Allow steroids

[slobo]

Second Place is just another way to say First Loser.

You don't seem to get it. The strongest program won't win at all in your tournament style. The program that enters most cheating copies will. In the current engine landscape Houdini would not stand a chance. 'Bodini' will finish some 200 points above it.

Who will become 'TopDog' might as well be decided by throwing dice. Is that what you want? The whole idea is a total bust.

In my rating list, with more than 30 Ivanhoes and more than 10 FB ou Fires, Houdini 1.5 and Houdini 1.5a are on the top, with the same elo points number.

The facts talk against your logic, once more.

[hgm]

This "nitpicking", as you call it, does not distract from the issue, because now we see that your statement that "alpha-beta pruning is a property of the game rules", is not true.

'We' see no such thing, and if you thing, and if you thinkyou see it,itmerely means you are delusional. All others here (programmers, that is!) disagree with you.

It is of course your right to advertize your delusional ideas here, if you feel that it is important that it becoesknown in wider circles, but you should not be disappointed if I will no longer comment on them.

[slobo]

This "nitpicking", as you call it, does not distract from the issue, because now we see that your statement that "alpha-beta pruning is a property of the game rules", is not true.

'We' see no such thing, and if you thing, and if you thinkyou see it,itmerely means you are delusional. All others here (programmers, that is!) disagree with you.

It is of course your right to advertize your delusional ideas here, if you feel that it is important that it becoesknown in wider circles, but you should not be disappointed if I will no longer comment on them.

Let me announce the human thinking artifice used by you in your comment:

1. You have avoided facts from my post.
2. you have commented only my introductory statement.
3. When you have found yourself without arguments, you´ve labeled your interlocutor and cut the discussion.

Perhaps you could create an algorithm that simulates that kind of human behavior?

[hgm]

2. you have commented only my introductory statement.

Of course. That is where I stopped reading. Which part of "I will no longer comment" did you not understand?

[michiguel]

This "nitpicking", as you call it, does not distract from the issue, because now we see that your statement that "alpha-beta pruning is a property of the game rules", is not true.

'We' see no such thing, and if you thing, and if you thinkyou see it,itmerely means you are delusional. All others here (programmers, that is!) disagree with you.

It is of course your right to advertize your delusional ideas here, if you feel that it is important that it becoesknown in wider circles, but you should not be disappointed if I will no longer comment on them.

Let me announce the human thinking artifice used by you in your comment:

1. You have avoided facts from my post.
2. you have commented only my introductory statement.
3. When you have found yourself without arguments, you´ve labeled your interlocutor and cut the discussion.

You just called me clown two posts above, for no apparent reason, and you complain that another poster labels you?

Miguel

Perhaps you could create an algorithm that simulates that kind of human behavior?

[hgm]

Nearly blitz-tourney time!

[benstoker]

Second Place is just another way to say First Loser.

You don't seem to get it. The strongest program won't win at all in your tournament style. The program that enters most cheating copies will. In the current engine landscape Houdini would not stand a chance. 'Bodini' will finish some 200 points above it.

Who will become 'TopDog' might as well be decided by throwing dice. Is that what you want? The whole idea is a total bust.

Ok, if you want to steer the thread this way and re-define Top Dog that way, then I win. I'll enter in 1 million clones designed to lose to my Super Duper Cheat Machine (which runs on a Casio calculator watch from 1989) and not only that, buy off all the other competitors and tourney officials with expensive bribes.

Part of what you say seems to be that there MUST be at least SOME kind of filter for a tournament, otherwise, you get the above absurdities. I agree.

The question is what is that filter.

The argument is that clones must be filtered out even if the clone is stonger, because of some kind of "originality" criteria. I ask why would you filter out the STRONGEST engine? You say because it isn't "original". I ask again, what is "original" in chess engines today? What is NOT merely a tweak or optimization of public domain routines? Whatever Ippo* had that made it stronger than R3, was NOT some grand paradigm shifting new algorithm, right? You all looked at the code and should know by now. Ippo* just implemented already known and used routines in a more efficient or optimized manner, right? Ditto for Fruit to Rybka.

