The Fate of Future WCCC's..??

[bob]

Say a commercial program lets use Zappa as an eg. - it wins WCCC on fast 64bit hardware. When it won 3 or 4 years ago people said wow I must have that engine - they bought it and found on their single 32bit machines it was only mediocre - weaker than Junior and Shredder who also competed that year. Is this fair to customers/spectators & sponsors?

Can you tell me exactly the names of the people who bought Zappa directly as a result of that tournament, and ran it on their single CPU 32-bit machine and then complained ?
And anyway, an intelligent sensible person is unlikely in my view to use the result of one tournament as their sole point of reference for their purchasing decision. If they do, then they have only themselves to blame.

That is quite funny - you could say the exact same thing about the unaffordable for most W5580 machines that played in WCCC Forget clusters, 99% people could only dream about a W5580. A cluster of multiple Quad Core Intel boxes for example would be cheaper than the W5580, as pointed out many times by other people here

I know that as Zappa was an American program sales were huge, in the USA, after it won and the complaints followed soon after.

Huge = maybe total sales of 500 copies at best???

People keep using this Cluster is cheaper argument. But people do not turn up to tournaments with cheap Clusters - Sjengs was actually, allegedly, more expensive than Rybkas. I say allegedly because GCP will not confirm what was in his borrowed cluster. Neither was anyone allowed to benchmark the machine he played the main tournament with.

People also show up with ND hardware that is not yet commercially available, or hardware with wild overclocking and cooling... This doesn't stop the "arms race" it just pushes it into a different direction.

People may only be able to dream of owning the machines that Shredder, Hiarcs, Sjeng, Junior and Rybka used this year - but anyone can walk into a shop and order one knowing that any of the above programs will run on them out of the box.

Well it is not for me to say what the sales figures were but if its 1000 or 1 million the point is the same.

I agree in the cluster tournament people can keep its contents secret - the nature of a limited tournament to me implies people if asked should prove what hardware they are using or at least allow a simple benchmark to be run. I did not insist at the WCCC as I have no reason to believe GCP would not be honest.

What good is a rule that can't be enforced? I'd not find it hard at all to make a 32-core box look like an 8-core box except when running Crafty. Linux is open source and could be fixed up to look like an 8-core box when it really has 32. So you need the machine "on site". Which is not common, although it used to be a requirement in the WMCCC events, which is where this kind of limitation belongs.

No way to tell what a remote machine looks like, so this just offers yet another way to skirt the rules and gain a competitive advantage over the others. Won't happen? Check FIdelity years ago. Those days were miserable.

All I can say is that anyone found cheating should receive a long ban. But I agree if someone really wants to cheat they will find a way. Even with Clusters cheating is still possible - who knows what engine anyone is really running?

That was my point. If someone wants to cheat, it would be nearly impossible to prevent it unless we could come up with a couple of million bucks to build a playing venue where all outside interference is completely blocked... And that's impractical of course.

[Gian-Carlo Pascutto]

I do not think you were there? It is up to the operator to supply the PGN - I have no idea if yours did or not.

Not sure on that one. If we didn't I can "fix" that as I retrieved the games off the machine.

It's a bit weird anyway that there's missing PGN as both sides to a game would have to not send it in for that to happen. Imagine a World Championship where the players refuse to submit the game scores.

Although I seem to remember in China you and I did most of the work of collating the PGN's and you did most of the ICGA website updates.

I don't know who were the appointed volunteers for that this year. You would think the organization takes care of it, but ehh...

[Gian-Carlo Pascutto]

But people do not turn up to tournaments with cheap Clusters

This is not true and you know it very well.

Last year Jonny used a 16 core cluster (4 x Q6600). Toga used a 24 core cluster. I don't know Toga's exact config, but it probably won't have been much more expensive if at all, than a dual W5580's.

The first time I used the cluster was in Leiden last year, where we used 12 or 16 cores (I forgot) with cheap hardware (Q6600 + Phenom I + 2 dual cores or something like that). I am sure it was cheaper than the Skulltrail you were using in the same tournament.

This exact setup got banned for Pamplona mere weeks after we first publicly used it, and was banned in Leiden this year, too. Your Skulltrail or the more expensive machine you got afterwards were not.

[Harvey Williamson]

But people do not turn up to tournaments with cheap Clusters

This is not true and you know it very well.

