World Chess Computer Champion?

[michiguel]

Leagues last months. World Championships and Olympic games etc tend to last a couple of weeks.

Harvey,

Every self respecting sport has a body that is recognized and endorsed by the vast majority of sportsmen / women. What once was since 2011 is no longer. Whatever the reason you have to act.

You keep making that pronouncement - the ICGA is no longer recognized.

Selective reading on your end, see the red above.

There is no reason to involve the Rybka controversy into the discussion. Forget about Rybka, it is what it is and doing nothing won't solve the above problem, the last 2½ year has proven that.

You will remember the days the WCCC and WMCCC were the yearly highlight, the magazins and CC fora exploded. That popularity halted (quite roughly) exactly when?

Circa 1997, to be exact. I assume you realize the significance of that date? Never was the same after that. Suddenly no TV crews showed up, no vendors kicked in tens of thousands of dollars or provided special hardware, etc.

You are not reading again. The WCCC's from 1998-2010 were just fine regarding popularity.

Now look up the number of postings of the last WCCC (Japan) here, there are hardly any.

You don't have to be a prophet to predict how this will end, if things already are not irreversable in the meantime by the 2½ year lack of action from David. As if doing nothing ever solved a problem.

Quite often, doing NOTHING is much better than doing something WRONG.

Yeah, do nothing about vice-world-champion LOOP (Amsterdam 2007), do nothing about Thinker, do not investgate Fritz 14.

Yeah... that kind of sweeping things under the carpet by silencing it.

I told you time and time again there will be no LOOP verdict. You promised there would be. Tell me your progress.

Sorry, but wrong. WC's since 1997 or so have fallen off drastically, both participation, publicity, sponsorships, etc. In the 80's and 90's we had live TV crews present every round, etc. My wife surprised me with a scrapbook in early 1984, the year after we won our first WCCC in New York in 1983. She had articles from all sorts of well-known publications. New York Times. Computer World. Wall Street Journal. Byte magazine. Chess Life and Review, ACM SigArt, this thing was about 3" thick. Had no idea there had been that kind of publicity until our USM publicity department started sending her all sorts of stuff. Today? Nada. Discussions on CCC or r.g.c.c are not the problem. It is the lack of interest everywhere else that forms the basis of the problem.

There WILL be a loop verdict.

Yes, hard to find ICGA in the NYT. But you still have computer chess there...
http://gambit.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01 ... blogs&_r=0

That is the whole point. If I guy with a computer in Sweden can do it (even on an age in which print media is becoming obsolete), how on earth an Institution cannot? We can debate forever what the reasons are, but at the end of the day, one is succeeding and the other is not.

Miguel

That is NOT the New York Times. That's a blog.

That is how the NYT put articles. That is the NYT.

Doesn't even have the facts correct since Rybka didn't win the last 4 WCCC events even...

This is the typical ICGA bashing nonsense. I gave you examples of the kind of publicity we got for ONE SINGLE 4 day tournament. Enough DIFFERENT sources to produce a scrapbook over 3" thick. And you offer up this kind of nonsense as to what the ICGA doesn't get today? There is no comparison between today and pre-1997.

It is not ICGA bashing, I am stating the fact that it is failing to attract as much as attention as Martin Tournament.

Miguel

The NYT is a newspaper. Printed. That is a blog. Doesn't even have the facts right. And you cite ONE blog post from 2011 and claim that is better than ICGA events?

No, it is not printed. By the way, how many read newspapers printed today? It is both, and the printed part is following the path of the Dodo. NYT has contributors that write articles in the form of blogs. One of them is a Nobel Laureate, for instance (Paul Krugman).

It appears, based on your research, it is not attracting ANY attention. 3 years old and counting.

TCEC is being mentioned in every single chess outlet, being commented by GMs, not to mentioned being supported by Chessdom, who is being reached by a huge number of people. Houdini's fame skyrocketed among chess players after its victory in TCEC season 1. The chat that follows the games peaked at 400 people (what I saw), and 1500 when it was co-broadcasted with Anand-Carlsen. I saw there Argentinians following it from at least two different Universities, and since that is my home country the radio of one of them interviewed me (a complete amateur! the previous interviewee was GM Michael Adams).

