Preliminary entries for the WCCC and Olympiad

[Harvey Williamson]

So it's not about hardware at all, it's about software. You want everyone to run with the same SOFTWARE that is already available. Thanks for clarifying that.

So Rybka, Sjeng, and Jonny all ran on clusters in 2008. But they cannot run on them again until their software is released to the public.

If you want the public to be interested in the WCCC that seems reasonable. they can use beta software of course as a good result will mean a release,

According to this then, the only WCCC possible will one in which only chessmaster participates. Maybe different entrants with different settings. Oops! it is done already

http://www.talkchess.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=27431

Miguel

Excellent!

[CThinker]

http://www.grappa.univ-lille3.fr/icga/t ... php?id=192
http://www.grappa.univ-lille3.fr/icga/t ... php?id=198

More entries in the open event than in the WCCC...

One of the entries is from the author of Lion...

Less than 10 participants, and no Naum. Even Harm's ad-hoc server attracts more players than WCCC.

I hope DSJ makes a repeat of last year, and prevent another walkover by Rybka.

[Gian-Carlo Pascutto]

It would be interesting to release a version and see who besides the hard core users could get it working without a stream of support emails.

This will be supported by default in Deep Sjeng 4.0, so I have every interest to make this easy to use, and did in fact already do so.

[Harvey Williamson]

It would be interesting to release a version and see who besides the hard core users could get it working without a stream of support emails.

This will be supported by default in Deep Sjeng 4.0, so I have every interest to make this easy to use, and did in fact already do so.

I look forward to it!

[Graham Banks]

the only WCCC possible will one in which only chessmaster participates. Maybe different entrants with different settings. Oops! it is done already

http://www.talkchess.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=27431

Miguel

Not all of us are lucky enough to be able to program an engine, so it's a great way for Chessmaster nerds to have some fun.

[swami]

http://www.grappa.univ-lille3.fr/icga/t ... php?id=192
http://www.grappa.univ-lille3.fr/icga/t ... php?id=198

More entries in the open event than in the WCCC...

One of the entries is from the author of Lion...

Less than 10 participants, and no Naum. Even Harm's ad-hoc server attracts more players than WCCC.

I hope DSJ makes a repeat of last year, and prevent another walkover by Rybka.

Exactly, Lance. This tournament doesn't (and never had a) feel like "WCCC".

The tournament will get little interesting with more addition: Hiarcs, Junior and some more spanish engines.

Surely there are many spanish computer chess people, some of them may be able to volunteer to be an operator for some program?

Is anybody up there in spain willing to operate for Crafty? I feel it deserves to be in there. Or perhaps Bob has avoided this event? I don't think so.

[Dave Gomboc]

How many normal computer users reading this forum can understand and do (or can be bothered to do) what you have just suggested?

Who cares? That shouldn't be a relevant consideration.

Dave

[bob]

Depends. If the distributed chess engine is well-written and debugged, _anybody_ can do this. Done correctly, the engine needs to be told which hosts (other than the current one) it can use, and that should be that...

The current cluster Sjeng is literally as easy as loading the UCI engine as usual, and then typing the IP that the engine displays into the other clients.

It's clear from this thread that the conceptual leap that a cluster could be trivial to use is so insurmountable for some people, that they felt the need to ban those misunderstood creatures from the WCCC.

Meanwhile, computer chess advances without them.

It would be interesting to release a version and see who besides the hard core users could get it working without a stream of support emails.

Who besides hard core users would want it?

Exactly - so lets play on machines you can buy put the dvd/download in and off you go.....

This argument can be summarized in an easy way. Those that have _not_ taken the time to develop software to use some neat architectural feature want to make it impossible for anyone else to use that feature against them. I've seen the same silly argument about multiple cpus vs single cpus. At the time, there was only _one_ multiple CPU microcomputer program around (Guess which one). But eventually, everyone saw the light, and put up the ridiculous arguments of "no normal user will ever have a box with 2 cpus." (since now no normal user can actually _buy_ a machine without at least two processors (cores). So that's mainline and once the _other_ authors got off their lazy a**es and wrote some code, or stole some code (depening on who did what and who we are talking about) that argument was dropped. Now it is more than 8 cores, which is much harder to use efficiently than two cores. So once again, rather than getting up off their lazy a**es and developing a good parallel search, they vote to exclude that which they are too lazy to produce themselves. And this carries over to clusters which are even harder to use. The current Rybka cluster approach is lousy. I can't imagine why anyone would be worried about that particular issue anyway. Rybka is strong enough as is. The cluster is not helping enough to make a difference anyway. But let's stifle development for everybody, because not everybody is willing to get up off their lazy a**es and write something reasonable.

That's the way to do this. Sit on lazy a** and outlaw the efforts of anyone that doesn't want to sit...

Makes perfect sense..

Looks like a _huge_ WCCC tournament is about to be held, as a result of some of the most idiotic decisions I have ever seen. And the ICGA deserves _exactly_ what it is going to get, which is simply a big joke.

[bob]

http://www.grappa.univ-lille3.fr/icga/t ... php?id=192
http://www.grappa.univ-lille3.fr/icga/t ... php?id=198

More entries in the open event than in the WCCC...

One of the entries is from the author of Lion...

Less than 10 participants, and no Naum. Even Harm's ad-hoc server attracts more players than WCCC.

I hope DSJ makes a repeat of last year, and prevent another walkover by Rybka.

Exactly, Lance. This tournament doesn't (and never had a) feel like "WCCC".

The tournament will get little interesting with more addition: Hiarcs, Junior and some more spanish engines.

Surely there are many spanish computer chess people, some of them may be able to volunteer to be an operator for some program?

Is anybody up there in spain willing to operate for Crafty? I feel it deserves to be in there. Or perhaps Bob has avoided this event? I don't think so.

I avoid it for several reasons.

(1) in the past, it has been too long, too expensive.

(2) We've had cases where an operator type entry had to pay an entry fee.

(3) the event is too small to be interesting. What are they going to end up doing with the current number of participants? A double RR?

[Dr.Wael Deeb]

the only WCCC possible will one in which only chessmaster participates. Maybe different entrants with different settings. Oops! it is done already

http://www.talkchess.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=27431

Miguel

Not all of us are lucky enough to be able to program an engine, so it's a great way for Chessmaster nerds to have some fun.

Hell true....
Dr.D