FriedmannC wrote:Great news, Martin but can't you wait till Houdini 5 shows up? Without Houdini 5, we already know the final.... Stockfish - Komodo And Deep Hiarcs 15 is to be released this month as far as I know. Deep Fritz 14 and Vitruvius, even Zappa on huge hardware might provide some interesting results
If Houdart wanted to provide a development/beta version of Houdini 5 he could have simply replied to one of my 4-5 emails sent to him the last few months. I have not had a single reply from him, which is sort of unprofessional. And besides, TCEC will not wait for engines to be released - there will always be new versions released.
Mark did not want to provide a beta version of Hiarcs 15, he said it was "far from finished".
The Fritz team also did not want to provide Fritz/Pandix as a UCI engine for TCEC, same as last Season.
Zappa has problems with 16 cores and is too unstable to include (unfortunately).
If I would be busy with repairing bugs or new developments in my chess program I also would not be interested in playing tournaments. And sometimes it's difficult to predict when a new version is ready.
But you would reply to the e-mails sent to you by a person who somehow helped you in promoting your chess engine as a commercial product,won't you
Dr.D
What would you answer? You can't say "My engine is at this moment in a terrible condition. I have major bugs and I don't know if I will ever be able to fix them. " That doesn't sell. Developers are not salesmen.
Or "I was busy with some major improvements in my engine, but it looks like they are total crap. So forget about the next new version this year".
Or what about " My engine is getting too complex I don't see any impossible improvements anymore".
Maybe he has found another job and he has no time for chess related topics anymore. Or he took a sabbatical year.
I suspect Dr. D is merely pointing out that the courteous thing to do would be to reply briefly to an email from someone who has helped you in the past.
That seems to me to be the right thing to do as well... no explanations are necessary -- something like a simple "Thank you Martin for including my engine in the past, but for a variety of reasons that I don't care to discuss I won't be participating this time around." This kind of reply would be more than sufficient to meet common courtesy requirements.
Martin, I'm looking forward to the start of the next tournament. Thanks for hosting this and making it available to us.
I will make one thread for TCEC Season 7 instead of creating new ones for each Stage.
So the start date is Friday 19th of September at 18:00 CEST (16:00 UTC).
There are 4 Stages plus the Superfinal.
A good thing there's only one engine by clone family. I hope you keep this rule in the future. I don't want to see a tournament between: Sting, DON, DeepSaros, Vitrivius, Bouquet, BlackMamba etc.
With one clone per family only Houdini represents the Robbolito family. Room for diversity, and encourages the authors that deserve it.
PS: If Hiarcs 15 is not ready, why not Hiarcs 14?
Theory and practice sometimes clash. And when that happens, theory loses. Every single time.
lucasart wrote:A good thing there's only one engine by clone family. I hope you keep this rule in the future. I don't want to see a tournament between: Sting, DON, DeepSaros, Vitrivius, Bouquet, BlackMamba etc.
With one clone per family only Houdini represents the Robbolito family. Room for diversity, and encourages the authors that deserve it.
PS: If Hiarcs 15 is not ready, why not Hiarcs 14?
You can ask the same question about Rybka and Shredder.
I guess that there is a preference for new programs relative to programs that did not get an update for a long time when the programmer does not ask to participate.
FriedmannC wrote:Great news, Martin but can't you wait till Houdini 5 shows up? Without Houdini 5, we already know the final.... Stockfish - Komodo And Deep Hiarcs 15 is to be released this month as far as I know. Deep Fritz 14 and Vitruvius, even Zappa on huge hardware might provide some interesting results
If Houdart wanted to provide a development/beta version of Houdini 5 he could have simply replied to one of my 4-5 emails sent to him the last few months. I have not had a single reply from him, which is sort of unprofessional. And besides, TCEC will not wait for engines to be released - there will always be new versions released.
Mark did not want to provide a beta version of Hiarcs 15, he said it was "far from finished".
The Fritz team also did not want to provide Fritz/Pandix as a UCI engine for TCEC, same as last Season.
Zappa has problems with 16 cores and is too unstable to include (unfortunately).
If I would be busy with repairing bugs or new developments in my chess program I also would not be interested in playing tournaments. And sometimes it's difficult to predict when a new version is ready.
But you would reply to the e-mails sent to you by a person who somehow helped you in promoting your chess engine as a commercial product,won't you
Dr.D
What would you answer? You can't say "My engine is at this moment in a terrible condition. I have major bugs and I don't know if I will ever be able to fix them. " That doesn't sell. Developers are not salesmen.
Or "I was busy with some major improvements in my engine, but it looks like they are total crap. So forget about the next new version this year".
Or what about " My engine is getting too complex I don't see any impossible improvements anymore".
Maybe he has found another job and he has no time for chess related topics anymore. Or he took a sabbatical year.
I suspect Dr. D is merely pointing out that the courteous thing to do would be to reply briefly to an email from someone who has helped you in the past.
That seems to me to be the right thing to do as well... no explanations are necessary -- something like a simple "Thank you Martin for including my engine in the past, but for a variety of reasons that I don't care to discuss I won't be participating this time around." This kind of reply would be more than sufficient to meet common courtesy requirements.
Martin, I'm looking forward to the start of the next tournament. Thanks for hosting this and making it available to us.
Perhaps het gets hundreds e-mails a day. So he doesn't read them anymore. Or he reads only a few he thinks are really important.
Might also be that he bought a new computer with a new e-mail address. After a while you don't look at the old e-mail address.
And Deep Hiarcs 15 is to be released this month as far as I know. Deep Fritz 14 and Vitruvius, even Zappa on huge hardware might provide some interesting results