Now, the winner of the Free-For-All-No-Holds-Barred-Anything-Goes-Including-Murder-And-Bribery-And-Hostage-Taking World Chess Engine Tournament convening at the Bulldog in Amsterdam would never be a Top Dog.

Top Dog beats all other programs mano a mano. Simple as that.

The funhouse scenario described above is not even chess. It's some other game for thugs and miscreants.

The point I attempt to make is legalistic, or philosophical maybe.

There is so much focus on this idea of "originality" in this Attack of the Clones debate. I ask you programmers to identify one single chess engine algorithm that is PATENTABLE. Are bitboards patentable by someone? SEE? Does anybody even own any kind of patent on a chess engine? Identify it please. Are any of the following routines owned by anyone and patentable, or are they each and every one of them public domain:

• 8*8 Board
  Mailbox
  0x88
  15*12 Board
  16*12 Board
  Pawn Fills
  Pawn Spans
  Attack Spans
  Dumb7Fill
  Kogge-Stone Algorithm
  Fill by Subtraction
  ABDADA - Alpha-Bêta Distribué avec Droit d'Anesse
  All-Nodes
  Biboards
  BitScan
  Butterfly Boards
  Cut-Nodes
  Depth-First
  DTS - Dynamic Tree Splitting
  EBF - Effective Branching Factor
  ETC - Enhanced Transposition Cutoff
  Exact Score
  Fail-Hard
  Fail-High
  Fail-High Nodes = Cut-Nodes
  Fail-Low
  Fail-Low Nodes = All-Nodes
  Fail-Soft
  FHR - Fail-High Reductions
  Frontier Node
  Futility pruning
  History Heuristic
  IBV - Integrated Bounds and Values
  ID - Iterative Deepening
  IID - Internal Iterative Deepening
  Killer Move - Killer Heuristic
  LMR - Late Move Reductions
  LS1B - Least Significant One Bit
  Minimax
  MS1B - Most Significant One Bit
  MVV-LVA - Most Valuable Victim - Least Valuable Aggressor
  Negamax
  NegaScout
  Nibble
  NMH - Null Move Heuristic
  NMO - Null Move Observation
  Null Window
  Passed Pawn
  Pre Frontier Node
  Pruning
  PV - Principal variation
  PV-Nodes
  PVS - Principal Variation Search
  PVS - Principal Variation Splitting
  QS - Quiescence Search
  R - Depth Reduction R
  Ranks
  Razoring
  Scout - Scout-Algorithm
  SE - Singular Extensions
  SEE - Static Exchange Evaluation
  Side to move
  SIMD - Single Instruction Multiple Data
  Skewer
  SSE - Streaming SIMD Extensions
  SSS = State Space Search like SSS* and Dual*
  Stop square
  SWAR - SIMD Within A Register
  TD - Temporal Difference Learning
  TT - Transposition Table
  X-ray
  YBW - Young Brothers Wait
  Zobrist Hashing

Again, after all is said and done, forever and anon, from here to eternity, Top Dog will always be that one special engine that has that one itsy bitsy piece of originality that makes it beat all other engines.

Houdini is the Top Dog today. It doesn't matter one iota that it is a wholesale rip of ivanhoe. Of necessity, there's something ORIGINAL added to Houdini, because there ain't no other program as good as it is.

In fact, all programs OTHER than Houdini are but copies and clones of the same worn out chess engine algorithms. It is only Houdini that has achieved something TRULY ORIGINAL and PROVEN it by being STRONGER THAN ALL OTHER PROGRAMS.

[Don]

Again, after all is said and done, forever and anon, from here to eternity, Top Dog will always be that one special engine that has that one itsy bitsy piece of originality that makes it beat all other engines.

Houdini is the Top Dog today. It doesn't matter one iota that it is a wholesale rip of ivanhoe. Of necessity, there's something ORIGINAL added to Houdini, because there ain't no other program as good as it is.

