Previous World Champion Engine Authors Speak Out...

[Alexander Schmidt]

I suppose the oddest thing is...

...that some people still don't believe the accusations while they believe another person yelling around "clone" without one single evidence.

[Albert Silver]

I suppose the oddest thing is that none of the authors actually signed the evidence, but rather it is backed by the analysis and conclusions of an unknown: Mark Watkins (who never wrote an engine that I heard of - feel free to correct me). One would think that the basis of such a serious letter would at least be backed by the analysis and conclusions of a well-known authority.

I am not sure that I would not prefer the judgement of anybody, even the most ignorant, to that of some of those "unbiased" world champions.
Besides, is it clear that the BB+ reports clearly support the Rybka is guilty theory? As I am not interested in its technicalities I only read the conclusions and I must say I am not the least convinced.

(Not for you, Albert: When responding to this you can omit the idiot, dude, etc. parts.)

Although I use these commonly in chat, I'm almost certain I never did so in a post..... haha

Briefly he says that there is cause for concern for the beta(s), though no judgment is made, but that as of Rybka 3 and later, the accusations are no doubt foundless.

[Steve B]

And Sign The OPEN letter to the ICGA President

http://hiarcs.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=4038

excluding the Engine Author under examination .. we have all but one World Champion engine author since 1992 signing the letter
it should be remembered that these men were fierce competitors for many years ..so seeing them all agree to the notion that Rybka is an authorized Fruit derivative is quite astonishing and remarkable

Of course many other highly respected and talented Engine authors also signed the letter..some of whom might have been World Champions themselves if not losing to the engine in question or deciding not to even compete entirely in the ICGA World Championships given the participation of the allegedly illegally derived engine

Bob Hyatt ..a World Champion author himself of course did not sign as he is on the panel invested with making a determination on the derivative issue

i think this is unprecedented in the history of competitive sport Regards
Steve

I suppose the oddest thing is that none of the authors actually signed the evidence, but rather it is backed by the analysis and conclusions of an unknown: Mark Watkins (who never wrote an engine that I heard of - feel free to correct me). One would think that the basis of such a serious letter would at least be backed by the analysis and conclusions of a well-known authority.

it seems to me that by signing the letter and unequivocally stating that they believe Rybka to be an unauthorized derivative of Rybka ..that they also accept the evidence as offered
dont know to what extent they have reviewed the evidence but the reasonable assumption is they have reviewed it closely
these men ..each and every one of them..have outstanding reputations and would not sign a document like that without considerable fore thought
Steve

I agree, but it doesn't change the fact that it is based on the analysis and conclusions of an unknown. It is a huge sticky point, because no matter how competent Watkins might be, he is not a recognized authority in the field, which means that the data, process, analysis and conclusions would need to be redone by an independent and recognized authority to confirm his paper at the very least.

It is much as if I wrote an opening book claiming to debunk a number of established conclusions on a famous variation, providing all the analysis to prove it. Even if 100% correct, no one can begin to take my word for it, and it would need far more scrutinizing than had the exact same book been signed Kasparov.

Actually my only gripe with Watkins (AKA "BB") is that he insists on not posting here and only on OPEN
a forum IMHO that is completely redundant ..was established under contrived circumstances(basically just an ego play for the forum creator) and would not even have 2 posts a day if not for reading and replying to whats posted here
he obviously reads here daily and even permits his Private Pm's to be posted here
this just seems silly to me
anyway..i digress i guess
Steve

[Harvey Williamson]

Here is the conclusion from the doc to save you all actually reading the PDF:

7 Conclusion
This document has highlighted a number of places where Rybka 1.0 Beta can
be said to have over-stretched an \originality" barrier with respect to Fruit 2.1.
These include a borrowing of arrays in PST, a peculiar match in data structures
for hashing, a wholesale re-use of evaluation features, and a repetition of the
same ordering of operations in root search. There is furthermore a re-appearance
of a 26-77-154-256 scaling rather than the more natural 10-30-60-100, and some
specic examples of \code copying" from the UCI parsing.
The rst appendix below gives another example of \code copying" (from
iterative deepening at the end of root search), while the second appendix tries
to determine whether later Rybka versions have remedied the above problems,
and draws together some related issues.

[Albert Silver]

And Sign The OPEN letter to the ICGA President

http://hiarcs.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=4038

excluding the Engine Author under examination .. we have all but one World Champion engine author since 1992 signing the letter
it should be remembered that these men were fierce competitors for many years ..so seeing them all agree to the notion that Rybka is an authorized Fruit derivative is quite astonishing and remarkable

Of course many other highly respected and talented Engine authors also signed the letter..some of whom might have been World Champions themselves if not losing to the engine in question or deciding not to even compete entirely in the ICGA World Championships given the participation of the allegedly illegally derived engine

Bob Hyatt ..a World Champion author himself of course did not sign as he is on the panel invested with making a determination on the derivative issue

i think this is unprecedented in the history of competitive sport Regards
Steve

I suppose the oddest thing is that none of the authors actually signed the evidence, but rather it is backed by the analysis and conclusions of an unknown: Mark Watkins (who never wrote an engine that I heard of - feel free to correct me). One would think that the basis of such a serious letter would at least be backed by the analysis and conclusions of a well-known authority.

it seems to me that by signing the letter and unequivocally stating that they believe Rybka to be an unauthorized derivative of Rybka ..that they also accept the evidence as offered
dont know to what extent they have reviewed the evidence but the reasonable assumption is they have reviewed it closely
these men ..each and every one of them..have outstanding reputations and would not sign a document like that without considerable fore thought
Steve

I agree, but it doesn't change the fact that it is based on the analysis and conclusions of an unknown. It is a huge sticky point, because no matter how competent Watkins might be, he is not a recognized authority in the field, which means that the data, process, analysis and conclusions would need to be redone by an independent and recognized authority to confirm his paper at the very least.

