ICGA's 2015 World Computer Chess Championship/Events

[Ralph Stoesser]

Kommodo 9 @ICGA but not Stockfish? How exciting... What do you think who will win?

Komodo is far too strong for all of the other ICGA participants. It should win quite easily.

Since SF is a community efford, who exactly is entitled to decide whether SF should participate?

[Michel]

Kommodo 9 @ICGA but not Stockfish? How exciting... What do you think who will win?

Komodo is far too strong for all of the other ICGA participants. It should win quite easily.

Since SF is a community efford, who exactly is entitled to decide whether SF should participate?

That's actually a good question since now HGM has pointed out that Lucas has misrepresented the situation and that there are no technical obstructions to SF participating. HGM has even offered help!

It would be quite fun to have both Komodo and SF in this tournament (for the same reason that a strong human tournament is fun). I am sure many people will agree.

[Ralph Stoesser]

I agree it would be fun to have the best engines competing. From my point of view SF should compete anywhere. Apart from the fun of competition it could only help to get more data about possible weaknesses. But how can it happen? It wouldn't be enough to find people willing to do the operator job and to provide the hardware setup. I don't think SF licence forbit anything about tournament participicion, but I assume ICGA would need an official request from SF developers to participate, which again raises the question who exactly that is since many people contributing to the project by code, testing and ideas. Is Marco or Lucas entitled to have a veto right against tournament participation? Why? Does it make sense? I fear it will not happen because it's not clear how exactly to proceed.

[APassionForCriminalJustic]

you guys should consider changing the title of this "2015 World Computer Chess Championship" because it clearly is not. It is a tournament where authors get together and discuss things; is that not a major focal point of this tournament? Why on earth do you guys seriously have a title like this when your tournament will not actually show who the REAL engine champion is?

This isn't rocket-science people.

The winner of the "world championship" gets to call themselves "winner of the world championship", or "world champion" for short.
The number one of the world ranking list gets to call themselves "no 1 ranked in the world" or "best in the world" for short.

These are not the same thing. Now, normally, you would expect the number one in the world to also win the world championship, but this is not a given, in any sports event. Either way, a necessary condition to win something is to compete in it. If someone thinks something is irrelevant because they don't compete in it, that's fine (it's breathtakingly arrogant though) but then they don't get to complain about it if the decision to not participate was their own (which would be both breathtakingly arrogant and hypocritical).

Now personally, I don't really care who calls themselves world champion and who calls themselves number one in the world - and I'm utterly sick of people getting into heated emotional arguments over it. Get a life people.

You can think what you want. The term world champion should not be used in this ICGA tournament. Why do they not just call the winner ICGA Champion? At least that would be ACCURATE. Use your brain and stop defending what cannot be defended. There are a multitude of engines, not just Stockfish and Komodo, that could take the title easily away from Deep Junior. I think it is a shameful thing for this organization to think that they can rightfully claim who is world champion and who is not. The number one ranked and world champion IS THE SAME THING. If you want to be world champion then you better be the best in the WORLD (Go look at Magnus). Period. I don't care what you are utterly sick of. I am quite frankly sick of stupidity, and lying authors like those two of Deep Junior. The real actual unequivocal computer chess WORLD champion is Komodo. That program is the real deal. It doesn't matter anyways since the TCEC has become the real tournament for the majority of us, and for obvious reasons (4+ months long; stiff competition; huge amount of games which helps to reduce the error bars, etc.). Enough with the lies of the ICGA.

TCEC = WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP. PERIOD.

[lucasart]

Kommodo 9 @ICGA but not Stockfish? How exciting... What do you think who will win?

Well, with the format of this tournament (1 game elimination), you never know. With a stroke of luck, maybe Pandix or Merlin could defeat Komodo. LOL.