That's fine, but then you have to agree that the same logic applies to Rybka when it dominated computer chess a couple of years ago.

In fact, all programs OTHER than Houdini are but copies and clones of the same worn out chess engine algorithms. It is only Houdini that has achieved something TRULY ORIGINAL and PROVEN it by being STRONGER THAN ALL OTHER PROGRAMS.

Just as Rybka did. So am I to understand then that you consider Rybka an original program?

I don't know how you personally feel, but I know many feel just about exactly like you describe here about Ivanhoe and family, but don't seem to apply the same logic to Rybka.

[benstoker]

Again, after all is said and done, forever and anon, from here to eternity, Top Dog will always be that one special engine that has that one itsy bitsy piece of originality that makes it beat all other engines.

Houdini is the Top Dog today. It doesn't matter one iota that it is a wholesale rip of ivanhoe. Of necessity, there's something ORIGINAL added to Houdini, because there ain't no other program as good as it is.

That's fine, but then you have to agree that the same logic applies to Rybka when it dominated computer chess a couple of years ago.

In fact, all programs OTHER than Houdini are but copies and clones of the same worn out chess engine algorithms. It is only Houdini that has achieved something TRULY ORIGINAL and PROVEN it by being STRONGER THAN ALL OTHER PROGRAMS.

Just as Rybka did. So am I to understand then that you consider Rybka an original program?

I don't know how you personally feel, but I know many feel just about exactly like you describe here about Ivanhoe and family, but don't seem to apply the same logic to Rybka.

Yes, but ...

First, I have no opinion on the fruit/rybka beyond whatever appears to be the current wisdom on the subject amongst you programmer folk.

If a program is 99.99% idenitical to some other program, BUT, it has some addition or modification that makes it stronger than all other pograms, then, of course, it must have something that is ORIGINAL. A literal byte by byte copy of a program should, one would think, not be stronger than itself.

Yes, Rybka has (or had) something original, even if all the naysayers prove it is a rip of fruit.

I saw on a bottle of hand sanitizer -- "Kills 99.99% of all germs." And I thought, hmmm, that one germ it doesn't kill, will kill me.

Rybka was that one germ.

And now, it's Houdini.

And they are apparently both rips from other programs.

But, they possess at least SOMETHING that's original, as demonstrated by their success. First place is first place. That's why it's called first place.

[hgm]

Part of what you say seems to be that there MUST be at least SOME kind of filter for a tournament, otherwise, you get the above absurdities. I agree.

The question is what is that filter.

Well, that is a good starting point.

The argument is that clones must be filtered out even if the clone is stonger, because of some kind of "originality" criteria.

Whose argument is that? I never said that. It stands to reason that it is up to the tournament organizer to define what filter he wants.

I ask why would you filter out the STRONGEST engine? You say because it isn't "original". I ask again, what is "original" in chess engines today? What is NOT merely a tweak or optimization of public domain routines? Whatever Ippo* had that made it stronger than R3, was NOT some grand paradigm shifting new algorithm, right? You all looked at the code and should know by now. Ippo* just implemented already known and used routines in a more efficient or optimized manner, right? Ditto for Fruit to Rybka.

Apart from the fact that _I_ said none of those things, this subect already came up in another thread, and what it boils down to is that it all depends if a tournament is intended to be acompetition for engines or a competition for authors. If it is for authors the author must be able to decide which of his engines he will enter, as he is allowed to enter only one. If it is intended as a competition for engines, then I can imagine that the tournament organizer takes another decision.

But I think your proposal is still not thought through very well. Suppose Robert enters Houdini, and I enter HGMini, which is my 10-min hex-edit job on an unrevealed engine which, coincidence of coincidences, turns out to be exactly as strong as Houdini 1.5a. Now which of the two would you accept in your tournament? Both of them? (And keep in mind that it would be naive to think less than 50 other people would have done the same hex-edit job as I, so you could read this question as "all 52 of them?"...) How would you even know whether Houdini or HGMini was the stronger of the two _before_ the tournament. And if you already knew that, what point would the tournament still have?