So, the visibility that it is starting to have exceeds in orders of magnitude what the ICGA championship have. Yes, TCEC has three years, ICGA had more than three decades and it is in decline, very fast.

What I am saying is nothing really new, it is quite obvious. In fact, I am agreeing with you. Not you now, I am agree with your self a decade ago when you were complaining about ICGA's trends, and you truly questioned how much of a championship ICGA's were. You clearly preferred CCT then, did you not?. Thing got worse and worse. This cannot be denied and the point is that ICGA has not been successful to revert this trend. That is the reality.

I am not arguing that ICGA tournament should not be called World Championship, I am arguing that they have not done what is necessary to protect the prestige for a while. When that happens, other venues start to come up. Now the prestige has been taken over by TCEC. So, we are now with a World Championship with no prestige, and a tournament with a lot of prestige. When that happens, an unstable equilibrium arises that causes all these discussions.

Miguel

The ICGA is not perfect. But they ARE doing what the programmers request, namely using a set of rules the programmers have agreed on over the years, modified here and there over the years, and then enforcing those rules the best they can. I don't really care who claims to be what nowadays. All I want is to play in tournaments with zero derivatives, period. No exceptions. No grey areas. The ICGA tries to provide that, just as we have in the CCT events. That it excludes some is simply tough. Someone is free to create a calling-all-clones tournament if they want. I won't play. I don't care who does, it is still a free world.

The biggest problem I see is that many are whining about rule 2 being outdated. Yet NOBODY has offered any suggestions on how to improve rule 2. I certainly want to see it clarified a great deal. To get rid of the stupid excuses like "yes, if you type the code, then it is original." The rule needs to be expanded to a full page, apparently, carefully spelling out what most of us can figure out, namely what is original and what is not.

Rule 2? it is completely irrelevant to the point I am trying to make.

As far as prestige goes, TCEC is not a tournament in the strictest sense of the word. No one "gathers".

The only (or one of the few) programmers I did not see in the TCEC chat room is you, and that explains why you think nobody gathers.

The time period is impossibly long to get a group together. So for max prestige, why is not topping CCRL the "cat's meow"?

The prestige of TCEC is not under debate.

WAY more games, WAY LESS error. The ICGA event is 7-9 rounds depending on the year. I suppose one could argue that Wijk Aan Zee was more prestigious than some of the past world championship cycles, where there were zonals (some of which had lousy players) where everyone worked their way up through those, to the inter-zonals, and finally to the final 1-1 match with the previous world champion. Wijk Aan Zee events have collected some of the strongest groups of GM players ever in one location. Certainly a stronger field than some of the older WC events. Yet the WC event awarded the title "World Chess Champion" all the same, even as many were going "wow!" at the Wijk Aan Zee tournaments.

The human chess is a really bad example because Kasparov was consider the WC for a long time when he did not have the official title. Anyway, totally irrelevant to my point.

Miguel

[Laskos]

Besides that you always bring silly and misplaced analogies. Like that the titles "World Champion" or "Olympic Champion" are not often misleading (in Cycling, Tennis, etc.).

Of course. World Championships in Soccer, Hockey, Track-and-Field, Swimming, Skating, Volleyball, Cycling , etc. etc. are all extremey misplaced analogies for a World Championship in Computer Chess. Obviously they have nothing to do with each other. They are just World Championships, and for Computer Chess we of course must have a World Championship in stead...

Who is being silly here?

What you don't acknowledge is that when there is parctically no difference in strength between the opponents, it is really not very relevant who is World Champion. Who cares about 30Elo?

Well, TCEC has a resolving power of ~30 points. And sure you are being silly here, because establishing the strongest is the _goal_ of a World Championship, that a WC doesn't have the resolving power to do that is a negative feature of that competition. In games of humans this is often the case because of the limited human resources. ICGA what, doesn't have enough electricity? I would like a statement from ICGA that they cannot afford more than 100kWh for their crappy, pre-historic championship with 150 points resolving power.

Sorry, but the world championship does NOT try to identify the strongest player in the world. Best way to do that is to take the #1 player on FIDE's list and give him the title each year.

A world championship tournament, as held for computer chess, has multiple purposes.

