Stockfish vs Chessbase....Who Do We Root For?!?

[supersharp77]

As Most People Know It Seems Stockfish is Suing (or intends to Sue) Chessbase GBH (Germany) Concerning Mainly it's Controversial "Fat Fritz 2 Project" and Also it seems Stockfish is upset that Chesbase was also Selling Houdini as part of a Houdini 6 Chessbase Gui Project (Probably They were also selling Houdini 5.0 with Chessbase also)....Rumor has it that Chessbase as part of some undisclosed "Agreement" has agreed with Stockfish to Stop Selling Houdini Bundles based on some Investigations "That have Origins Guess Where?.. Right Here On Talk Chess Forum Of Course In That Wicked and Now Infamous 'Engine Origins Area" Congrats Guys...First Rybka...Then Houdini...and Now Fat Fritz 2 (Chessbase)!! It's all part of The Historical Record Now So I will pose A Question That Came To Me Yesterday...Who Do We Root for In Such a Matter (LAWSUIT)...I did a Bit Of Digging On Both Chessbase (A Private Company) & Stockfish and Came up with This " https://www.dnb.com/business-directory/ ... 9f304.html "Dun and Bradstreet:
ChessBase GmbH is located in Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany and is part of the Computer Systems Design and Related Services Industry. ChessBase GmbH has 20 employees at this location and generates $2.05 million in sales (USD). (Sales figure is estimated).
So it seems That Chessbase is not some Huge Company....There is also Chessbase India (A mom and Pop outfit) and The Germany Operation with 20+ Employees...They may be even Struggling to survive in todays Business environment..Perhaps that is why they 'Gambled with Fat Fritz 2'....Trying something new and exciting to up their sales volume...

Then There is Stockfish....A search On Financials Brings Up Nothing Whatsoever...Now for a Company with No Income They are doing quite a lot...Droidfish App...A Blog...A Stockfish Development Web site (Abrok.eu) A Stockfish Main Web site
www.stockfish.org There is also A fishtest site...Who/What is paying all these bills? There should be some kind of income streams by now even by accident..if so where are they coming from IOS? Lichess? I mean no offense but these guys have been working "Around The Clock For Years Now" Sometimes Putting out A couple of New Engines each day..."A real Chess Engine Factory of Sorts..No One Can Keep Up Even"...Even Komodo Could Not Keep Pace...Who pays the Bills? Whats The End Game?
They've Cornered the Chess Engine Market So To Speak and Now They are Suing A potential Competitor (Chessbase) Who is paying their Potentially Large LEGAL FEES? Where is that money coming From? Will The Chessplaying Public be better off without CHESSBASE or Without a Potentially Monopolistic STOCKFISH? Let us all know your thoughts/opinion on this Important matter.....Thanks ALL AR



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChessBase

"ChessBase GmbH is a German company that makes and sells chess software, maintains a chess news site, and operates an internet chess server for online chess. Founded in 1986, it maintains and sells massive databases, containing the moves of recorded chess games.[1][2] Databases organise data from prior games; engines provide analyses of games whileendgame tablebases offer perfect play in some endgames

