WCCC 2011 - Junior is the 2011 World Champion

[Adam Hair]

Your analogy falls short. The tournaments are competitions between the authors. The general public plays very little to no role in the tournaments. On the other hand, artists rely on the general public's interest and money to be able to continue their art (in many cases).

At any rate, the creative talent do not have to follow the whims of the public. We should be grateful that they share with us. Unless they want something from us, such as adulation or money or anything else.

The adulation is built in the title of the event.
As for the money, commercial engines use the title very actively for marketing purposes. For example on the Shredder home page the word "world champion" appears about 20 times.

If you don't want justified remarks from chess fans that the winner cannot even remotely be considered the best engine on the planet, don't call your event a "World Championship". Call it, for example, the "Superior Chess Author Meeting".

Robert

When computer chess fans start funding a tournament to determine a "World Champion", then their opinions will carry some weight. As it stands, the ICGA event is for the authors. Thus, they can use rules that they determine and give whatever title they want to the champion.

History and Purpose of the ICGA
The ICGA was founded as the ICCA in 1977 by computer chess programmers to organize championship events for computer programs and to facilitate the sharing of technical knowledge via the ICCA Journal.

Renamed the 'ICGA' in 2002, the association now more broadly fosters the Computer Games community through its relationships with Computer Science, Commercial and Game organisations throughout the world.

The ICGA's broader scope reflects the more general way in which computer-game capability contributes to Artificial Intelligence and to the human experience of game-playing.

The aims of the ICGA are:
to publish a quarterly ICGA Journal
to hold regular World Computer-Chess Championships, Computer Olympiads, and Advances in Computer Games conferences
to strengthen ties and to promote cooperation between computer-game researchers
to introduce computer games to the games world
to support national computer-games organizations and computer-games tournament organizers

Of course, computer chess fans can ridicule the results of the tournament all they want. But, given that the fans (including myself) have no connection to the ICGA event, I find it ridiculous that people are demanding changes. If any fan would like to possibly have some influence, I suggest that they try at least one of the following links:

ICGA Membership
http://ilk.uvt.nl/icga/organisation/member.php

ICGA Sponsorship
http://ilk.uvt.nl/icga/organisation/sponsor.php

[Adam Hair]

To say the tournaments have "nothing to do with chess players...and everything to do with the program authors", is like saying that art has nothing to do with the receivers (listeners, readers etc. etc.) and has everything to do with the artists.

And it actually goes both ways, it has everything to with the receivers and the artists.

And for you to blatantly insult those who enjoy following the tournaments shows a pomposity and pretense that is rather staggering and to be quite honest, disappointing!

Your analogy falls short. The tournaments are competitions between the authors. The general public plays very little to no role in the tournaments. On the other hand, artists rely on the general public's interest and money to be able to continue their art (in many cases).

At any rate, the creative talent do not have to follow the whims of the public. We should be grateful that they share with us. Unless they want something from us, such as adulation or money or anything else.

Are you serious bro
So your post literally means to hell with the computer chess fans....

I am a computer chess fan. But I know that, since I have done nothing to support the ICGA, I have no say in how their tournaments are run.

Well let me tell you something,these computer chess fans are the same people who buy these commercial chess products so their opinion and their wishes count whether you like it or not....

Ahhh, but then you have every right to voice your opinion directly to the author that you supported by buying their product. However, the ICGA does not appear to be intimately connected to commercial interests. Unless you have supported the ICGA in some fashion, I do not see why your opinion (or mine) should be of much interest to organization.

And another thing bro regarding that we should be grateful that they share with us,share what exactly
Aha,I get it,the extremely bad coverage of the event,the twisted hypocrite rules of the tournament & the laughable title they award....
Get real bro
Dr.D

Come on Doc, read a bit more. I used the word "creative talent", which includes amatuer authors. Furthermore, I stated that we should be grateful unless they want adulation or money. That would exclude commercial programs.

I know that you support amateur authors and are appreciative when they share their work with us. They do not have to do that, and the true fans of computer chess consider ourselves lucky when they do.

Adam

[Adam Hair]

To say the tournaments have "nothing to do with chess players...and everything to do with the program authors", is like saying that art has nothing to do with the receivers (listeners, readers etc. etc.) and has everything to do with the artists.

And it actually goes both ways, it has everything to with the receivers and the artists.

And for you to blatantly insult those who enjoy following the tournaments shows a pomposity and pretense that is rather staggering and to be quite honest, disappointing!