It is much as if I wrote an opening book claiming to debunk a number of established conclusions on a famous variation, providing all the analysis to prove it. Even if 100% correct, no one can begin to take my word for it, and it would need far more scrutinizing than had the exact same book been signed Kasparov.

Actually my only gripe with Watkins (AKA "BB") is that he insists on not posting here and only on OPEN
a forum IMHO that is completely redundant ..was established under contrived circumstances(basically just an ego play for the forum creator) and would not even have 2 posts a day if not for reading and replying to whats posted here
he obviously reads here daily and even permits his Private Pm's to be posted here
this just seems silly to me
anyway..i digress i guess
Steve

I don't have a gripe with his analysis or conclusions, just that as the basis of an official accusation, it will warrant deeper scrutiny simply because he is not a well-established authority in the field. It is a fact that is all.

I have a gripe with posting anonymously in general, especially if the content goes so deep as to question or confirm a program's legitimacy. I am a firm believer in taking responsibility for one's words, which anonymity dispenses with. (No offense BB)

[Damir]

BB has a name, and it's ''Mark Watkins'' whether you like it or not.

[Albert Silver]

Here is the conclusion from the doc to save you all actually reading the PDF:

7 Conclusion
This document has highlighted a number of places where Rybka 1.0 Beta can
be said to have over-stretched an \originality" barrier with respect to Fruit 2.1.
These include a borrowing of arrays in PST, a peculiar match in data structures
for hashing, a wholesale re-use of evaluation features, and a repetition of the
same ordering of operations in root search. There is furthermore a re-appearance
of a 26-77-154-256 scaling rather than the more natural 10-30-60-100, and some
specic examples of \code copying" from the UCI parsing.
The rst appendix below gives another example of \code copying" (from
iterative deepening at the end of root search), while the second appendix tries
to determine whether later Rybka versions have remedied the above problems,
and draws together some related issues.

That is not the whole conclusion:

B Other comments

In this appendix, I pull together some other comments I have made regarding Rybka and Fruit. In particular, as this document is largely aimed at listing similarities, it might be good to list some differences also.

B.1 Principal differences for Rybka 1.0 Beta and Fruit 2.1

Among the more well-known differences of Rybka 1.0 Beta are the use of bitboards (rather than a mailbox representation) and the extensive material imbalance table. Rybka 1.0 Beta also does not have the history-based reductions made prominent by Fruit 2.1, but rather a more vanilla LMR approach that considers only the location in the move list. The weightings of evaluation features are also of course different (and perhaps more well-tuned).

Except for the issues listed in §4 above, the search routines of Rybka 1.0 Beta and Fruit 2.1 do not seem to me to be more similar than I would expect for two PVS engines. Rybka 1.0 Beta seems not so mature, e.g., simply announcing mate and not trying to minimise the distance to it. The principal "new idea" in Rybka 1.0 Beta seems to me to be the loosening of the stringent cutoff values for futility previously used in the AEL pruning of Heinz.

These add up to about a 75-100 Elo improvement on a 32-bit machine, comparable to the amount that Fruit itself gained over the second half of 2005.

B.2 Later versions of Rybka

I have not checked every version of Rybka, but have verified that the evaluation function in Rybka 2.3.2a is substantially the same as in Rybka 1.0 Beta. Much of the numerology is still extant, and only a few features have changed. The re-writing of the evaluation function in Rybka 3 (by Larry Kaufman) has likely removed much of any complaint here.

[michiguel]

And Sign The OPEN letter to the ICGA President

http://hiarcs.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=4038

excluding the Engine Author under examination .. we have all but one World Champion engine author since 1992 signing the letter
it should be remembered that these men were fierce competitors for many years ..so seeing them all agree to the notion that Rybka is an authorized Fruit derivative is quite astonishing and remarkable

Of course many other highly respected and talented Engine authors also signed the letter..some of whom might have been World Champions themselves if not losing to the engine in question or deciding not to even compete entirely in the ICGA World Championships given the participation of the allegedly illegally derived engine

Bob Hyatt ..a World Champion author himself of course did not sign as he is on the panel invested with making a determination on the derivative issue

Then... shouldn't be a proper procedure to sign and recuse himself to be in the secretariat?

Also, if signing (accusing) and being part of the process is not expected, how come M. Uniacke is signing and H. Williamson is part of the investigation secretariat?

I am surprised that nobody has seen this as a problem.

Or the goal is to give Vas enough reasons to sue ICGA in case the decision does not favor him?

Miguel

i think this is unprecedented in the history of competitive sport Regards
Steve

[Harvey Williamson]

H. Williamson is part of the investigation secretariat?


Miguel

I do not recall signing the letter.

[michiguel]

H. Williamson is part of the investigation secretariat?


Miguel

I do not recall signing the letter.

Very funny. When Vas sues ICGA, try to explain to a judge you do not have any relationship to the accusers.

Miguel