WCCC 2009 - Limit of 8 cores

[Bill Rogers]

Over the last 10 years or so I have argued about this subject. The name of the game is which is the best computer program or which computer program plays chess the best. It is not about who has enough money or connections to use a main frame or who has a 10 billion move opening book vs a 10 thousand book.
Once again the quest is for the best program, period !!!
Why can't people either understand that or at least remember what the game is about. In my opinion no one, I repeat no one will ever know which program is the worlds best until they all use identical hardware and opening books.
I still remember in CCT5 or CCT6 where one program beat another without ever leaving its opening book. The entire game had been played before and just by luck his opponent made the same losing moves. That, in my opinion is not chess because the program never had to make a move on its own. Who knows, maybe the program could not play legal chess at all.
Bill

[IanO]

In my opinion, they have this exactly backwards.

The WCCC has since its inception in 1970 been the venue for open hardware. It should remain so.

If they wish to return to the days of segregation, then they should reinstitute the World Microcomputer Chess Championships. That would be an appropriate venue for hardware limits.

Book limits are stupid, in my opinion. Are there any regular chess matches that impose such a rule? Of course not.

Ian

[George Tsavdaris]

Once again the quest is for the best program, period !!!

If the quest is for the best program then they should increase the games programs play, from the ridiculous(for the purpose of the quest) 9-15 games to 500-1000.
If they don't do that, their target of finding the best program, fails miserably.

Why can't people either understand that or at least remember what the game is about. In my opinion no one, I repeat no one will ever know which program is the worlds best until they all use identical hardware and opening books.

So you say that if identical hardware will be used then the winner of the WCCC will show us the worlds best program? After around 11 games?
Well....?

Obviously the answer is negative. The WCCC with such a tiny number of games, can't show us the worlds best program.
I can't even imagine that this is the purpose of WCCC.

WCCC is just a tournament. A glorious one. That's all.

And as Dr. Hyatt said, its real purpose was to promote research in computer Chess. Now it seems they take decisions that contradict the initial target.

[Dann Corbit]

Over the last 10 years or so I have argued about this subject. The name of the game is which is the best computer program or which computer program plays chess the best. It is not about who has enough money or connections to use a main frame or who has a 10 billion move opening book vs a 10 thousand book.
Once again the quest is for the best program, period !!!
Why can't people either understand that or at least remember what the game is about. In my opinion no one, I repeat no one will ever know which program is the worlds best until they all use identical hardware and opening books.
I still remember in CCT5 or CCT6 where one program beat another without ever leaving its opening book. The entire game had been played before and just by luck his opponent made the same losing moves. That, in my opinion is not chess because the program never had to make a move on its own. Who knows, maybe the program could not play legal chess at all.
Bill

If the goal is to find out which program is strongest, then in what way can a very short Swiss style tournament better inform us than the 120K games of the SSDF @ 40/120, the 155K games of the CCRL at 40/40, or the 297K games of CEGT at 40/20 have not already told us? We know the strength of these programs, on various common hardware setups carefully normalized -- often to within 20 Elo or less.

Add to that the fact that *most* of the strongest programs do not even bother to show up and we end up with a question:
"What is the point of the WCCC?"
Clearly, we cannot consider this to be a serious attempt to show us what the strongest program is or even to show the strength of a set of programs on a certain class of hardware. There is simply not enough data (and programmers are still free to choose their hardware, but they have a lid put on how many CPUs they can use now).
Here is what the WCCC has become:
A European contest to name a champion in computer chess.
Now, with no other realistic goal in sight, I want there to be some hook to make the contest interesting *for me*. In my case, I would like to see the best possible chess, and so I think it would be nice for the hardware to be unlimited.
There is another real and valuable purpose for that contest -- it is an opportunity for chess programmers to meet face to face. That will not change if they make everyone play on a toaster IC or if they allow the Scandia supercomputer to enter.

Of course, it's none of my business what the ICGA does because I am not even a member and have little interest in becoming one.