Your analogy falls short. The tournaments are competitions between the authors. The general public plays very little to no role in the tournaments. On the other hand, artists rely on the general public's interest and money to be able to continue their art (in many cases).

At any rate, the creative talent do not have to follow the whims of the public. We should be grateful that they share with us. Unless they want something from us, such as adulation or money or anything else.

No my analogy does not fall short. Because a true artist, like the pure and true chess authors you seem to believe in, creates the art they are compelled to create. (I ain't talking about Britney Spears...an artist ain't always an artist if you get my drift)

But the true artist after creating the best work of art they are capable of then releases it to the public (for free or for money) The receiver then receives it! It is a two way process.

AND by releasing their engines (free or for money) most engine authors are engaging in a two way process! AND they all, IF they won the tournament, would post that as advertising or publicity.

My statement stands.

Dr. Hyatt doesn't get it.

Just because an artist releases their work to the public does not mean the public has any say on what that artist does next. The artist is always free to do as they please in regards to their work. It is a two way process if the artist is responsive to the public's thoughts. Even more so if they want our money. Otherwise, it is two disjoint processes.

In regards to the ICGA tournament itself, we have no connection to it and thus have no say in how it is run.

[Don]

But most "authors" want a fair competition without clones/derivatives, where everyone writes their own program and then we compete head-to-head with each other on as level a playing field as we can define...

This position is not an obvious majority opinion anymore from the tri-ennial ICGA meeting this week where this was a lengthy agenda point. A fair group of participating programmers present have expressed they want the rules to be updated. One line of thinking is that attribution plus added value should be sufficient to compete, instead of 100% originality.

Although interesting, there is nothing here that is of much relevance. None of the programs in question are by authors that have given attribution. And you also have to address the issue of whether you are going against the wishes of the authors of those sources as well as the question of reverse engineering. So unless you take the heavy handed Robin Hood approach that the authors don't have a say then no problem has been solved here.

I would like to point out that attribution is completely worthless if the author makes a blanket statement acknowledging that his program would not be nearly as strong without ideas taken from various open source engines. If I can clone some program and just say that in order to compete, then anybody can compete. The author has to share co-authorship and has to do with the permission of the original authors. So again, that does not solve any of the issues we have been having here.

Who are the authors that were at the meeting that spoke out in favor of letting derivative works compete in the tournaments and which programs do they represent?

[Houdini]

The adulation is built in the title of the event.
As for the money, commercial engines use the title very actively for marketing purposes. For example on the Shredder home page the word "world champion" appears about 20 times.

If you don't want justified remarks from chess fans that the winner cannot even remotely be considered the best engine on the planet, don't call your event a "World Championship". Call it, for example, the "Superior Chess Author Meeting".

Robert

When computer chess fans start funding a tournament to determine a "World Champion", then their opinions will carry some weight. As it stands, the ICGA event is for the authors. Thus, they can use rules that they determine and give whatever title they want to the champion.

A computer chess fan has actually funded and organized an event that by any measure was far superior to the recent WCCC. It was called the TCEC tournament and was run earlier this year.

Martin Thoresen didn't have the pretentiousness to call it the "World Championships", but he might as well have done so.
The format of the tournament, the quality of the competing field, the at times awesome quality of the games, and the live broadcasting of the games were several levels above the recent WCCC.

Robert

[fern]

Yes, so it was.
Look Mister, leave these discussions and save the time in implementing an even better Houdini with more features for the players like me, desirous to get fun with all kind of frills.
Certainly you have already realized that you will convince nobody of the opposite camp.
If so, go to work and stop discussing.
If I ever listened to the bastards that critics my writings, I would not be a guy with 12 books in the shells.
As El Quijote used to say, "deja que los perros ladren, sancho, señal de que vamos galopando".
OR:
Let the dogs barking, Sancho, because is a good signal we are galloping fast

My best
Fern

[CRoberson]

The assumption there is that forcing everyone to write their own move generator, SEE, SMP before they can add value is a good thing. You can also see it as a barrier that keeps new entrants out.

Yes and that may be a good thing. If you can't code a legal move generator then why should you be allowed in?

Of course, there is a way around that. Allow the use of common base parts. Some code that has a legal move gen and a few other simple things like an eval that only counts pieces and Alpha/Beta search to jump start development. That would be it - no timers or transposition tables are anything else. Don't even give them Perft - if they can't code Perft then that is their problem.

The question becomes what should be in the jump start code. Such a rule is a bit of a problem due to erosion of the idea over time. Eventually, the jump start code would become something on the order of Rybka and that is going too far for now.

