Open Letter & $100,000 challenge to FIDE

[Vasik Rajlich]

Hi,

I'm making a $100,000 challenge (together with an open letter) to FIDE, for a match between Rybka and the winner of FIDE's upcoming 'Ultimate Computer Chess Challenge 2007'.

More info is here:

http://www.rybkachess.com/docs/ChallengeToFIDE.htm

If anybody could help me to spread this to other chess news channels, that would be great.

Vas

ps. Good luck to the freestylers this weekend

[Yar]

Good news !

[Lion]

Hi Vas,

I am a strong supporter of Rybka as many other here and have lot of respect for you and your work.

One question from my side is does the 100'000 dollars coming from external sponsor ?

I know Rybka is very strong, stronger than Fritz or Junior.

But putting of your own money in this match with this handicap of a pawn and a draw odd, would bevery risky !

Hope that I misunderstood and that these 100'000 dollars are coming from a sponsor.

Yours sincerly

[Nelson Hernandez]

Imagine if he IS putting the $100,000 on the table from his own bank account. That takes nerve, and it adds to the drama. I really believe it could get a ton of publicity and that it might even upstage the championship match as people finally realized that the quality of the computer games considerably surpassed those of the human games. But in my judgment Chessbase will never accept this challenge as it doesn't make business sense to lose such a match. They have much more to lose than to gain, while Rajlich has much more to gain than to lose.

[pkappler]

He's just offering a one-point handicap, *not* a one-pawn handicap. As strong as Rybka is, I don't think it can spot Fritz or Junior a pawn.

Good luck, Vas - I hope you get this match!

-Peter

[ArmyBridge]

and again "... with Rybka giving a handicap of one point plus draw odds and thus requiring a score of 13 out of 24 or better to win the match."!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, I know that the power of Rybka is overwhelming, but .. http://perso.orange.fr/lefouduroi/tourn ... htm#080307
I mean, give odds to any human GM is just free, but give this kind of advantages to program as Junior or Fritz could be too much ,don´t you think so Vas?, but well.. I hope that the FIDE accepts the challenge, would be very interesting to see the result. I think that we are back to the times at which Morphy did not have any serious challenger

[George Tsavdaris]

Hi,

I'm making a $100,000 challenge (together with an open letter) to FIDE, for a match between Rybka and the winner of FIDE's upcoming 'Ultimate Computer Chess Challenge 2007'.

More info is here:

http://www.rybkachess.com/docs/ChallengeToFIDE.htm

What i don't understand is this:

1)You say: "with Rybka giving a handicap of one point plus draw odds and thus requiring a score of 13 out of 24 or better to win the match."
What does that mean?

-OK, 1 point odds is easy to understand. You add to the final score 1 point to the opponent of Rybka.
-But what is draw odds? I thought it was that when Rybka draws, then the opponent takes a full point. Is this really?
If not then what it is exactly?

Because your conclusion(thus requiring a score of 13 out of 24 or better) takes into consideration only the 1 point odds.
But you say PLUS draw odds! Here i'm confused?!?! What are the draw odds?


2)And what about this FIDE match?
I mean how fair is the (random?) selection of 2 programs.
I'm speaking about the money($100000).
They say the winner takes $60000 and the loser $40000.
Who exactly will take these? The authors of Junior and Fritz or someone else?

Funny if true! It appears as a charity by FIDE that one random day has said: "So....,let's choose 2 persons and give them some $$$$."

[hgm]

Great Joke!

But you are not seriously thinking that the FIDE, or anyone else, is going to pay (or even risk) k$100 on computer Chess?

As I understand from your letter the event that is scheduled is merely a scam, ChessBase sponsoring the prizes that with certainty go to their own two engines. So no real money is involved...

[Alkelele]

Because your conclusion(thus requiring a score of 13 out of 24 or better) takes into consideration only the 1 point odds.
But you say PLUS draw odds! Here i'm confused?!?! What are the draw odds?"

This confused me also, but the math is right.

If Rybka wins 13-11, and 1 is added to 11, it is 13-12, and thus a win for Rybka.

If Rybka wins 12½-11½, we would get 12½-12½, and Rybka would lose because of the draw odds.

Basically, Rybka has to get +2 to win the match.

[Thomas Mayer]

Hi Vas,

fantastic idea. They never will take it because they know that 100:1 they would lose, but this shows how poor their engine decision for the "The Ultimate Computer Chess Challenge 2007" is.
Of course it is good when computer chess events in public happen and reach other people then just as few in the computer chess comunity. But it should be also in public that they simply "forgot" about the best engine for x86 environment. Sorry that I said only x86 environment, we simply do not know how good Hydra is, in my opinion Rybka on decent hardware will be definitely stronger, but we will never know for sure. Anyway, of course they forgot Hydra as well. So this looks really just like a marketing campaign...

Greets, Thomas