[Leto]

Over the last 10 years or so I have argued about this subject. The name of the game is which is the best computer program or which computer program plays chess the best. It is not about who has enough money or connections to use a main frame or who has a 10 billion move opening book vs a 10 thousand book.
Once again the quest is for the best program, period !!!
Why can't people either understand that or at least remember what the game is about. In my opinion no one, I repeat no one will ever know which program is the worlds best until they all use identical hardware and opening books.
I still remember in CCT5 or CCT6 where one program beat another without ever leaving its opening book. The entire game had been played before and just by luck his opponent made the same losing moves. That, in my opinion is not chess because the program never had to make a move on its own. Who knows, maybe the program could not play legal chess at all.
Bill

If people want to know what is the strongest engine they can just go to the websites of established organizations such as CCRL and CEGT whose sole purpose is to figure out what the strongest engine is. They use standard opening books, equal hardware, and they play thousands of games with each engine against many opponents. If the intention of this rule is to limit Rybka's strength then I think a severe mistake has been made, if anything they just decreased the other participants' chance.

As others have mentioned in this thread the strongest opponent cannot be identified in a short 9 or 12 round tournament. Try 1000 games for a start, and even 1000 games can sometimes be not enough, I've experienced that firsthand when I was a tester for CEGT.

When I think of the WCCC I think of powerful computers like Belle, Cray Blitz, Deep Thought, etc going through an exciting 9 to 12 rounds. It is unfortunate that there weren't more Deep Blues and Hydras in the world, powerful machines like these could have brought in more interest in computer chess. Now I hear that they are considering limiting the participants to 8 cores, that just doesn't make any sense to me whatsoever.

[pijl]

Hi, I brought this topic in another post and I agree with the decision of having uniform hardware, but I would have just stated one-cpu and let the users decide on the one cpu, instead of core number. I believe this decision has a lot to do with Rybka having 40 cores certainly a ridiculous situation!

The main investment for participating is not the investment in the hardware, but the investment in the software. It is not a trivial task to make effective use of >2 cores and the task will be even more difficult on cluster type of configurations.
So if the competition is about the software, it is nonsense to limit the hardware.
Richard.

[Bill Rogers]

Gentlemen
I realize that a Swiss system or even a round robin is not enough to really determine which program is the strongest. The basis of my post is to point out the ways these contest are held right now.
Most of us admired Deep Blue but I also believe that a great many people today also believe that some of todays strong program running on quad cores or more might actually beat Deep Blue.
Bill

[Dann Corbit]

Gentlemen
I realize that a Swiss system or even a round robin is not enough to really determine which program is the strongest. The basis of my post is to point out the ways these contest are held right now.
Most of us admired Deep Blue but I also believe that a great many people today also believe that some of todays strong program running on quad cores or more might actually beat Deep Blue.
Bill

Sure, but if a rejuvinated Deep Blue (or Hydra) asked to enter it would be turned away.
Too darn many CPUs.

[Vinvin]

Gentlemen
I realize that a Swiss system or even a round robin is not enough to really determine which program is the strongest. The basis of my post is to point out the ways these contest are held right now.
Most of us admired Deep Blue but I also believe that a great many people today also believe that some of todays strong program running on quad cores or more might actually beat Deep Blue.
Bill

Sure, but if a rejuvinated Deep Blue (or Hydra) asked to enter it would be turned away.
Too darn many CPUs.

That's not true ! :

Alongside the World Computer Chess Championship the ICGA organizes the annual Computer Olympiad, and when there are two or more contestants we will organize, as part of the Computer Olympiad, an open chess tournament (or match if there are just two entries) in which hardware systems with more than 8 cores may compete. This will NOT be given the status of a world championship event – it will be the Computer Olympiad Open Chess Championship.

[bob]

Again, getting back to my original position, I suggest a standard for hardware. I think the best would be either one-cpu or two-cpu's with a predetermined set of RAM, say 6 Gigs...

Let the owners of the software decide on the type of cpu, ram and mobo they want to use, so if the best cpu is an Intel with 6-cores, then I presume most participants will use it, but they still have the flexibility.

What is the point of a match if Rebel program is playing with 40-cores and 50-gigs of RAM against Fritz with 4-cores and 2-gigs of RAM.

Can somebody on this thread tell me why this match of Rebel vs. Fritz is of any interest whatsoever? What does it prove or disprove?

Cordially,

Sean

The goal is to find the strongest _combination_. You won't find that a 40-core Rebel plays any better than a 1-core Rebel. Rebel doesn't use any sort of parallel search. Developing this kind of code is non-trivial, and is a significant part of the overall program design. Your idea nullifies all the effort that many of us have invested in parallel search, and gives an advantage to those that have eschewed parallel search and instead worked on the serial algorithm more.

So it isn't about :"fairness" because 1 core is no fairer than 40. And in light of that, there should be no limit for a WCCC. Otherwise why wouldn't you exclude Kasparov from the human WC since his "engine" is much better than most??? That's the idea, in fact...