ICGA WCCC and WCSC in Santiago de Compostela

[hgm]

They don't. Anyone else can make their own World Championship, e.g. the TCEC Chess World Championship, CCC Chess World Championship, etc etc

And the more you have, the less it means...

[Rebel]

Now that the world title will become vacant I wonder who will claim it, or maybe the ICGA will sell it to the highest bidder.

in what sense is "World Computer Chess Champion 2025" a piece of property to be bought and sold? Why would any one person/org have exclusive rights to its use?

It's not about rights, there are not any, but about image. It looks much better if the WCCC goes as an official extension of a 50 year organization than just people who rob it.

[smatovic]

I think this about finishing a journey that started ~50 years ago....have a good time!

* This will be the last WCCC. After 50 years, it's time to declare success. The WCCC started out with ELO 1600 programs and today we have ELO 3600 programs. It's time for a celebration...

--
Srdja

[chrisw]

I think this about finishing a journey that started ~50 years ago....have a good time!

* This will be the last WCCC. After 50 years, it's time to declare success. The WCCC started out with ELO 1600 programs and today we have ELO 3600 programs. It's time for a celebration...

--
Srdja

"I think this about finishing a journey that started ~50 years ago", as in "doing the Compostela". haha!

Unfortunately for the potential pilgrims, Compostella is pretty dull, tourists aren't really there for the nightlife, restaurants are unexiting and few in number, likewise tapas bars and the hotels (pilgrims just don't support it). You're in fact expected to go another 20kms to the coast at Finisterre, take of all your clothes and burn them in a fire. Not sure what happens after that. Airport is out of town and mostly budget airlines, so not easy access. Off season Spain would be better, more accessible, more fun if they'ld have chosen one of the Mediterranean cities, hell, I might even have driven there, but Compostella is just way off route.

[smatovic]

[...]
more fun if they'ld have chosen one of the Mediterranean cities, hell, I might even have driven there, but Compostella is just way off route.
[...]

Hehe, pack Ed and HGM into your van, and do a little founders tour

--
Srdja

[Jouni]

Good idea to stop after 50 years! Maybe title number 20 for Shredder? "Most successful chess program ever" says homepage.

[CRoberson]

There are two groups: the people that understand the meaning behind the ICGA events and the people that don't (end users).
The event has never been to decide which is the best software for an end user.
It has always been an event to stimulate scientific research in the field. A computer scientist is far more than the average programmer.

The algorithms for parallelizing chess programs were invented and used in the ICGA event before the PCs ever had more than one processor.
Lots of things were developed at least in part for this event. It has been about what is the best possible chess playing entity combination of HW and SW.
There have been supercomputers, FPGA systems, grid systems ...

It is about pushing the envelope of the science! Thus it gives us unlimited imagination tob develop something new.
CCRL, CEGT, TCEC and the rest don't do that.
The reason d'etre of the ICGA events is completely different from that of the end user test groups and it is obvious that many end users don't come close to understanding that.

[Graham Banks]

WCCC analogue to football will be to play 1 minute games so any team that is somewhat competent will draw every other team.
And then go to tie breakers which feature 1 penalty shot from only 1 side - if they score they win, if they don't score they lose.
Would be a great tournament with a lot of meaning indeed.

Then in contrast, there's the old adage, "If you're not in it, you can't win it."

[Viz]

There are two groups: the people that understand the meaning behind the ICGA events and the people that don't (end users).
The event has never been to decide which is the best software for an end user.
It has always been an event to stimulate scientific research in the field. A computer scientist is far more than the average programmer.

The algorithms for parallelizing chess programs were invented and used in the ICGA event before the PCs ever had more than one processor.
Lots of things were developed at least in part for this event. It has been about what is the best possible chess playing entity combination of HW and SW.
There have been supercomputers, FPGA systems, grid systems ...

It is about pushing the envelope of the science! Thus it gives us unlimited imagination tob develop something new.
CCRL, CEGT, TCEC and the rest don't do that.
The reason d'etre of the ICGA events is completely different from that of the end user test groups and it is obvious that many end users don't come close to understanding that.

The reason why everyone sees it as only shitty tournament nowadays is because modern chess engine development isn't about science, it's about engineering. All innovations in past decades were not created/discussed at ICGA events, they were made by enthusiasts at fishtest and openbench.
And even if they were not - which is the case for such gamebreaking concepts as CNNs and NNUE, they were made not by any person at ICGA either, it's either deep mind and group of enthusiasts that reconstructed A0 logic, or shogi engine developers.
So in general "scientific relevance" of WCCC is basically 0 for more than a decade - Marco said it's irrelevant in as far as 2012 in this aspect, for example - so idk what "pushing envelope of the science" it does. It did in the past but this days are long time gone. You can't do this if you don't have literally anyone relevant participating - and with internet you don't even need them to group at one place.
TCEC as an event got multiple people interested in chess engine programming that eventually became accomplished devs, so it indeed did much better job at this in recent years, well, not even talking about being infinitely better tournament from any point of view.

[hgm]

It is irrelevant as a consumer test for chess engines, because it never was one. Some participants in the past few tournaments might very well have been the strongest Chess entities that ever performed, because of the hardware they used.