(1) attract interested programmers/developers to a central site where they can exchange ideas via discussion, formal presentation, etc. The attraction for the programmers is to play against other programs to see how their current program compares.

(2) attract future programmers/developers via the publicity the tournament attracts. IE to drive development forward.

To think that a 5-6-7-8-9 round tournament finds the best program in the world is utter nonsense. There are lots of development projects going on that don't compete for various reasons. You can't even guarantee you have the strongest programs playing, much less that the strongest will win a Swiss gambit.

The title "world champion" simply means that at a specific date in time, a specific group of players came together and played a Swiss tournament, and player X won and was awarded the title of "world champion." It means no more nor no less than that. Certainly not that the winner is the best there is.

It seems that many simply do not understand the basic concepts, which makes the discussions go way off course.

You seem to have missed the whole discussion following my post. I will not repeat myself, more so when arguing with you, a known epitome of sophistry and lack of acceptance for other's, usually more sound than yours arguments.

[jhellis3]

What a straw man argument. WHERE has the ICGA said any other WC is not legitimate. In fact, WHICH "other event" has even claimed to be a "world computer chess championship event?"

Calling it a strawn man fallacy is a straw man fallacy. My comments are and have always been in response to the attitude expressed by the OP. You have misinterpreted my comments as an attack on the ICGA, which they are not. The comments I have made were only illustrative examples of the flaws in others' reasoning in this thread.

BTW, there IS a linux users group. I doubt they think windows is legitimate, for reasons you probably wouldn't understand. The ICGA has claimed NOTHING. They have simply hosted a WCCC event since 1977.

The first sentence is pretty condescending and quite frankly arrogant, but I digress. The second sentence again misses the context of my statements, which were made in response to the idea that one can not claim to be "world champion" based upon alternate criteria, when clearly they can. Again, I did not say the ICGA did any of this.

And nobody has said it DOES matter to anyone outside the ICGA.

Surely you jest. This is the core point of the OP. That Komodo's claim to be World Champion based upon the TCEC result was not legitimate.

You want a spectator's association, form one. But don't expect the ICGA to change internal policies because you want them to.

Please stop putting words in my mouth... I am completely fine with ICGA. The problem I have is that of other people's perception of what the ICGA titles mean (which they are perfectly entitled to) and the insistence that everyone else's perception much match their own (which they are obviously not entitled to).

The argument was, quite simply, if you win a tournament, you are NOT automatically the world chess champion. There have been incredibly strong human events in past years. Not a single one of them claimed to be world champion until they played in an event titled "world chess championship"

So are you saying that if Martin had simply called the event the TCEC World Championship, the claim would be valid? And if Martin adopts that label and applies it retroactively, it would valid? Of course, it would be, because he doesn't have to ask anyone for permission to do just that. I suppose if he wanted to lend the title a little extra gravitas, he could form the TCEC consortium with members consisting of direct contributors to the event. But that is mostly just for show anyway...

[ouachita]

I think I see a new record here: a reply with 12 quotes embedded. Keep it going, perhaps you can eclipse 20, maybe 30, quotes in a single reply?

[Keith317]

Well, right or wrong (and what does an idiot like me know) but this thread has done 50 x more marketing for Komodo than any World Champion claims.

If you then consider that here may be no (or minimal) additional sales from thos then I wonder about the amount of cerebral power here that generates so little light but so much heat.

[ouachita]

Komodo gets the last laugh, as they have arranged a match versus the ICC at http://voting.chessclub.com/komodo/ and otherwise at ICC

Go K Go!

[bob]

What a straw man argument. WHERE has the ICGA said any other WC is not legitimate. In fact, WHICH "other event" has even claimed to be a "world computer chess championship event?"

Calling it a strawn man fallacy is a straw man fallacy. My comments are and have always been in response to the attitude expressed by the OP. You have misinterpreted my comments as an attack on the ICGA, which they are not. The comments I have made were only illustrative examples of the flaws in others' reasoning in this thread.

BTW, there IS a linux users group. I doubt they think windows is legitimate, for reasons you probably wouldn't understand. The ICGA has claimed NOTHING. They have simply hosted a WCCC event since 1977.