Starting in 1983, Frederic Friedel and his colleagues put out a magazine Computer-schach und Spiele covering the emerging hobby of computer chess. In 1985, he invited then world chess champion Garry Kasparov to his house, and Kasparov mused about how a chess database would make it easier for him to prepare for specific opponents. Friedel began working with Bonn physicist Matthias Wüllenweber who created the first such database ChessBase 1.0, software for the Atari ST. The February 1987 issue of Computerschach & Spiele introduced the database program as well as Chessbase magazine, a floppy disk containing chess games edited by GM John Nunn.
The August 1991 issue of Computerschach & Spiele announced that Dutch programmer Frans Morsch's Fritz program would soon be available, sold as software for PCs unlike all of the dedicated chess computers which at the time dominated the ratings lists. This program was marketed initially as Knightstalker in the U.S., and Fritz in the rest of the world. Mathias Feist joined ChessBase, and ported Fritz to DOS and then Microsoft Windows.
In 1994, German GM Rainer Knaak joined ChessBase as a full-time employee, annotating games for Chessbase magazine, and soon authoring game database CD-ROMs on topics such as the Trompowsky Attack or Mating Attacks against 0-0. British GM Daniel King was another early author of such CD-ROMs which eventually grew into the Fritztrainer series of multimedia DVDs.
In the mid-1990s, R&D Publishing in the U.S. released a series of print books in the Chessbase University Opening Series, including Anatoly Karpov and Alexander Beliavsky's The Caro-Kann in Black and White.
In December 1996, ChessBase added Mark Uniacke's Hiarcs 6 chess engine to its product line up, selling it inside the existing Fritz graphical user interface (GUI).[5] In March 1998, ChessBase added Junior 4.6 and Dr. Christian Donninger's Nimzo99.[6] Also that year, ChessBase released Fritz 5 including a 'friend mode' which would automatically scale its strength of play down to the level that it assessed the player was playing.[7] This remains a feature of all of ChessBase's Graphical User Interfaces even now.
In 1998, Chessbase took their database of chess games online.[8] In November, Chessbase started offering trainer CD-ROMs by such GMs as Robert Hübner, Rainer Knaak and Daniel King.[9]
In 1999, Stefan Meyer-Kahlen's Shredder had won the world computer chess championship. In April, Meyer-Kahlen and Huber released the Universal Chess Interface (UCI) protocol for engines to communicate with GUIs, to compete with Winboard and Chessbase's. Meyer-Kahlen's contract with Millennium 2000 expired in June, and ChessBase immediately snapped him up, adding Shredder to their product line under a Fritz style GUI, and giving their new GUIs the ability to import UCI engines.[10]
In April 2000, ChessBase released a Young Talents CD featuring the engines Anmon, Goliath Light, Gromit, Ikarus, Patzer, Phalanx and Rudolf Huber's SOS. Christophe Theron's engines Chess Tiger and Gambit Tiger were also released as Chessbase engines that month.[10]
In the early 2000s matches were held pitting world champions Garry Kasparov and Vladimir Kramnik against versions of theFritz or Junior engines.
In 2003, ChessBase introduced the Chess Media System, allowing players to produce videos with them playing out moves that can be seen on the user's chessboard within a Chessbase program. Eventually, ChessBase commissioned world champions Garry Kasparov, Viswanathan Anand, Vladimir Kramnik and Rustam Kasimdzhanov to produce DVDs using the new format. Chessbase also produced Fritztrainer Opening DVDs by the likes of grandmasters Alexei Shirov and Viktor Bologan and a Power Play series by British GM Daniel King for lower level players.
In April 2006, following its victory at the World Computer Chess Championship, Anthony Cozzie's Zappa chess engine was published by ChessBase as Zap!Chess.
In 2008, Vasik Rajlich's Rybka engine was added to the ChessBase product line, followed by Robert Houdart's Houdini andDon Dailey and Larry Kaufman's Komodo engines.
Recent versions of ChessBase and the engine GUIs such as Fritz offer access to cloud engines. ChessBase/Playchess had long had a downloadable client, but they had a web interface by 2013.[11] ChessBase added a tactics trainer web app in 2015.[12] In 2015, ChessBase added a play Fritz web app,[13] as well as My Games for storing one's games.[14]
The company[edit]
The company is located in Hamburg, Germany. ChessBaseUSA[15] markets their products in the United States, and some of the most popular programs are sold by licensee Viva Media, now a division of Encore, Inc. In 1998, the German companyData Becker released the program 3D Schach Genie, containing the Shredder engine and Fritz interface. Chessbase India markets their products in India and surrounding countries. Chessbase India is run by International Master(IM) Sagar Shah and his wife Amruta Mokal.[16]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockfish_(chess

"Stockfish is a free and open-source chess engine, available for various desktop and mobile platforms. It is developed by Marco Costalba, Joona Kiiski, Gary Linscott, Tord Romstad, Stéphane Nicolet, Stefan Geschwentner, and Joost VandeVondele, with many contributions from a community of open-source developers.[2]
Stockfish is consistently ranked first or near the top of most chess-engine rating lists and is the strongest CPU chess engine in the world.[3] It won theunofficial world computer chess championships in seasons 6 (2014), 9 (2016), 11 (2018), 12 (2018), 13 (2018), 14 (2019), 16 (2019), 18 (2020), 19 (2020) and 20 (2021). It finished runner-up in seasons 5 (2013), 7 (2014), 8 (2015), 15 (2019) and 17 (2020).
Stockfish is derived from Glaurung, an open-source engine by Tord Romstad released in 2004"

https://www.chess.com/news/view/chessba ... chess-zero

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27896386

[AdminX]

I root for Stockfish, because with the Fat Fritz Series in general it seems that they go out of their way to misrepresent the facts. I saw this with Fat Fritz / based on Leela, and saw it repeated with Fat Fritz 2 / based on Stockfish. Mind you I have no problem buying the Net or NNUE created by Silver, but to act like the core of your work did not come from others is BS. Yes you get the CB GUI, but that is not what is being pitched. They have been pitching the Engine and not as much the Net or NNUE. It is the Engine that was created by others and they seem to go out of their way to omit this information. Only when called out on it do they update their statement.

