WCCC 2009

[jshriver]

Perhaps this is an old topic. I came across this on wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Comp ... ampionship

It states that the 2009 tournament is restricting hardware to 8 cores or less. Thus getting rid of users with access to clusters/super computers.

When did this come about and why?

[MattieShoes]

They sort of split it -- there was some sort of unlimited category but with only six entries.

http://www.grappa.univ-lille3.fr/icga/event.php?id=41

Incarnations of Rybka won both. For some idiot reason, they call the limited category world chess computer champion. Which seems backwards to me.

[bob]

Perhaps this is an old topic. I came across this on wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Comp ... ampionship

It states that the 2009 tournament is restricting hardware to 8 cores or less. Thus getting rid of users with access to clusters/super computers.

When did this come about and why?

It was a last-minute decision by the ICGA, mainly David Levy. Who was pushing for this is not clear. After a lot of rapid backlash, he then came out with the lame excuse that it was too late to change it back, even though the original decision was made maybe 3 months before the tournament.

One of the silliest decisions I have seen, made it a dark room with little input.

[Bill Rogers]

I realize that many of you chess enthusiast have money to burn but to people like me which I think are the majority buying an 8 core or above is just about fincially impossible. If they really wanted to hold a world chess tournement with unlimited computing power then it should be advertized that way and then maybe Big Blue and a few other really radical chess playing systems can go at. On the level that reaches the most players we will stick to Crafty, Rybka, Hyarcs, and a few others that run on our single CPU machines, I mean after all the all kick our asses.
Bill

[Bo Persson]

I realize that many of you chess enthusiast have money to burn but to people like me which I think are the majority buying an 8 core or above is just about fincially impossible. If they really wanted to hold a world chess tournement with unlimited computing power then it should be advertized that way and then maybe Big Blue and a few other really radical chess playing systems can go at. On the level that reaches the most players we will stick to Crafty, Rybka, Hyarcs, and a few others that run on our single CPU machines, I mean after all the all kick our asses.
Bill

But this is supposed to be the World Championship, not a popularity contest.

I can't afford to run F1 racing either, but perhaps there will be slots open soon. Just try to force Ferrari and Toyota to run on Ford Cosworth standard engines. .-)

http://www.fia.com/en-GB/mediacentre/pr ... _fota.aspx

[MattieShoes]

*exactly*. If you've got a computer fast enough that can beat Rybka with full width searches and material-only eval, more power to you. It's still winning.

There's nothing wrong with contests on restricted hardware, I just think they stuck the world champ title on the wrong contest. In this case, it's kind of a moot point since Rybka won both, but it's the principle of the thing.

[Spock]

There's nothing wrong with contests on restricted hardware, I just think they stuck the world champ title on the wrong contest. In this case, it's kind of a moot point since Rybka won both, but it's the principle of the thing.

EXACTLY.

[Michael Sherwin]

In boxing there is a world champion for every weight category. So, chess should do something similar.

a cluster world champion

a multi core world champion

a single core world champion

an atom world champion

whatever.

and they would not all have to be run by the same organization.

enter all that you wish and hope that Rybka does not show up at one of them.

[BubbaTough]

In most sports there is THE WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP, and then a bunch of things with qualifiers (under 18 world championship, special olympics gold medal, whatever). We have 1 qualifier, "Computer", implying the computer must make all decisions unaided. As many people here say, it is unusual, misleading, and just plain wrong to call something a computer world championship with no other qualifiers, and then put lots of qualifiers. If they want hardware restrictions so that the only computers that can be used are home computers (such as 8 core restriction) they can call it the micro-computer championships.

It is a sad, sad thing for computer chess in my opinion if there is no true world computer championship though (where there are no restrictions other than all decisions must be made by the computer program). I also consider it somewhat ironic that the rational is to make it accessible to the masses, when the only x-world champion chess computer the masses know is "Deep Blue", which would be banned from this event, and probably would never have been developed if such restrictions had always been in place. Who knows what wonderful advances in computer chess will be missed by having no completive outlet spurring on advances in highly parallel chess computation.

-Sam

[bob]

In boxing there is a world champion for every weight category. So, chess should do something similar.

a cluster world champion

a multi core world champion

a single core world champion

an atom world champion

whatever.

and they would not all have to be run by the same organization.

enter all that you wish and hope that Rybka does not show up at one of them.

However, who would disagree with this: "The world heavyweight is the bext boxer in the world"???

With that many classes, as few participants as the WCCC attracts, you would end up with 1 or 2 programs in each class. That would hardly be interesting. We want to produce a good "show" with "the best player in the world" being the one that wins. No-holds-barred cage-match type of event... Or a UFC-type event. No "queen's rules" or anything.