The first sentence is pretty condescending and quite frankly arrogant, but I digress. The second sentence again misses the context of my statements, which were made in response to the idea that one can not claim to be "world champion" based upon alternate criteria, when clearly they can. Again, I did not say the ICGA did any of this.

And nobody has said it DOES matter to anyone outside the ICGA.

Surely you jest. This is the core point of the OP. That Komodo's claim to be World Champion based upon the TCEC result was not legitimate.

You want a spectator's association, form one. But don't expect the ICGA to change internal policies because you want them to.

Please stop putting words in my mouth... I am completely fine with ICGA. The problem I have is that of other people's perception of what the ICGA titles mean (which they are perfectly entitled to) and the insistence that everyone else's perception much match their own (which they are obviously not entitled to).

The argument was, quite simply, if you win a tournament, you are NOT automatically the world chess champion. There have been incredibly strong human events in past years. Not a single one of them claimed to be world champion until they played in an event titled "world chess championship"

So are you saying that if Martin had simply called the event the TCEC World Championship, the claim would be valid? And if Martin adopts that label and applies it retroactively, it would valid? Of course, it would be, because he doesn't have to ask anyone for permission to do just that. I suppose if he wanted to lend the title a little extra gravitas, he could form the TCEC consortium with members consisting of direct contributors to the event. But that is mostly just for show anyway...

I have a hard time imaging ANYONE calling their event "the world computer chess championship" after 37 years of ICGA events. But they could. And those who want could take it seriously. I've been doing this too long. The WCCC _IS_ something put on by the ICGA, period...

[bob]

Leagues last months. World Championships and Olympic games etc tend to last a couple of weeks.

Harvey,

Every self respecting sport has a body that is recognized and endorsed by the vast majority of sportsmen / women. What once was since 2011 is no longer. Whatever the reason you have to act.

You keep making that pronouncement - the ICGA is no longer recognized.

Selective reading on your end, see the red above.

There is no reason to involve the Rybka controversy into the discussion. Forget about Rybka, it is what it is and doing nothing won't solve the above problem, the last 2½ year has proven that.

You will remember the days the WCCC and WMCCC were the yearly highlight, the magazins and CC fora exploded. That popularity halted (quite roughly) exactly when?

Circa 1997, to be exact. I assume you realize the significance of that date? Never was the same after that. Suddenly no TV crews showed up, no vendors kicked in tens of thousands of dollars or provided special hardware, etc.

You are not reading again. The WCCC's from 1998-2010 were just fine regarding popularity.

Now look up the number of postings of the last WCCC (Japan) here, there are hardly any.

You don't have to be a prophet to predict how this will end, if things already are not irreversable in the meantime by the 2½ year lack of action from David. As if doing nothing ever solved a problem.

Quite often, doing NOTHING is much better than doing something WRONG.

Yeah, do nothing about vice-world-champion LOOP (Amsterdam 2007), do nothing about Thinker, do not investgate Fritz 14.

Yeah... that kind of sweeping things under the carpet by silencing it.

I told you time and time again there will be no LOOP verdict. You promised there would be. Tell me your progress.

Sorry, but wrong. WC's since 1997 or so have fallen off drastically, both participation, publicity, sponsorships, etc. In the 80's and 90's we had live TV crews present every round, etc. My wife surprised me with a scrapbook in early 1984, the year after we won our first WCCC in New York in 1983. She had articles from all sorts of well-known publications. New York Times. Computer World. Wall Street Journal. Byte magazine. Chess Life and Review, ACM SigArt, this thing was about 3" thick. Had no idea there had been that kind of publicity until our USM publicity department started sending her all sorts of stuff. Today? Nada. Discussions on CCC or r.g.c.c are not the problem. It is the lack of interest everywhere else that forms the basis of the problem.

There WILL be a loop verdict.

Yes, hard to find ICGA in the NYT. But you still have computer chess there...
http://gambit.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01 ... blogs&_r=0

That is the whole point. If I guy with a computer in Sweden can do it (even on an age in which print media is becoming obsolete), how on earth an Institution cannot? We can debate forever what the reasons are, but at the end of the day, one is succeeding and the other is not.

Miguel

That is NOT the New York Times. That's a blog.