[lucasart]

I agree it would be fun to have the best engines competing. From my point of view SF should compete anywhere. Apart from the fun of competition it could only help to get more data about possible weaknesses. But how can it happen? It wouldn't be enough to find people willing to do the operator job and to provide the hardware setup. I don't think SF licence forbit anything about tournament participicion, but I assume ICGA would need an official request from SF developers to participate, which again raises the question who exactly that is since many people contributing to the project by code, testing and ideas. Is Marco or Lucas entitled to have a veto right against tournament participation? Why? Does it make sense? I fear it will not happen because it's not clear how exactly to proceed.

I'm still not clear what the ICGA rule is here (not that I care):

• HGM says anyone can go to Leiden and operate SF.
• You're saying the ICGA requires the engine authors to do it (there are many in the case of SF, but the most important ones are clearly Tord, Marco, Joona).

If someone wants to do that, they are free to do it. I have no right of "veto" over what other people want to do. People are free to do what they want, and the ICGA is free to allow them to come and operate SF (or to refuse and say that it's the engine authors that should come instead).

All I'm saying, is that the ICGA is a useless fossil, and we should not give them credit by participating in their ridiculous tournament. And we should also stop spreading the myth that we owe anything to the ICGA (for having supposedly invented the wheel before us). But I'm speaking for myself, and I'm sure you'll find lots of different opinion amongst the people who contributed to SF.

[Michel]

Kommodo 9 @ICGA but not Stockfish? How exciting... What do you think who will win?

Well, with the format of this tournament (1 game elimination), you never know. With a stroke of luck, maybe Pandix or Merlin could defeat Komodo. LOL.

What do you mean by 1 game elimination? This is what is on their website

The tournament will be an all-play-all tournament if the number of participants is twelve or below. The provisional playing schedule is announced on the ICGA website. If the number of participants is six or below a double all-play-all tournament will be considered. If the number of participants is higher than twelve, it will be an 11-round Swiss tournament.

Seems like a nice format to me.

[hgm]

I agree it would be fun to have the best engines competing. From my point of view SF should compete anywhere. Apart from the fun of competition it could only help to get more data about possible weaknesses. But how can it happen? It wouldn't be enough to find people willing to do the operator job and to provide the hardware setup. I don't think SF licence forbit anything about tournament participicion, but I assume ICGA would need an official request from SF developers to participate, which again raises the question who exactly that is since many people contributing to the project by code, testing and ideas. Is Marco or Lucas entitled to have a veto right against tournament participation? Why? Does it make sense? I fear it will not happen because it's not clear how exactly to proceed.

Note that in all the years I have visited that event (from 2007 or so) Rybka was operated by Hans van der Zijden, and not by Vas or Larry. So it obviously is not against their rules. It is understandable that ICGA would require some form of endorsement by the developers, however, for the practical reason that it would otherwise not be clear what to do if two different people both wanted to participate with Stockfish.

Basically the rules only require the authors to enter the program, but they do not care much who operates it. In case there are multiple contributors to the code, the rules require them to all grant permission for the use of their contribution. (An example fro this was GridChess, which participated in 2007, and was a chimera of Crafty, Toga II and new code. It was entered by the author of the new code, but Bob and Fabian had to grant permission.) Now what exactly this means in the case of open-source project with many contributors is not clear, as it never happened before. In my interpretation the permission is implicitly given by release of the code under the GPL.

[michiguel]

Kommodo 9 @ICGA but not Stockfish? How exciting... What do you think who will win?

Komodo is far too strong for all of the other ICGA participants. It should win quite easily.

Since SF is a community efford, who exactly is entitled to decide whether SF should participate?

Anybody.

Anybody can get SF, modify it lightly (or not...?), and enter, as long as they recognize the other authors in the license. GPL allows to do that and the GPL gives explicit permission. At least, that is exactly what Tord said in this forum.

Miguel

[Harvey Williamson]

Kommodo 9 @ICGA but not Stockfish? How exciting... What do you think who will win?

Well, with the format of this tournament (1 game elimination), you never know. With a stroke of luck, maybe Pandix or Merlin could defeat Komodo. LOL.

It has never been a 1 game elimination. It is either a Swiss or an all play all.