Last year Jonny used a 16 core cluster (4 x Q6600). Toga used a 24 core cluster. I don't know Toga's exact config, but it probably won't have been much more expensive if at all, than a dual W5580's.

The first time I used the cluster was in Leiden last year, where we used 12 or 16 cores (I forgot) with cheap hardware (Q6600 + Phenom I + 2 dual cores or something like that). I am sure it was cheaper than the Skulltrail you were using in the same tournament.

This exact setup got banned for Pamplona mere weeks after we first publicly used it, and was banned in Leiden this year, too. Your Skulltrail or the more expensive machine you got afterwards were not.

C'est la vie - but your personal attacks against me since Leiden last year I have found really strange - until recently I ignored them but after Pamplona I decided I would not any more. The rules were changed. I agree with the changes you do not. Why can't we agree to disagree like others do? Then drink Scotch!!
My voice like yours is just one in a legitimate debate. A few weeks before Pamplona while you were blasting me anywhere you could I offered to operate for you in the Cluster tournament and suggested to Erdo he offered you his book - which he did. Personally I have no problems with you after I had met you only once I loaned you hardware for Amsterdam. Why you have to take this disagreement personally I have no idea.

[Rolf]

That was my point. If someone wants to cheat, it would be nearly impossible to prevent it unless we could come up with a couple of million bucks to build a playing venue where all outside interference is completely blocked... And that's impractical of course.

Years ago when I thought about the constant superiority of SHREDDER in championships I wrote about a similar scenario in special because at that time the SHREDDER engine itself wasnt winning in all tournaments when in special Stefan didnt operate himself. So my solution in a thought was that in every game against opponent X Stefan could have let run a model of the opponent to get some information about the probable continuation. Even if that model were weaker than the actual opponent it would still deliver valuble information. Ok, being no programmer I cant imagine how all this could be programmed but my idea is also interesting because Stefan was a long time and close collegue of DREIHIRN expert Althöfer. If it's true, and I believed that, that DREIHIRN leads to stronger results than just the single entity then it's expectable that Stefan had a step in front of his competitors.

My concrete question to the expert is, is that doable, is it favorable and in special is it allowed by the rules of the ICGA?

[bob]

That was my point. If someone wants to cheat, it would be nearly impossible to prevent it unless we could come up with a couple of million bucks to build a playing venue where all outside interference is completely blocked... And that's impractical of course.

Years ago when I thought about the constant superiority of SHREDDER in championships I wrote about a similar scenario in special because at that time the SHREDDER engine itself wasnt winning in all tournaments when in special Stefan didnt operate himself. So my solution in a thought was that in every game against opponent X Stefan could have let run a model of the opponent to get some information about the probable continuation. Even if that model were weaker than the actual opponent it would still deliver valuble information. Ok, being no programmer I cant imagine how all this could be programmed but my idea is also interesting because Stefan was a long time and close collegue of DREIHIRN expert Althöfer. If it's true, and I believed that, that DREIHIRN leads to stronger results than just the single entity then it's expectable that Stefan had a step in front of his competitors.

My concrete question to the expert is, is that doable, is it favorable and in special is it allowed by the rules of the ICGA?

Preparation against specific opponents has been done for years, and is perfectly against the rules. The rules only deal with what happens _after_ the first move is made over the board. Once the first move is played, the operators can not exert any influence over the game from that point forward. What they do prior to the game is not governed by the rules.

Once the first move is played, you can not use multiple programs unless you wrote them yourself. And you can not choose between the moves offered by each, that has to be done completely by the software.

[pijl]

I do not think you were there? It is up to the operator to supply the PGN - I have no idea if yours did or not.

The Deep Sjeng games were sent to the organisation.
Richard.

[Bo Persson]

You mean, like here:

http://www.f1update.com/full_story/view ... ger_be_F1/

[brianr]

Preparation against specific opponents has been done for years, and is perfectly against the rules. The rules only deal with what happens _after_ the first move is made over the board.

I assume you meant:
perfectly ok and not against the rules, right?

[bob]

Preparation against specific opponents has been done for years, and is perfectly against the rules. The rules only deal with what happens _after_ the first move is made over the board.

I assume you meant:
perfectly ok and not against the rules, right?

Right. I had just installed Fedora 11, and had not gotten the synaptics touch-pad utility so I could disable the thing. Occasional "thumb taps" deletes text or moves the cursor unintentionally.