a response to anthony Cozzie opinion on rybka

[ozziejoe]

(opinion below)


If the ideas in strelka/rybka are trivial, why does it perform so much better than other engines? . Could it be that anthony has missed something, or underestimates the importance of what he is looking at.?


Why do we even need an "opinion" of the quality of the code when we have an objective measure: engine strength? What anthony says is simply unrelated to reality. If the ideas in rybka where just "old" and trivial, then you would have seen 100 engines at rybka's strength.

Maybe the secret is in the implimentation of the ideas (e.g., bug free code). But even this is nontrivial, because again, objectively rybka does better then the 1000 or so other uci engines (and better than the programs that have been professionally developed for over a decade).


Let me translate what anthony is saying to golf: Tiger woods is nothing special, because he uses the same golf clubs and same strokes as everybody else. there is absolutely nothing new in tiger woods game.

best
Joseph






Anthony says:

Since this release comes immediately after the release of the
Strelka source code, I assume that there will be a hue and cry from
the unwashed masses about how I am pirating the intellectual
property of Vasik Rajlich. Let me just immediately say that there
are simply no new ideas in Strelka anyway; my shock at reading the
Strelka source code was not generated by the brilliancies contained
therein but by the lack thereof. Looking at Strelka finally
convinced me to do some things that everyone else has done for a
long time (like futility pruning), and to clean up my code a bit
since I had always been developing in "crunch" mode. I did not add
any eval terms from Strelka (my view being that Zappa's eval is way
better than Strelka's anyway) and I also did not do the crazy
futility pruning where it drops into the qsearch at depth 3. In
summary, Strelka was more a source of motivation than chess ideas.
Of course, you will just have to take my word for it until some
enterprising Russian hacker disassembles Zappa Smile."

( from the read-me file of the new Zappa Mexico II )
Quote selected text

[Uri Blass]

(opinion below)


If the ideas in strelka/rybka are trivial, why does it perform so much better than other engines? . Could it be that anthony has missed something, or underestimates the importance of what he is looking at.?


Why do we even need an "opinion" of the quality of the code when we have an objective measure: engine strength? What anthony says is simply unrelated to reality. If the ideas in rybka where just "old" and trivial, then you would have seen 100 engines at rybka's strength.

Maybe the secret is in the implimentation of the ideas (e.g., bug free code). But even this is nontrivial, because again, objectively rybka does better then the 1000 or so other uci engines (and better than the programs that have been professionally developed for over a decade).

I totally agree with you.
I do not consider the ideas in strelka as trivial.

My conclusions based on strelka code are:
1)It is better if programmers use the principle make it simple and stupid first and try to improve later.

If programmers try to make too much first then they have bugs and their code is even weaker than simple and stupid code(note that I do not claim that strelka is simple and stupid but programmers may get the feeling that it is simple and stupid relative to their code and I think that it is simpler than my code and in some ways stupid relative to my code but also in other ways smarter relative to my code.

It certainly faster relative to my code.

2)There is a lot of knowledge in computer chess and no programmer can claim to know all of it.
Even if strelka use nothing new(and I do not believe in it) then programmers still can learn from it.

Uri

[Nid Hogge]

I don't see anything wrong with his statements. you have to remember that Strelka is based on Rybka 1.0 32-bit beta, and is at least 100 ELO short of the latest Rybka 2.3.2a. Many things could have benn changed since, including eval, search and whatever. so the statements are only in line and applied for strelka. that's how I see it.

[bob]

(opinion below)


If the ideas in strelka/rybka are trivial, why does it perform so much better than other engines? . Could it be that anthony has missed something, or underestimates the importance of what he is looking at.?

IMHO, it is a matter of a "quick look" rather than a detailed analysis. If a program intentionally divides the node count by 4 to hide the speed, one could logically infer that speed was an important aspect. Or it could just be that there are some cute search tricks, and he was not trying to hide his speed advantage, rather he was trying to make it appear that the program actually has significantly more knowledge (which would slow it down significantly)... It is more about the search rather than the evaluation, in my opinion...

Why do we even need an "opinion" of the quality of the code when we have an objective measure: engine strength? What anthony says is simply unrelated to reality. If the ideas in rybka where just "old" and trivial, then you would have seen 100 engines at rybka's strength.

