seen anywhere that the ICGA is recognised as such. There is no "official" world championship. World Championship can be used by anyone - and as in the example I gave, indeed that is happening.

[kgburcham]

I wonder how much of the Ippo code, Rybka, code, Fruit code, is in Shredder, Junior, Hiarcs??

You can suppose that but IMO there is no reason to think so.

There is every reason to think so

These were strong programs before even Fruit was released.

Not by todays standards

Furthermore there are now a number of very strong open source programs that are not derived from Rybka/Fruit/Ippolit.

I doubt that

--Jon