World Champion?

[James Constance]

Given that the program in the WCCC used different hardware, is it correct for a program to claim to be world champion? Or should they put on the box "Program X on hardware Y, computer world champ year Z"?

Congrats to Rybka, who would no doubt have won on equal hardware anyway!

[gerold]

Given that the program in the WCCC used different hardware, is it correct for a program to claim to be world champion? Or should they put on the box "Program X on hardware Y, computer world champ year Z"?

Congrats to Rybka, who would no doubt have won on equal hardware anyway!

Why not play them on equal hardware and see who wins.
Anything can happen in just a few games.

[hgm]

As WCCC is not a contest between programs, it is indeed not correct to claim that the winning program is World Champion, any more than it is correct to claim that the hardware on which it was running is World Champion.

[swami]

Given that the program in the WCCC used different hardware, is it correct for a program to claim to be world champion? Or should they put on the box "Program X on hardware Y, computer world champ year Z"?

Congrats to Rybka, who would no doubt have won on equal hardware anyway!

Why not play them on equal hardware and see who wins.
Anything can happen in just a few games.

In events like WCCC, you can bring any hardware you want, Onus is on you to look for companies that can sponsor the faster hardware. I don't think WCCC's should be played on equal hardware platform.

[Titu]

Given that the program in the WCCC used different hardware, is it correct for a program to claim to be world champion? Or should they put on the box "Program X on hardware Y, computer world champ year Z"?

Congrats to Rybka, who would no doubt have won on equal hardware anyway!

Why not play them on equal hardware and see who wins.
Anything can happen in just a few games.

It's an old deiscussion of course. Equal hardware is boring IMHO.

Anyone can play a 10 rounds "WCC" at home on 2 cores, 4 cores or 8 cores. There are very good public books nowadays as well.

Or if you want to know the real strength then check all those independent rating lists, played on different hardwares and with 1000s of games.

[Ovyron]

Well, they wanted to bring the strongest automated chess entities on earth for a tournament, and this can't be done with equal hardware (unless you give 40 cores to everyone but most programs aren't capable of using them properly.)

I don't see anything wrong about calling "Cluster Rybka" the world champion.

[hgm]

It's an old deiscussion of course. Equal hardware is boring IMHO.

Anyone can play a 10 rounds "WCC" at home on 2 cores, 4 cores or 8 cores. There are very good public books nowadays as well.

This is not true, as the programs that are competing might be version that are not yet released, or might be completely private. Also, they might use tournament books, which are specially tuned against their opponents. Public books, no matter how good, are no substitute for this.

That there is a large element of chance, due to the limited number of games, is indeed what makes the event interesting: every individual game is important. This is one of the defining characteristics of sports events, and sets those apart from scientific determination of the playing strength.

But I don't see how the hardware being different does contribute much to the excitement. I would be inclined to believe the opposite is true: due to hardware differences, the number of programs that have a real chance is much smaller than it could have been. To stay with the football metaphore: the World Cup would not be a very interesting event if only the German and Brazilian team would be allowed to play on kangaroo-leather shoes, while all other teams would have to play on wooden cloggers...

[BubbaTough]

Yes, Kasparov should never have been declared World Champion...only reason he was better than me is better hardware!

[hgm]

Yes, Kasparov should never have been declared World Champion...only reason he was better than me is better hardware!

This is flawed reasoning. "Kasparov" does not refer to a program, but to the combined hardware/software entity.

You could say that it was not "Kasparov's Chess knowledge" that was World Champion But of course no one claimed that in the first place...

[BubbaTough]

This is flawed reasoning. "Kasparov" does not refer to a program, but to the combined hardware/software entity.

I guess that makes him like "Toga Cluster" except the Kasparov entity keeps getting worse hardware, and toga cluster keeps getting better hardware .

-Sam