bob wrote:Rémi Coulom wrote:Gian-Carlo Pascutto wrote:If anything, they could be blamed for not realizing this reality has changed. The current WCCC format is a nice example of this. It made some sense when computer chess was a big business with large monetary gains to be made. It makes much less sense now.
I completely agree with this.
Still I would not like to see the WCCC replaced by an internet tournament or a rating list. From my point of view, this would be equivalent to having no WCCC anymore. Internet tournaments and rating lists are very nice of course. But it is impossible to compare them to a real-life tournament.
Rémi
Here is a missed point. How can you compare an event with 50 participants, most of them authors, to an event with four participants or whatever there are in the open event going on now? We actually have lots of interesting and technical discussions while playing online events. And with so many authors present, there is at least a chance that one can ask one-on-one questions and get answers. At a WCCC with hardly anyone present, that is not so likely. These events are far different from the many WCCC events I participated in, starting in 1977. They are too long. Too expensive. And fading fast.
In most points we agree Bob, especially with GCP's one i agree that ICGA doesn't keep up with time. Times have changed. I will argue however if you follow me that it is impossible for icga to keep up with time.
You shouldn't do as if 1977 was better than today other than the money that was there in computerchess.
A few differences with 1977 and today:
- there is still criminals in computerchess today, but in the 70s and 80s there was guys who really physical hurted others. I will not go into details here, but especially from yankee side it was bad what was there. Not speaking of the programmers here
- entry fee in 80s for commercial entries was 5000 dollar
- there was several world titles, some simply got sold more or less by decision taking of ICGA board
- there was a lot more money to make with computerchess than today. Just producing an engine in a garage you could make money with. Forget about that today. In 90s there was dozens of commercial programs and many sold well.
- organisations really paid a lot of cash to keep these events. As there was so many criminals back then, paying icga $100k 'organisation costs', which administrative seen is a form of bribe - so not acceptable, was not a problem.
- entire ICGA already for dozens of years basically runs upon Johanna Hellemons. She is doing all the work from Tilburg, TICC.
Obviously if basically a secretary runs the entire administration and the other ICGA members are rather passive, there is zero marketing that the organisation itself produces.
Additional to that ICGA has Jaap van den Herik as tournament director, or better: "as arbiter", during the event.
Now in a technical sport you never can do real well, yet i know dozens of arbiters, and in a world championship you really need to be tough. Jaap is doing a reasonable job there. Or let me say it different. All others fock up *major league*. This where, though nowadays a lot tinier, bringing together the commercial parties, is complicated.
The bad decision taken by ICGA is basically done by passive members, usually presidents. In this case David Levy.
What i found real bad is the recognition of Bilbao as an official worldchampionship, whereas only chessbase organized that event and the only player who played objectively and didn't let himself get beaten up (Topalov), wasn't invited the year after. After recognizing Bilbao,
chessbase never again showed up with Fritz at the world championships.
So the companies have gone, what is left is real little.
The number of rounds and days the event takes, i feel that's not the biggest issue. Whether it is 3 days or 7 it doesn't matter. Some years ago event was 7 rounds, tens of programmers then found that 11 was better, so it became 11 rounds. I would not mind going back to 7.
What also is bad, is that the open event got hammered down. Some participants got information from elsewhere, or in case or Richard had a 'gutfeeling' that this would happen.
- Not broadcasting it i find real evil.
- First shipping around email that participants could 'vote' on time control,
yet in the end time control was simply decided by David and not by a 'majority vote' of the participants at that event.
- Initially giving impression that one would need 2 persons to join both events was also bad.
- icga did do a lot of effort, yes some organisations even were thrown into battle, in order to get everyone to the 8 core event, which is really bad.
This is all implementation details that bothers everyone.
Most important thing is that the president has too much power here in ICGA and that the members basically have only paper decision rights. The next shot at replacing levy you have around 2011.
The only real 'bad' obvious 2 actions Levy forced was the 8 core event and the recognition of Bilbao.
However ICGA is in a total vicious circle, as they require a lot of cash for 'organisation costs'. No normal run organisation will pay that nowadays for computer chess. Only some bad run administrations and organisations that try to get into contact with other nations do. That's always government organisations who have the habit to make little publicity for themselves.
Note FIDE has a similar problem with chess events. If ICGA can continue to travel with FIDE to new nations, that would be very good. In years there is no such FIDE events, like this year, then only improper led organisations will be able to pay that much cash (last few years the 'organisation costs' that icga charges got down to 40k euro last time i heard).
Proper run organisations will not soon invite ICGA. That is a problem for computerchess. One of the most important things a sport has, is its different world championships.
Online events like ACCA draw 0 publicity other than from a few programmers, who can easily find operators for them to join online. Showing up online is easy.
But it makes very little publicity normarketing.
ICGA on paper would be able to do this, yet the way the organisation works this doesn't happen. They depend namely upon a sponsoring entity to do the marketing.
As we already know from logical deduction and practice that only financial bad led organisations, or pure malafide organisations that do some vague stuff for government, will organize this event, we know that ICGA therefore usually will fail to find proper led universities or organisations to sponsor this event.
Such proper led organisations are doing the marketing aspect, like getting onto TV and into the media, a lot better.
Note that we shouldn't have the illusion that ICGA can follow the FIDE a lot. In a lot of cases FIDE keeps events at for example Turkey.
This is how turkish chess federation works and within FIDE some nations are very mad at this.
Turkish chess federation forces every participant of every federation to sit in a specific hotel. Where the hotel is good, it is real expensive. For each participant, turkish federation gets a fee from that hotel. You can get a hotel closeby for about 1/3 of that price, quite easily. Yet that's not allowed.
So based upon a huge number of participants then, such tournaments pay themselves.
That's not the case with ICGA. If 10 participants show up, from which by the way only a handful of programmers, the rest is operator and most operators and programmers are from The Netherlands, or persons living in The Netherlands.
Basically enthusiasts from the Jaap school.
10 participants never pay that 40k euro back to Turkish chess federation.
So it is wishful thinking that ICGA can follow FIDE there.
The obvious solution is to get rid of those 'organisation costs', in which case it is possible to follow FIDE for ICGA.
However then ICGA is dead as an organisation, because without support from TICC by Johanna, ICGA is not there.
All kind of other opinions i have, some of which are very sharp, i've tried to not post here, as that would reveal too much, though i never signed a single document i am not allowed to reveal that.
my most important criticism to ICGA is that they do not manage to produce in a systematic manner a lot of marketing in nations where computerchess is big. A world championship is a manner of getting a lot of marketing and they are selling it each time and manage to insult another few participants of the few they had left.
Tel Aviv gets served well.
Thanks,
Vincent
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