Impressive Preliminary Results of Rybka 3 by Larry Kaufman!

[mclane]

is rybka a beancounter ?
i would say no-

reason it is ahead so much is it is different animal than all others.

[playjunior]

is rybka a beancounter ?
i would say no-

reason it is ahead so much is it is different animal than all others.

You definitely haven't read what A. Cozzie has written about Rybka after seeing Strelka's code.

[mclane]

i read what cozzie said, what chrilly donninger said. and what many others said.

[AdminX]

I think that the main difference between the growth of Rybak over Rebel is the fact that Larry is a GM if not an IM and not only that he understand computer chess extremely well.
Bill

Larry is an IM.
Vas is an IM.
Iweta Rajlich is also a very strong chess player:
http://www.rybkachess.com/index.php?auswahl=Rybka+team

However, the combination of excellent chess player and excellent programmer is not new.

Vincent is a FM:
http://ratings.fide.com/card.phtml?event=1003054

Hans Berliner was a superb correspondence chess player:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Berliner
"As of March 31, 2005, Berliner still had by far the highest International Correspondence Chess Federation (ICCF) rating of any player in the United States, at 2726, 84 points above the second-highest rated player. (Chess Life 2005:37). Berliner's 2726 rating places him third on the ICCF's world list, behind Joop van Oosterom (2741) and Ulf Andersson (2736) [2] (accessed 2008-05-08)."

GMs assisted on both the Deep Blue project and the Hydra project:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydra_(chess)

From:
http://sjeng.org/ftp/deepblue.pdf
"8.1 Opening book
The opening book in Deep Blue was created by hand, primarily by Grandmaster Joel Benjamin, with assistance from Grandmasters Nick De Firmian, John Fedorowicz, and Miguel Illescas. The book consisted of about 4,000 positions, and every position had been checked by Deep Blue in overnight runs. The openings were chosen to emphasize positions that Deep Blue played well. In general this included tactically complex openings, but also included more positional openings that Deep Blue handled well in practice. Opening preparation was most extensive in those openings expected to arise in match play against Kasparov. In fact, none of the Kasparov-specic preparation arose in the 1997 match.
Prior to a game, a particular repertoire was chosen for Deep Blue. There were a number of possible repertoires to choose from, and the choice would be made on the basis of the match situation and the previous experience playing with the same color. Last minute changes or corrections were made in a small "override" book."

There are some other strong chess players that have written chess programs.

Gaviota's author is a Fide Master:
http://ratings.fide.com/seek.phtml?idco ... a&offset=0

Gullydeckel's author Martin Borriss is a very strong player:
http://ratings.fide.com/seek.phtml?idco ... s&offset=0

I seem to recall Sune Fischer as an IM, but I can't find a rating for him.

Uri Blass is a very strong correspondence player (Israel champion). Here is his Fide rating:
http://ratings.fide.com/seek.phtml?idco ... s&offset=0

I am not sure how much we can conclude about the combination of a good chess programmer and a strong chess player in creation of a chess program. One thing we do know for sure, is that it worked out well for the Rybka team.

Hi Dan,

Iweta Rajlich holds the Womens Grandmaster Title and is a Polish International Master

http://ratings.fide.com/card.phtml?event=1108166

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iweta_Rajlich

[M ANSARI]

Rybka 3 seems to have gained a lot by improvement to MP coding ... In my tests of Zappa vs Rybka 2.3.2a ... Zappa gains strength against Rybka in a linear fashion when hardware is increased ... I estimate that Zappa on 8 cores @ 5.2 Ghz would be at equal strength to Rybka 2.3.2a. Fortunately for Rybka this type of hardware is not readily available ... but it does make a point that Rybka can gain tremendously with improvement to MP scaling. I know Vas has been working hard on that ... and it seems he might have cracked this problem with Rybka 3. From Larry's post it does seems that Rybka 2.3.2a poor MP scaling has been "fixed" ... and thus Zappa's legendary MP scaling has been matched or bettered. With more and more cores being added to CPU's ... MP scaling will be very important as engines gain free ELO's by simple hardware gains. It looks like Rybka has set the bar higher for what was already a very high bar to reach.

