Suppose the worst case against Vas, and then...

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Steve B
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Re: Rybka 1.0 Beta read.me

Post by Steve B »

Eelco de Groot wrote:
(Answer to Steve:)

Many people were given credit by Vas:


Rybka v 1.0 Beta Readme
Dec 4, 2005



Special Thanks

I hesitate to include this section because I know I'll forget people who have been helpful in this project, but (with advance apologies to the omitted) here goes:

Robert Hyatt - For Crafty. There is nothing like an open source program for passing knowledge to the next generation.
Fabien Letouzey - For Fruit, which shattered a number of computer chess myths, demonstrated several interesting ideas, and made even the densest of us aware of fail-low pruning.
Tord Romstad - For making Fabien aware of fail-low pruning :-), and more seriously for sharing in every way possible his considerable knowledge.
Eugene Nalimov - For his cryptic but somehow fully functional endgame tablebase access code.
Uri Blass, Gerd Isenberg, Dieter Burssner, Vincent Diepeveen, Raschid Chan, Anthony Cozzie, Mridul M* :), Thomas Gaksch, Peter Berger, Sandro Necchi, Ed Shroeder, Amir Ban, Christophe Theron and every one else, past and present, on the computer chess club: For sharing their computer chess knowledge despite the fact that in principle computer chess is a competitive field.
Heinz van Kempen, Guenther Simon, Olivier Deville, Sergio Martinez, Claude Dubois: for testing early versions of Rybka despite countless bugs and annoying problems.
Alex Dumov, Gabriel Luca: for helping a Windows newbie get up to around half-speed without excessive derision (or at least open derision :))
and Iweta: for being great! :) and a pretty good Rybka tester and web master to boot


Happy testing, and best chess regards,
Vasik Rajlich
Budapest Hungary
December 4, 2005
thanks Eelco
this is not exactly the same thing as crediting Fabien for Fruit code(if it were used or modified in some way)
however i will not nitpick this issue and i thank you for the above information
nice to see that Hyatt, Theron and Cozzie were also mentioned

can i ask you..i see this was a message in the R1 beta readme file
was this only sent to potential R1 beta testers or to anyone receiving a copy of R1 ..or otherwise made public on a website or something similar?

Best Regards
Steve
henkf

Re: Rybka 1.0 Beta read.me

Post by henkf »

There's another place where he gives credit to Fabien. From an interview between the Arena team and Vasik Rajlich:

21. Alexander Schmidt:

We had our first contact when I had questions about a similarity to Fruit in the search, others found similarities in the evaluation. Some people where a little bit suspicious that Rybka could be a clone of the open source engine. In the meantime it is clear that Rybka is no clone but you used ideas of Fruit (I guess all other serious engine programmers had a look at Fruit too). How strong would Rybka actually be if the Fruit code would have never been published?

Vasik Rajlich:

It's a good question. I don't want to get too specific about which ideas from Fruit I think are really useful, but they fall into two categories:

1) Very specific tricks, mostly related to search.
2) Philosophy of the engine (and in particular of the search).

Fruit could really hardly be more useful along both of these dimensions. Fabien is a very good engineer, and also has a very clear and simple conception of how his search should behave.

Anyway, if I really had to give a number - my wild guess is that Rybka would be 20 rating points weaker had Fruit not appeared.
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Eelco de Groot
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Full name:   Eelco de Groot

Re: Rybka 1.0 Beta read.me

Post by Eelco de Groot »

Hi Steve,

Yes,

This is just the Read.me that everone got, who downloaded the Rybka 1.0 Beta in 2005 or later. The Rybka 1.0 Beta was recently upgraded to Rybka 2.2n2, so I am not sure it can still be downloaded from Rybkachess.com but if not from there then surely from somewhere else.

Several Betatesters are also mentioned in the read.me, several of which are members here or where until recently, Günther Simon is no longer posting, Olivier Deville has already said some things here. Well at the least they should be able to say something about the strength of the earlier Beta versions. If Rybka 1.0 Beta was created literally overnight I think it would be a little suspicious.

Best Regards,

Eelco
Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first
place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you
are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it.
-- Brian W. Kernighan
gerold
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Joined: Thu Mar 09, 2006 12:57 am
Location: van buren,missouri

Re: Suppose the worst case against Vas, and then...

Post by gerold »

Zach Wegner wrote:
eriq wrote:Fern is right!

None of this would be talked about without Rybka being the best engine in the world. When I started reading some of these post I just couldn't believe how people could even think this way. What a bunch of haters, but I guess this is what the world is about these days.

Peace and love must be just a silly concept. :roll:
This is simply nonsense. Those that have a bit of short term memory will remember that two clones were discovered in the past couple months or so, and I was involved in both discussions. I do not like dishonesty; the strength of an engine is inconsequential.

Now, what is important in this issue, is the fact that Rybka is making a lot of money. So if it turns out that Rybka started life as Fruit, IMO a big chunk of that money belongs in Fabien's hands.

That's all there is to it. No need for such speculation.
Another way to look at this whole deal is if Rybka is a clone
of Fruit than Rybka source would have to be released. Than
with the strongest eng. being free for all what would happen
to Tiger and all the other comm. programs that make money
from their product. With the stongest chess eng in the world
being copyed by all. :)

Very best to you Zach.

Gerold.

