Vasik Rajlich Speaks!

[mclane]

Your last two sentences are nonsense. If ChessBase were to be unwilling to sell Rybka 5 at some time in the future on account of legal and public relations problems then it would certainly not be continuing to sell Rybka 4 as it does at present.

In addition to Rybka, ChessBase sells Fritz, Hiarcs, Junior, Shredder, Zap!Chess and Chess Tiger. Rybka is significantly stronger than all of them. ChessBase will continue to sell Rybka 4 (and will sell Rybka 5 in due course) because a very large number of people will always want to purchase the strongest commercial program available.

You seem to confuse the subjective opinions of the ICGA and the Grand Inquisitor with a legal decision. ChessBase will continue to sell Rybka so long as it is legal , so long as it is the strongest commercial program, and so long has it has a large customer base.

Perhaps Letouzey (or more likely the triumvirate of Levy, Hyatt and Williamson) will bring a legal case against Rajlich. I doubt whether any of those four gentlemen have the stomach for that (the Grand Inquisitor and Harvey much prefer endless words), but if they did then the fun would really start. But please note, Thorsten, that any legal case would have to be against Rybka 4 (or Rybka 5 when it appears) and not Rybka 1.0.

In the absence of a court case then there is no question that ChesssBase and others will sell the current and future versions of Rybka. The central fact (unpalatable as it is to the Grand Inquisitor) is that Vasik Rajlich has proved himself to be the most skilful programmer on the planet. And not only has he kept ahead of commercial rivals by a substantial margin, they all owe him a vote of thanks for improvements in their own programs by giving them a superior program against which to test and refine their own software.

IMO you overestimate rajlich. he has copied-pasted crafty and fruit and mixed them together. i see nothing genius in betraying people who trust you.

[Roger Brown]

Your last two sentences are nonsense. If ChessBase were to be unwilling to sell Rybka 5 at some time in the future on account of legal and public relations problems then it would certainly not be continuing to sell Rybka 4 as it does at present.

In addition to Rybka, ChessBase sells Fritz, Hiarcs, Junior, Shredder, Zap!Chess and Chess Tiger. Rybka is significantly stronger than all of them. ChessBase will continue to sell Rybka 4 (and will sell Rybka 5 in due course) because a very large number of people will always want to purchase the strongest commercial program available.

You seem to confuse the subjective opinions of the ICGA and the Grand Inquisitor with a legal decision. ChessBase will continue to sell Rybka so long as it is legal , so long as it is the strongest commercial program, and so long has it has a large customer base.

Perhaps Letouzey (or more likely the triumvirate of Levy, Hyatt and Williamson) will bring a legal case against Rajlich. I doubt whether any of those four gentlemen have the stomach for that (the Grand Inquisitor and Harvey much prefer endless words), but if they did then the fun would really start. But please note, Thorsten, that any legal case would have to be against Rybka 4 (or Rybka 5 when it appears) and not Rybka 1.0.

In the absence of a court case then there is no question that ChesssBase and others will sell the current and future versions of Rybka. The central fact (unpalatable as it is to the Grand Inquisitor) is that Vasik Rajlich has proved himself to be the most skilful programmer on the planet. And not only has he kept ahead of commercial rivals by a substantial margin, they all owe him a vote of thanks for improvements in their own programs by giving them a superior program against which to test and refine their own software.

Hello Derek,

Isn't Houdini the strongest program on the planet outside of the margin of error? Has Robert Houdart therefore proven himself to be the most skilful programmer on the planet and therefore worthy of praise by all programmers?

Houdini 1.5 appeared less than 13 months ago so ignoring the question whether it is ir is not a Rybka clone the fact is that Houdart has still to prove himself in the longer term. Rybka was the strongest program (by a wide margin) between 2006 and early 2011 - a substantial period of time. Houdini is a relatively new kid on the block. It will be interesting to see whether Houdini can achieve and maintain the gap over its rivals between 2012-2016 that Rybka achieved from 2006-10. If so then Houdart will indeed have proved himself to be the strongest programmer on the planet.

I simply do not understand your suggestion that Houdart is "worthy of praise by all programmers". The point about Rybka is that its appearance was followed by a measurable increase in the strength of the leading commercial programs - as pointed out by Soren Riis. This was partly because the engine authors tuned their programs to Rybka over a period of time and partly because (perhaps!) some of Rybka's code was revealed in open source clones. There simply has not been time for the main commercial programmers to benefit from Houdini in the way they benefited from Rybka.

Hello Derek,

Your point about the longevity of the supremacy of Rybka is well taken.

Time will tell.

The point about the possibility of copied code from Rybka in open source clones is not one I am going to touch. There is some evidence that perhaps they are not clones of Rybka at all.

