More proof of Strelka cloning

[Stan Arts]

Bravo Tord! You might have just saved some lives! Plus reading your code gives me lots of ideas and delays the onset of brain crumble.

I'm wrong then, Tord saved humanity after all.

[mjlef]

Bravo Tord! You might have just saved some lives! Plus reading your code gives me lots of ideas and delays the onset of brain crumble.

I'm wrong then, Tord saved humanity after all.

You are saying that like saving humanity is a good thing. That has not been proven yet!

[Daniel Mehrmann]

...I'm so going to be flamed for this comment...

"This is precisely why I am NOT and advocate of open-source engines..., especially strong engines..."

Example open source engines with rating, say, under 1800 are fine and allow the community to grow with newcomers learning the basic techniques..., but

Why have open-source engine in excess of 2500??? It hurts the chess engine community far more than doing anything good!

That's correct.

I must agree here as well.
With a bit exaggerated words i'm must say that Rybka without an opensource fruit engine would be under 2500 ELO today.

Best,
Daniel

[Karlo Bala]

He cares. Remember he almost cried when accused the first time. But, again, IF he cheated, why he left a track as the one pointed by Martin?

Indolence, forgetfullness, what?

Fernando

It seems that it was type of a game by him to see if people are smart enough to find that it is a clone.

In the first time he tried to hide it better and had success in convincing other people that it is not a clone.

Now he decided to do his program more similiar to rybka and wanted to see if people are stupid enough to believe that it is not a clone.

Uri

Someone who is capable to write almost identical program to Rybka is not stupid, and I think that was intentional. After releasing of Rybka, we all have objection about NPS, truncated PV, suspicious depth etc. Then, few months ago, some guy (named rubkin, or something like that) says on russian forum that he decomplied Rubka and that he is going to reprogram Rybka and show real NSP and PV. Yet, Strelka is few rating points weaker, maybe because it is little slower, or because author could not find every aspect of eval (it seems that search is identical). Now we have real NPS and PV, so what we want more? ... yes I know, source code, but that is not going to happen

[Dr.Wael Deeb]

...I'm so going to be flamed for this comment...

"This is precisely why I am NOT and advocate of open-source engines..., especially strong engines..."

Example open source engines with rating, say, under 1800 are fine and allow the community to grow with newcomers learning the basic techniques..., but

Why have open-source engine in excess of 2500??? It hurts the chess engine community far more than doing anything good!

That's correct.

I must agree here as well.
With a bit exaggerated words i'm must say that Rybka without an opensource fruit engine would be under 2500 ELO today.

Best,
Daniel

No,this is a pure sample of speculation,how do you know that,did you take a look at Rybka's source code
I don't think so....

[Tord Romstad]

Why have open-source engine in excess of 2500??? It hurts the chess engine community far more than doing anything good!

That's correct.

I must agree here as well.
With a bit exaggerated words i'm must say that Rybka without an opensource fruit engine would be under 2500 ELO today.

You seem to contradict yourself here. If you really believe that Rybka without the open source Fruit would be under 2500 Elo (which I don't believe at all, even with the addition of the phrase "a bit exaggerated"), isn't that a great example of how open source programs help the community?

Tord

[K I Hyams]

...I'm so going to be flamed for this comment...

"This is precisely why I am NOT and advocate of open-source engines..., especially strong engines..."

Example open source engines with rating, say, under 1800 are fine and allow the community to grow with newcomers learning the basic techniques..., but

Why have open-source engine in excess of 2500??? It hurts the chess engine community far more than doing anything good!

That's correct.

I must agree here as well.
With a bit exaggerated words i'm must say that Rybka without an opensource fruit engine would be under 2500 ELO today.

Best,
Daniel

If my memory serves me correctly, Vas said that access to Fruit code was worth about 30 Elo to him.

[Tord Romstad]

I'll give it a try.
I think :

-If computerchess were entirely scientific, opensource is great.
-When there's a competitive element, opensource is bad.

I admit that I am born without the competition gene, but I sincerely believe that sharing knowledge and source code does not destroy competition, but on the contrary brings competition to an even higher level. This is not restricted to computer chess, the same arguments apply to software in general (and probably to many other fields as well). From a macroeconomic point of view, proprietary software doesn't make much sense: The cost of developers all over the world constantly having to reinvent all sorts of big and small wheels must be staggering. But now I'm rapidly heading towards CTF territory, so I should better stop here.

Computerchess science? I don't think so, used to be, perhaps till 10-20 years ago.

Yes, it was much more interesting 10-20 years ago. These days, most of the interesting research seems to be focused on go and shogi.

Now it seems all about tuning evaluation and tuning an alphabeta+nullmove+other reductions search. I don't think at the top there are many exceptions to that. That's not exactly science. It's hardly AI programming either.

I agree.