Taking ideas, okay I get it, that is how Leela was created, but all that code is something else.

My two cents, your mileage may vary, I really don't care as you are entitled to your opinion.

[Uri Blass]

I do not see a potential for stockfish to be monpolistic.
They do not care about customers because they have no customers and they care only about one thing that is the playing strength of stockfish.

For commercial programs I think that it is a mistake to try to have the highest elo and it is better if they care about having other advantages.


Having the best engine to beat weak engines with a rook handicap or queen handicap may be something that commercial programs can work about.
Having the best engine to see mates as fast as possible is also an option(in order to test it you can take some big pgn and analyze every position for one second to see how many mates you find and stockfish does not care about being the best in it)

Calculating how much material you win in x plies is also something that programmers can work about espacielly for weak humans who hate seeing some +5 by stockfish for positional reasons that they do not understand but want to get tactical exercises that are simply about winning material based on games.

[Uri Blass]

I can also add that I consider Chessbase as a big company

You say:
ChessBase GmbH has 20 employees at this location and generates $2.05 million in sales (USD). (Sales figure is estimated).

2.05 million divided by 20 is more than 100,000$ per year.

I believe that most commercial chess programs have less employees and less sales.

[Cornfed]

Well, Chessbase of course. It puts out a LOT of meaningful products...Stockfish, just one.

Actually, I 'root for' Stockfish...but not at the cost of any heavy financial anyway loss to Chessbase.

[JohnS]

I can also add that I consider Chessbase as a big company

You say:
ChessBase GmbH has 20 employees at this location and generates $2.05 million in sales (USD). (Sales figure is estimated).

2.05 million divided by 20 is more than 100,000$ per year.

I believe that most commercial chess programs have less employees and less sales.

Without buying into the CB vs Stockfish debate these figures look wrong. Sales don't equal profits so $2 mill sales could be $200,000 profit - not a lot for 20 people plus wages offices utilities etc.

[dkappe]

About 20 years ago we would eyeball a services company by dividing revenue by headcount. $100k per employee was average. That was 20 years ago, though. I’d guess $100k isn’t all that healthy now, but it’s not a very sophisticated calculation.

[KLc]

2.05 million divided by 20 is more than 100,000$ per year.

I fear this is not how it works.

[Stephen Ham]

Hi Dietrich,

Why divide revenue by headcount? That's a meaningless figure given that margins vary from company to company.

Instead, profits per headcount is much more meaningful. But even that figure can be manipulated and contrived, for example, due to bonuses or extraordinary events/expenses.

The best measure of employee productivity is average annual cashflow per headcount. But then, you'd need to review years of corporate financial statements for that in order to see non-cash expenses (i.e. depreciation, amortization, and depletion).

All the best,
-Steve Ham-
Retired Credit Analyst

[dkappe]

Hi Dietrich,

Why divide revenue by headcount? That's a meaningless figure given that margins vary from company to company.

Instead, profits per headcount is much more meaningful. But even that figure can be manipulated and contrived, for example, due to bonuses or extraordinary events/expenses.

The best measure of employee productivity is average annual cashflow per headcount. But then, you'd need to review years of corporate financial statements for that in order to see non-cash expenses (i.e. depreciation, amortization, and depletion).

All the best,
-Steve Ham-
Retired Credit Analyst

It’s amazing how consistent revenue per employee was for a small to medium professional services company. Profit was a bit more difficult since it depended on r&d and other types of costs that could fluctuate from year to year. It wasn’t meant as a gold standard for anything, just a quick reality check. If that figure was off, you might dig a little bit deeper to figure out if they had a product business or were in a particular industry with different ratios.

Very similar to cheat sheet calculations that private equity or venture capital investors make before the start of due diligence.