[quote="bob"Rule 2 is about program code, not the book. In fact, I am not sure where that analysis came from. But books have been "free" for years. At one point, Ken Thompson did the typesetting for David's volume on the Dragon, and David gave Ken permission to use all of that analysis (many many games) in Ken's opening book. Bert Gower and I personally hand-typed MCO-10, MCO-11, and big parts of ECO to create the book for Cray Blitz. The only rule that has been used in recent years is that no single "book author" can provide an opening book for more than one program. The source of the opening book material has never been discussed...[/quote]
But this rule is so arbitrary. Let's face it – if engines had been switched between Diep and you before the game started the result of this tournament game would have been exactly the other way round – that's way worse than a shared piece-square table in engines – it is deterministic ( if this is a word). And this was supposed to be about artifical intelligence ..
During the three years I somehow „participated“ I got the clear impression that the WCCC is simply some kind of social event ( a very nice one I might add).
The tournament director Jaap just has no clue of course ( no idea *what* he has a clue of btw :p) , but all the participants know this very well.
And tournament rules get violated right and left – I give the three most blatant examples that come to my mind instantly:
1.) Crafty-Shredder, Ramat-Gan 2004, Rd. 1
At about move 40 in a dead drawn position after a very nice game so far Crafty crashed ( you may remember as you fixed the bug before the next round). I tried to set this position back up according to the tournament rules, but as this was a real bug, this was simply impossible without Crafty crashing again.
On the other side of the board sat a determined Stephan Meyer-Kahlen, watching my efforts with interest.
The 15 minutes deadline was approaching fastly. ( too lazy to check if I remember the 15 minute thing correctly, but you guys will know the correct amount of minutes). Of course Stephan and me knew back then ( Jaap, who knows what he knows
.. )
Finally I decided to simply try and set up the position without history ( a clear violation of rules, and I saw in Stephan's face that he knew very well) . And even if this fact were ignored , it actually just took too long.
Now I was Mr. Unknown nice guy interested in computerchess and clearly desperate in this situation operating Crafty in such a major event for the very first time, so he decided to let it go ( which might have cost him the title btw!!) – after the game was finally running again it ended in a quick draw of course.
2.) FIBChess 2004
This was maybe one of the funniest things I ever experienced in computerchess world. FIBChess was no real competitor at all. Some Mexican(?) guy had just downloaded a very weak engine ( TSCP-like) by a Spanish original author he somehow knew personally and took it to apply for the WCCC event in Israel without the knowledge of the engine author ( btw getting all the bonusses offered back then, like travel expenses, hotel costs ..) ..
This was discovered during the event. But as it would have been extremley embarassing if ever found out by the public, it never made any news. The guy just got a nice free holidays
.
3.) Junior- Crafty – Blitz event 2005
I am not 100% sure about the year, but I think I got it right. Amir Ban operated and made a operator mistake making the wrong move on the actual physical chessboard. Jaap was standing next by. I let him take it back.
I have no problem to understand how all the cloning discussions are very important – but ICGA-wise - they really have no standards anyway IMHO.
Peter