That is how the NYT put articles. That is the NYT.

Doesn't even have the facts correct since Rybka didn't win the last 4 WCCC events even...

This is the typical ICGA bashing nonsense. I gave you examples of the kind of publicity we got for ONE SINGLE 4 day tournament. Enough DIFFERENT sources to produce a scrapbook over 3" thick. And you offer up this kind of nonsense as to what the ICGA doesn't get today? There is no comparison between today and pre-1997.

It is not ICGA bashing, I am stating the fact that it is failing to attract as much as attention as Martin Tournament.

Miguel

The NYT is a newspaper. Printed. That is a blog. Doesn't even have the facts right. And you cite ONE blog post from 2011 and claim that is better than ICGA events?

No, it is not printed. By the way, how many read newspapers printed today? It is both, and the printed part is following the path of the Dodo. NYT has contributors that write articles in the form of blogs. One of them is a Nobel Laureate, for instance (Paul Krugman).

It appears, based on your research, it is not attracting ANY attention. 3 years old and counting.

TCEC is being mentioned in every single chess outlet, being commented by GMs, not to mentioned being supported by Chessdom, who is being reached by a huge number of people. Houdini's fame skyrocketed among chess players after its victory in TCEC season 1. The chat that follows the games peaked at 400 people (what I saw), and 1500 when it was co-broadcasted with Anand-Carlsen. I saw there Argentinians following it from at least two different Universities, and since that is my home country the radio of one of them interviewed me (a complete amateur! the previous interviewee was GM Michael Adams).

So, the visibility that it is starting to have exceeds in orders of magnitude what the ICGA championship have. Yes, TCEC has three years, ICGA had more than three decades and it is in decline, very fast.

What I am saying is nothing really new, it is quite obvious. In fact, I am agreeing with you. Not you now, I am agree with your self a decade ago when you were complaining about ICGA's trends, and you truly questioned how much of a championship ICGA's were. You clearly preferred CCT then, did you not?. Thing got worse and worse. This cannot be denied and the point is that ICGA has not been successful to revert this trend. That is the reality.

I am not arguing that ICGA tournament should not be called World Championship, I am arguing that they have not done what is necessary to protect the prestige for a while. When that happens, other venues start to come up. Now the prestige has been taken over by TCEC. So, we are now with a World Championship with no prestige, and a tournament with a lot of prestige. When that happens, an unstable equilibrium arises that causes all these discussions.

Miguel

The ICGA is not perfect. But they ARE doing what the programmers request, namely using a set of rules the programmers have agreed on over the years, modified here and there over the years, and then enforcing those rules the best they can. I don't really care who claims to be what nowadays. All I want is to play in tournaments with zero derivatives, period. No exceptions. No grey areas. The ICGA tries to provide that, just as we have in the CCT events. That it excludes some is simply tough. Someone is free to create a calling-all-clones tournament if they want. I won't play. I don't care who does, it is still a free world.

The biggest problem I see is that many are whining about rule 2 being outdated. Yet NOBODY has offered any suggestions on how to improve rule 2. I certainly want to see it clarified a great deal. To get rid of the stupid excuses like "yes, if you type the code, then it is original." The rule needs to be expanded to a full page, apparently, carefully spelling out what most of us can figure out, namely what is original and what is not.

Rule 2? it is completely irrelevant to the point I am trying to make.

As far as prestige goes, TCEC is not a tournament in the strictest sense of the word. No one "gathers".

The only (or one of the few) programmers I did not see in the TCEC chat room is you, and that explains why you think nobody gathers.

When are the games played? I am in my office 8-5pm (or later with 6-7-8pm classes on occasion). Weekends are my only chance for the most part. An event that spans weeks is not exactly convenient. The CCT events are done over two days, and don't take all of both days.

I'm not looking for a new career watching a long-running chess tournament. The ICGA events started off as 4 day events, once a year. Doable.

The time period is impossibly long to get a group together. So for max prestige, why is not topping CCRL the "cat's meow"?

The prestige of TCEC is not under debate.

So no response? Is longer better? CCRL is longer. Is shorter better? WCCC is shorter. So what makes something "in the middle" the most prestigious? Just a casual vote?