P.S. Thinks for your enquiry into this matter.
Steve B
Posts: 3697
Joined: Tue Jul 31, 2007 4:26 pm

Re: Rybka 1.0 Beta read.me

Post by Steve B »

henkf wrote:There's another place where he gives credit to Fabien. From an interview between the Arena team and Vasik Rajlich:

21. Alexander Schmidt:

We had our first contact when I had questions about a similarity to Fruit in the search, others found similarities in the evaluation. Some people where a little bit suspicious that Rybka could be a clone of the open source engine. In the meantime it is clear that Rybka is no clone but you used ideas of Fruit (I guess all other serious engine programmers had a look at Fruit too). How strong would Rybka actually be if the Fruit code would have never been published?

Vasik Rajlich:

It's a good question. I don't want to get too specific about which ideas from Fruit I think are really useful, but they fall into two categories:

1) Very specific tricks, mostly related to search.
2) Philosophy of the engine (and in particular of the search).

Fruit could really hardly be more useful along both of these dimensions. Fabien is a very good engineer, and also has a very clear and simple conception of how his search should behave.

Anyway, if I really had to give a number - my wild guess is that Rybka would be 20 rating points weaker had Fruit not appeared.
yes but i think this interview(and credit to Fruit) was granted well after the release of R1 and R2
this was the interview i was referring to above

Regards
Steve
Uri Blass
Posts: 10903
Joined: Thu Mar 09, 2006 12:37 am
Location: Tel-Aviv Israel

Re: Rybka 1.0 Beta read.me

Post by Uri Blass »

Eelco de Groot wrote:Hi Steve,

Yes,

This is just the Read.me that everone got, who downloaded the Rybka 1.0 Beta in 2005 or later. The Rybka 1.0 Beta was recently upgraded to Rybka 2.2n2, so I am not sure it can still be downloaded from Rybkachess.com but if not from there then surely from somewhere else.

Several Betatesters are also mentioned in the read.me, several of which are members here or where until recently, Günther Simon is no longer posting, Olivier Deville has already said some things here. Well at the least they should be able to say something about the strength of the earlier Beta versions. If Rybka 1.0 Beta was created literally overnight I think it would be a little suspicious.

Best Regards,

Eelco
Not exactly
Fabien was mentioned in the free version that beta testers and everybody could download but later
I remember that I could download rybka from the rybka site when the readme did not include names

I have in
C:\Downloads\Rybka v1.0betaw32\Rybka v1.0betaw32\readme.htm the following information when Fabien is not mentioned like the other authors



Contents & License



In this package, you will find the Rybka 1.0 Beta chess engine (dated Dec 4, 2005), as well as the Turk opening book by Djordje Vidanovic. Both versions of these components are free and can be used and transmitted without restriction.



Overview



This package is intended to be a free introduction to the Rybka engine. If you like the engine and would like to upgrade to the full commercial version, you can do so at our web site:



www.rybkachess.com



Rybka 1.0 Beta engine FAQ



How can I use this engine?



You must install it in a chess graphical user interface of your choice. If you are not familiar with this procedure, please follow our Rybka installation instructions.



What version of the engine is Rybka 1.0 Beta?



Rybka 1.0 Beta is an older release of the Rybka engine, dated December 5, 2005. It has been widely tested - you will find it on many computer chess rating lists, and it even saw action at the IPCCC in Paderborn at the end of December 2005.



Why should I update to the commercial version?



The commercial Rybka version includes my full-time development work on the engine since the release of Rybka 1.0 Beta. The following is a brief overview of the improvements as of March 15, 2006:



1) More efficient search

2) Improved endgame heuristics

3) Improved knowledge about transitions to the endgame

4) Additional middlegame heuristics

5) A number of improved analysis features, including multi-variation mode and tablebase support

6) Various bug and stability fixes

7) Inclusion of commercial Rybka opening book (by Jeroen Noomen)



The following improvements are still planned as part of Rybka 1:



1) Full support for the UCI & UCI2 protocol

2) Further improvements in analysis features

3) Further improvements to search & evaluation (and therefore strength of engine)

4) Inevitably, some more bug fixes



How much stronger is the commercial Rybka 1.2 version than the Rybka 1.0 Beta version?



It is best to leave such questions to the testers. There have been signficant enhancements since Beta 1 to the algorithms which determine playing strength. However, the Rybka 1.0 Beta version does give a fairly good introduction to the style and general approach of the engine.



Will this Rybka 1.0 Beta version expire after a certain time or constantly ask me to update to the commercial version?



No.



Turk opening book FAQ with Djordje



The Turk opening book included with this package has been created and hand-tuned by Djordje Vidanovic. It is in ".ctg" format, so it can only be used with the Chessbase family of graphical user interfaces.



How does this book differ from your Rybka Paderborn book?



This book is slightly bigger than the Paderborn book. Besides, it is not as deterministic as the Paderborn book, meaning that it offers more leeway for the choice of moves to the program. It is slightly guided (moves marked in green), and has about 335,000 positions.



What are the book's strong points?



I believe that the book's strong points could be its sharpness and, hopefully, its congruence with Rybka's playing style.



What are the book's weak points?



Again, its overall sharpness and its depth that may prove counter-productive.



What opening books can you recommend for other user interfaces (ie. Arena, etc)?



I haven't enough data regarding other interfaces. I might recommend the Gandalf book that runs in the Lokasoft interface. It may be the strongest of all I've seen. I find the Fritz 9 book very strong too and I believe that Alexander Kure has done a very good job there.



What other opening books can you recommend for the Chessbase interfaces?



Any future book by Jeroen Noomen :-)



How should one use the Turk?



In [Edit, Openings book, Book options] please check book options "Use book" and "Tournament book", set variety of play only one mouse click to the right (about one fifth of the slider), influence of learn value about one mouse click to the left starting from the extreme right on the slider, and learning strength at zero (slider completely at the left) unless you would like to enable book learning, which might be counter productive in the long run. Set minimum games to 1, and maximum moves to 40