Then there are a lot of computerchess tournaments, online, over the board, etc. So there's a strong competitive element. I for one get much more joy from watching a newly written 1500 Elo program duking it out with higher rated ones and watch it develop over years as the programmer thinks up new ideas, then a tournament where everyone starts off at 2800 Elo with tuned Fruit's and tuned Glaurung's and soon tuned Rybka's. Which were/is the case if total code-sharing would become/is the norm. If someone wants try state-of-the-art (ehh..see point above) searchtechniques that's fine, but do it privately because you ruin or ruined the computerchess-amateur-scene with it. Not everyone wants to go the easy way and some want to develop something of their own.

Your last sentence is very true: Indeed very few programmers choose to go the easy way; almost everyone develop something of their own, simply because it is so much more fun. I don't recognize the picture you paint at all. There are lots of new 1500 Elo programs appearing all the time, and almost no tuned Fruits or Glaurungs (apart from Toga).

It is fine when someone wants to write the strongest program in the world, but don't think your doing science. Having to share your work for progress of whole therefore does not apply, it's not like you devised some miracle-medicine or nuclear fusion to save humanity. Notice how there's no real practical use to programs getting stronger for about 10 years now, except for the competitive element.

When we get sufficiently close to perfect chess, computer chess will indeed get less interesting (and in my eyes, we have already been there for a while), but this is not necessarily a negative development: It's a nice opportunity for people to move on to more challenging problems, and hope that our experiences from computer chess will prove useful.

As for sharing ideas, I will share any idea (and my engine actually has original ideas, imagine that.) in discussion or written form, that way the other has to use his brain and think, instead of pasting or using sourcecode and think later.

There is no contradiction between sharing ideas in written form and sharing actual source code, and my impression is that the practice of pasting or using source code and thinking later isn't very widespread.

"Open source programs are a great educational resource."

Educational for who? For 5 people in the world who already have written a 2400 Elo engine ?

The source code of Phalanx, as previously mentioned, taught me almost everything I know about computer chess beyond the basics. Reading Phalanx's source code was also how I learned the C programming language (which I have never really studied). I had not even written a 2400 Elo engine, nor even a 1000 Elo chess engine before learning from Phalanx.

The simpler searchtechniques and an introduction to computerchessprogramming can be taught well (better even) with <2000 Elo opensource programs, if they wish to look at code.

For this, you don't need a chess program at all. What you can learn from programs like TSCP, you can learn more quickly and easily by reading a 20 line pseudocode implementation of the alpha beta algorithm.

It is fine when someone wishes to experiment with a strong program, such a person can contact an author and have fun with whichever sourcecode, even have basement tournaments with it, just don't release it publicly.

But hardly anyone does release it publicly, and when they do (as in the case of Toga), people who don't like it can just refrain from using it. I don't see the problem.

Also if someone wants to modify your program that is great, how does that require it to be open source publicly?

Simply donwnloading an open source engine is much easier than writing to dozens of engine authors and asking them if they will kindly send you their code.

"Free open source engines can be used for many more purposes than a proprietary engine. Users can port it to new platforms without assistance from the author"

I for one would like to hear about it as an author, and would like to assist.

So would I, as long as I have the time and technical knowledge, which is not always the case.

"I am in contact with someone who is currently developing a chess program for handheld computers with my engine as its brain. This obviously wouldn't be possible with a proprietary program. "

You are in contact and assisting, so how did it require your engine to be open source publicly?

Because otherwise they wouldn't have found it at all.

"The availability of numerous strong open source engines help to show beginners that there is more than one way to write a strong chess program"

I would argument the lack of open source would actually bring more diversity.

Let's face it: Neither the situation where no strong programs are open source (your utopia?) nor the situation where all chess programs are open source (my utopia) is ever going to happen. A more practical question is whether it is preferable to have a small or a bigger number of strong open source engines. I think a bigger number is preferable, for the reason I explained.

Tord

[Stan Arts]

I admit that I am born without the competition gene

If you think that's bad, imagine being born with an idealistic gene, then CCC is a rather unhealthy place, reading here gives me all sorts of twitches and thunderbolts of lightning in my mind's eye.

but I sincerely believe that sharing knowledge and source code does not destroy competition, but on the contrary brings competition to an even higher level.

I agree, but it leaves people much less of a choice to go along with the available knowledge or not.

Indeed very few programmers choose to go the easy way; almost everyone develop something of their own, simply because it is so much more fun. I don't recognize the picture you paint at all. There are lots of new 1500 Elo programs appearing all the time, and almost no tuned Fruits or Glaurungs (apart from Toga).

You're probably right and numbers are low.
Even the low numbers can and seem to be quite harmfull to such a community though.

Let's face it: Neither the situation where no strong programs are open source (your utopia?) nor the situation where all chess programs are open source (my utopia) is ever going to happen. A more practical question is whether it is preferable to have a small or a bigger number of strong open source engines. I think a bigger number is preferable, for the reason I explained.

Sounds like a good conclusion.

Stan

[fern]

Difficult to believe that. Take a look at his explanation. Nobody engage in such arduous job just to make a joke. BTW, people are not stupids because they believed or still believe there is not cheat.
According the explanation, I tend to believe is not a clone and not a not-clone either. I see a mix of things, a complicated event.
Else: have you used your positional tests with other programs? I am curious to know how in such weird position engines behave.

My best
Fernando