WAY more games, WAY LESS error. The ICGA event is 7-9 rounds depending on the year. I suppose one could argue that Wijk Aan Zee was more prestigious than some of the past world championship cycles, where there were zonals (some of which had lousy players) where everyone worked their way up through those, to the inter-zonals, and finally to the final 1-1 match with the previous world champion. Wijk Aan Zee events have collected some of the strongest groups of GM players ever in one location. Certainly a stronger field than some of the older WC events. Yet the WC event awarded the title "World Chess Champion" all the same, even as many were going "wow!" at the Wijk Aan Zee tournaments.

The human chess is a really bad example because Kasparov was consider the WC for a long time when he did not have the official title. Anyway, totally irrelevant to my point.

Miguel

[Adam Hair]

As a reminder, this is what the OP wrote:

I am not sure how this has evolved. That at chess program can self proclaim itself with World Championship Status.

http://komodochess.com/

From the Komodo site.

"2013 World Chess Engine Champion!"

What is strange about the Komodo claim and as far as I know. TCEC has never claimed itself with any kind of World Computer Chess Champion Status.

We have a WCCC history and a 2013 World Computer Champion and it is not Komodo.

http://icga.uvt.nl/wp-uploads/conferenc ... 202013.pdf

From ICGA
Final
standing 2013:

1. and World Champion Software Hiarcs.

Under Komodo's logic of claiming World Championship Status. Houdini 4 could also claim itself to be the World Computer Chess Engine Champion, because like TCEC. CCRL also is a rating list and performs tournaments to rate chess programs. And Right now Houdini 4 is the best chess engine on the CCRL list. And CCRL plays more programs and plays far more games then TCEC.

When I first saw the proclamation on the Komodo site, I must say that I was a little surprised. After all, Martin does not claim that TCEC is the world championship for computer chess. However, the Komodo proclamation is not so baseless that it should cause indignation. After all, TCEC is a multi-month competition involving the top engines on a computer that is much better than the CCRL reference computer. Enough games are played so that the eventual winner can reasonably be considered deserving, and the level of play exhibited in the games (especially during the later rounds) is higher than that found in any rating list games, including SSDF. The way I see it, Komodo beat the other top engines in an extensive tournament and could lay a claim on being the world champion.

[Adam Hair]

Any organisation can run a World Championship, and the winner can claim that title. The ICGA is one example.

Actually this is almost universally not true. The way it works in real life is that people who engage in a certain competative activity organize themselves into an official representative body, and delegate the right to organize a World Championship exclusively to that body.

So yes, I could jump on my bicycle, ride a few laps around the block, and then call myself "World Champion cycling". (Or "God of the Wheels", or whatever. There are no limits to how I could call myself.)

But I would be lying. Everyone would know that, and at best would think I was a pompous idiot.

This is not exactly what occur. Though the title of "World Chess Engine Champion" is a self-proclamation, Komodo accomplish a feat that was noteworthy by winning the TCEC.

Only one organization can award the title World Championship cycling, and that is the UCI. Because cyclist have agreed that the UCI is their representative body.

In Chess the globally representative body is FIDE. For a Chess title to be more than just a 'Mickey-Mouse title' it must be endorsed by FIDE. The largest (if not the only) organization of Chess-program authors is ICGA, and it is associated with FIDE. So they have the monopoly of awarding World-Championship titles in computer Chess.

The question for me is "Does the ICGA have the same mandate from the engine authors that it did when it was founded?". The answer seems to be "no". Of course, no other organization of authors has come into being (though, if Don's health had not deteriorated there may have been a new organization), so there is no one else handing out world championship titles. But it does not seem to me that the ICGA is the official organization for the majority of engine authors nowadays.

The Komodo people are simply lying, for obvious commercial benefits.

Those are the facts. It is rather disappointing that the Komodo team resorts to such cheap methods for financial gain. If they think they deserve the title, the honorable way would be to compete for it. If I were the organizer of TCEC, I would consider this claim sufficient reason to ban Komodo from further participation, as they are obviously abusing the privilage of having been allowed to participate.

They were not "allowed" to participant. I believe Martin chose to included Komodo, and may have been thrilled that Don took an active participatory role.