[CRoberson]

When computer chess fans start funding a tournament to determine a "World Champion", then their opinions will carry some weight. As it stands, the ICGA event is for the authors. Thus, they can use rules that they determine and give whatever title they want to the champion.

History and Purpose of the ICGA
The ICGA was founded as the ICCA in 1977 by computer chess programmers to organize championship events for computer programs and to facilitate the sharing of technical knowledge via the ICCA Journal.

Renamed the 'ICGA' in 2002, the association now more broadly fosters the Computer Games community through its relationships with Computer Science, Commercial and Game organisations throughout the world.

The ICGA's broader scope reflects the more general way in which computer-game capability contributes to Artificial Intelligence and to the human experience of game-playing.

The aims of the ICGA are:
to publish a quarterly ICGA Journal
to hold regular World Computer-Chess Championships, Computer Olympiads, and Advances in Computer Games conferences
to strengthen ties and to promote cooperation between computer-game researchers
to introduce computer games to the games world
to support national computer-games organizations and computer-games tournament organizers

Of course, computer chess fans can ridicule the results of the tournament all they want. But, given that the fans (including myself) have no connection to the ICGA event, I find it ridiculous that people are demanding changes. If any fan would like to possibly have some influence, I suggest that they try at least one of the following links:

ICGA Membership
http://ilk.uvt.nl/icga/organisation/member.php

ICGA Sponsorship
http://ilk.uvt.nl/icga/organisation/sponsor.php

Extremely well stated my fellow North Carolinian.

[hgm]

A computer chess fan has actually funded and organized an event that by any measure was far superior to the recent WCCC. It was called the TCEC tournament and was run earlier this year.

Martin Thoresen didn't have the pretentiousness to call it the "World Championships", but he might as well have done so.
The format of the tournament, the quality of the competing field, the at times awesome quality of the games, and the live broadcasting of the games were several levels above the recent WCCC.

Indeed, this was a really well organized and technically supported event. Kudos to Martin. It still baffles me why the participants of WCCC are so bent on making the event look worse than amateurish from the outside, and why ICGA allows this to happen. When I wat to participate in the CSA Champtionship (Computer Shogi Association) a non-negociable requirement is that I am able to connect to the server that runs the event (even though my physical presence in the tournament hall is required as well; it is not an on-line event!).

Of course I believe that the internet coverage of such an event could even be better than at TCEC, either through my own broadcasting software (as I usually do) or by runing the event with the aid of an ICS.

[bob]

So teams are co-mingled? That sounds reasonable to have the same person on multiple teams, just because he wrote the original? Exactly how many were proposing that? I'd bet "very few".

Teams have been co-mingled from the time that Nalimov was allowed to provide chess code for multiple entrants. Nalimov's code was the first to become a commodity and many see no reason it should be the last.

We explicitly voted to allow nalimov EGTB code. It is the sort of code where for any input, there is exactly one output, no variability whatsoever. Most of a chess engine does NOT fit in that category. Certainly nothing to do with search or evaluation..

I'm not an expert but I've heard of a program called 'bayeselo', many rating lists seem to use it.

What is the INPUT for BayesElo? (BTW I use it daily in my cluster testing). The answer is "raw PGN". From WHAT games? Under WHAT conditions? Under WHAT time controls? Etc. Too easy to manipulate.

Conditions set by the TD, or prior winners, whatever, its implementation is solvable.

You are using a recursive process. You don't let them compete until they show a significant improvement. They can't show a significant improvement if they can't compete. How, exactly, does that seem like a rational process???

A "world championship tournament" has NEVER been able to reliably choose "the strongest program." That's why the human WCC is not a tournament, but a match (or series of matches)...

According to wikipedia it better be like that:

A world championship(s) is the top achievement for any sport or contest. The title is usually awarded by contests, ranking systems, stature, ability, etc. This determines the best nation, team, individual (or other entity) in the world in a particular field.

That is a Wiki "public impression." Not fact. Ever seen the best soccer team lose? Ever seen the best basketball team lose? Do you think the best basketball team in the US ALWAYS wins the NCAA tournament? Tournaments don't identify the best player or team. They just identify the best/luckiest player/team on that given day, nothing more.

If if here it doesn't (and apparently never has?) it only highlights the problem and not justifies the format.

The problem is unsolvable. Even WC (human) matches have not always identified the best player. To think that the WCCC title means that is a pretty simple-minded idea...