Maybe the secret is in the implimentation of the ideas (e.g., bug free code). But even this is nontrivial, because again, objectively rybka does better then the 1000 or so other uci engines (and better than the programs that have been professionally developed for over a decade).


Let me translate what anthony is saying to golf: Tiger woods is nothing special, because he uses the same golf clubs and same strokes as everybody else. there is absolutely nothing new in tiger woods game.

best
Joseph






Anthony says:

Since this release comes immediately after the release of the
Strelka source code, I assume that there will be a hue and cry from
the unwashed masses about how I am pirating the intellectual
property of Vasik Rajlich. Let me just immediately say that there
are simply no new ideas in Strelka anyway; my shock at reading the
Strelka source code was not generated by the brilliancies contained
therein but by the lack thereof. Looking at Strelka finally
convinced me to do some things that everyone else has done for a
long time (like futility pruning), and to clean up my code a bit
since I had always been developing in "crunch" mode. I did not add
any eval terms from Strelka (my view being that Zappa's eval is way
better than Strelka's anyway) and I also did not do the crazy
futility pruning where it drops into the qsearch at depth 3. In
summary, Strelka was more a source of motivation than chess ideas.
Of course, you will just have to take my word for it until some
enterprising Russian hacker disassembles Zappa Smile."

( from the read-me file of the new Zappa Mexico II )
Quote selected text

[ozziejoe]

I think anthony gives a considered and interesting response here, and the response does not look arrogant to me.



http://rybkaforum.net/cgi-bin/rybkaforu ... t#pid41927

[frosch]

Mr Hyatt,

you complained, that rajlich collected all the knowledge, you and others had to offer and then used it in his new commercial program adding some new techniques, he found himself. why don't you have a look on the rybka 1.0 code and check out, which incredible new techniques he found, that he "hided" from the chess programing community?

according to cozzie, there's nothing like that.

but I guess you will complain again, that he used your new ideas to built the latest rybka. I really wonder, why crafty is 400+ points weaker than rybka?

[Graham Banks]

CCC is not the place to discuss Anthony Cozzie's character.
Some posts have been removed after discussion between the moderators.

Regards, Graham.

[Tony]

Mr Hyatt,

you complained, that rajlich collected all the knowledge, you and others had to offer and then used it in his new commercial program adding some new techniques, he found himself. why don't you have a look on the rybka 1.0 code and check out, which incredible new techniques he found, that he "hided" from the chess programing community?

according to cozzie, there's nothing like that.

but I guess you will complain again, that he used your new ideas to built the latest rybka. I really wonder, why crafty is 400+ points weaker than rybka?

Because Robert spends a lot of time teaching others.

Some appreciate this, some don't and some take advantage of that.

For 90% of the programmers here, the first SMP code they ever saw was Crafty.

Tony

[Rolf]

Mr Hyatt,

you complained, that rajlich collected all the knowledge, you and others had to offer and then used it in his new commercial program adding some new techniques, he found himself. why don't you have a look on the rybka 1.0 code and check out, which incredible new techniques he found, that he "hided" from the chess programing community?

according to cozzie, there's nothing like that.

but I guess you will complain again, that he used your new ideas to built the latest rybka. I really wonder, why crafty is 400+ points weaker than rybka?

Because Robert spends a lot of time teaching others.

Some appreciate this, some don't and some take advantage of that.

For 90% of the programmers here, the first SMP code they ever saw was Crafty.

Tony

I really had appreciated if an expert like you would have given a better defense for Bob against some "Horst" who simply addressed impolitely. More, he obviously even confused Strelka with Rybka...

[K I Hyams]

Mr Hyatt,

you complained, that rajlich collected all the knowledge, you and others had to offer and then used it in his new commercial program adding some new techniques, he found himself. why don't you have a look on the rybka 1.0 code and check out, which incredible new techniques he found, that he "hided" from the chess programing community?

according to cozzie, there's nothing like that.

but I guess you will complain again, that he used your new ideas to built the latest rybka. I really wonder, why crafty is 400+ points weaker than rybka?

Perhaps you would be kind enough to explain the circumstances under which you might expect an open source program to be stronger than a closed source commercial program.