[Henrik Dinesen]

I seem to recall Sune Fischer as an IM, but I can't find a rating for him.

Could it be that you're thinking of GM Sune Berg Hansen, Elo 2542?

Sune Fisher doesn't seem active, and I've heard about him on the danish chess-scene.

[Nimzovik]

Heavens! I as a chess player love to analyse openings.....who doesn't? Now I have an even better engine looming on the horizon for this purpose. Vas -- like the terminator--JUST KEEPS COMING! My point is this however.....We as chess players are being given what we SAY we want---a strong engine-------------THEN we WHINE about it? Why?? Because it beats the snot out of the competition? Sheeeesh. Something wrong here... I applaud the new paradigm shift! This is capitalism and ingenuity at work! I too was tired of being milked like a cash flow cow and paying the "annual fee" for engines that improved perhaps 10 rating points a year.....were not we all? I chant "All hail Vas! All hail VAS". I still like to play Hiarcs tho. Maybe one day we will even get a program that can beat Father Pablo's stonewalling 100% of the time That is the paradigm shift I am truly waiting for!

[Dr.Wael Deeb]

Heavens! I as a chess player love to analyse openings.....who doesn't? Now I have an even better engine looming on the horizon for this purpose. Vas -- like the terminator--JUST KEEPS COMING! My point is this however.....We as chess players are being given what we SAY we want---a strong engine-------------THEN we WHINE about it? Why?? Because it beats the snot out of the competition? Sheeeesh. Something wrong here... I applaud the new paradigm shift! This is capitalism and ingenuity at work! I too was tired of being milked like a cash flow cow and paying the "annual fee" for engines that improved perhaps 10 rating points a year.....were not we all? I chant "All hail Vas! All hail VAS". I still like to play Hiarcs tho. Maybe one day we will even get a program that can beat Father Pablo's stonewalling 100% of the time That is the paradigm shift I am truly waiting for!

You mean Pablo's monkey trick

[kranium]

By lkaufman Date 2008-07-08 09:51 Since yesterday I've been testing a version of Rybka that is very close to Rybka 3, with the improved scaling and all my latest eval terms added. I'm running it against 2.3.2a mp. It appears that on a direct match basis, we will reach the goal of a 100 Elo gain, at least on quads. As of now, after 900 games total, the lead is 110 Elo (105 Elo on quads, 120 on my octal). This is with both programs using the same short generic book, each taking White once in every opening. To achieve this result Rybka 3 has to win about 4 games for each win by 2.3.2a on the quads and about 5 for 1 on the octal, due to draws. How this will translate to gains on the rating lists remains to be seen.

hi all-
lets not forget, that right before a major release, this type of message can generate a real 'buzz' and greatly boost sales.
(although i think the info given is likely accurate, i certainly hope it is not!) :>

i'd like to note here that larry credits his 'evaluation terms' as well as the MP improvements. my guess would be that this is probably contributing most to any ELO gains. i myself have carefully read Larrys seminal paper: The Evaluation of Material Balances from 1999, posted on Dan Heismans website: http://home.comcast.net/~danheisman/Art ... alance.htm, and i've created eval terms for xyclOps based on some of these findings (as have most i believe).

converting these findings into accurate evaluation terms for a computer program would almost certainly add to its strength. i imagine that after almost 2 years now (how long has it been?) of work as part of the rybka team, that larry is perfecting this (chessbase) statistical analysis technique, and is obtaining some very accurate terms indeed. at this point it's clear that rybka has a very solid positional understanding, better than any other engine. i thinks rybkas 'secret' can be found not in its speed, nor its search algorithm, etc. but in Larry's work with the evaluation code.

apparently Larrys play may also be benefiting from this deep positional analysis of millions of grandmaster games, surprising many by recently winning the US Senior Open!

best regards-
norman schmidt
www.xyclOps.com

[Zach Wegner]

In this interview Vas says that he has worked very hard on MP scaling and is "quite sure" Rybka will be the best scaling:
http://www.chesscafe.com/text/chessok20.pdf

Personally, I think that's a load of BS. I highly doubt that any program is going to touch Zappa or Diep in terms of scaling in the near future. Rybka simply cannot do it without going the iterative search route... and this will surely take longer than 6 weeks.