Needless to say, I do not believe that the person best suited to prove or disprove that particular assertion is about to do so in the immediate future.

Tuning using Houdini is well under way but again, I agree that Houdini's ascendancy occupies a short period.

Your prose flows and is quite enjoyable, please post more in the General Forum.



Later.

[dj]

Your last two sentences are nonsense. If ChessBase were to be unwilling to sell Rybka 5 at some time in the future on account of legal and public relations problems then it would certainly not be continuing to sell Rybka 4 as it does at present.

In addition to Rybka, ChessBase sells Fritz, Hiarcs, Junior, Shredder, Zap!Chess and Chess Tiger. Rybka is significantly stronger than all of them. ChessBase will continue to sell Rybka 4 (and will sell Rybka 5 in due course) because a very large number of people will always want to purchase the strongest commercial program available.

You seem to confuse the subjective opinions of the ICGA and the Grand Inquisitor with a legal decision. ChessBase will continue to sell Rybka so long as it is legal , so long as it is the strongest commercial program, and so long has it has a large customer base.

Perhaps Letouzey (or more likely the triumvirate of Levy, Hyatt and Williamson) will bring a legal case against Rajlich. I doubt whether any of those four gentlemen have the stomach for that (the Grand Inquisitor and Harvey much prefer endless words), but if they did then the fun would really start. But please note, Thorsten, that any legal case would have to be against Rybka 4 (or Rybka 5 when it appears) and not Rybka 1.0.

In the absence of a court case then there is no question that ChesssBase and others will sell the current and future versions of Rybka. The central fact (unpalatable as it is to the Grand Inquisitor) is that Vasik Rajlich has proved himself to be the most skilful programmer on the planet. And not only has he kept ahead of commercial rivals by a substantial margin, they all owe him a vote of thanks for improvements in their own programs by giving them a superior program against which to test and refine their own software.

IMO you overestimate rajlich. he has copied-pasted crafty and fruit and mixed them together. i see nothing genius in betraying people who trust you.

I see! So all one has to do to create the strongest program is to mix and match Fruit (a good program but not the best) and Crafty (not in the top 20). If it was that easy why was that not even half-achieved by the very many programs such as Toga that were improved clones of Fruit?

In the years that followed, Rybka continued to improve and remained a long way ahead of its competitors, who were using Rybka to tune their own engines. Precisely how, Thorsten, did Rajlich achieve this? Did he re-mix and match Crafty and Fruit? Or did he mix-and-match Crafty and Fruit with other lesser engines such as Hiarcs and Shredder? Golly, I did not realize that programming was that simple...

You make yourself look ridiculous, Thorsten, if you seek to rubbish Rajlich and fail to ackowledge his talent - for it would be proven talent even if it were true that he had used some Fruit code in his early (and much weaker) versions of Rybka.

Finally, Thorsten, can you tell me why you have to failed to convince your chum Chris Whittington of the truth of your opinions? After all you were once so close, and you attributed almost god-like powers to him.

[mclane]

he translated fruit into a bitboard engine, like crafty is.
he also had the help of larry kaufmann. but larry kaufmann is now working with don dailey again.

crafty had ~2400+, fruit was 2800+.

i guess larrys help made also some 50 or 80 elo.

and there you have the rybka "wonder".

In the years that followed, Rybka continued to improve and remained a long way ahead of its competitors,

yes. the others did not copy fruit. they had own programs weaker than fruit.
if the others would have given up their own programs, they could have made the same "wonder". but then they would have been the same cloner.

derek, do YOU buy rybka5. i will boycott the product.

rajlich a talent ??
how ?
his first program was a crafty clone, weaker then crafty, arround 2000 elo ! did you ever replayed the games ? where is the TALENT ?

it changed when fruit was open source and he used the stuff to
mix the programs.


when a politician writes a work by his own, gets a doctor title, and later the people in the internet find out that this work is copy+paste from many sources, NOT original by this politician, the university takes away the doctor title and the guy can resign from beeing a politician because he has shown that he is a LIAR.
thats what happened in germany with our minister of defence Guttenberg. he betrayed. was also did this kind of copy+paste and it is only logical that ICGA took away the titles and banned him life time.

[bob]

Vas has not helped himself with the ridiculous answers he is giving but you still blindly defend him while claiming you are impartial.

How can I be defending him if I can't say whether the ruling is right or wrong?
All I am interested in is that what people say is not twisted and then misrepresented in an impartial manner. That's all.

I'm really disappointed in the way that several people on both sides of the argument have turned this forum and the Rybka forum into cesspools though. Not sure why either forum bothers to have moderators wen they can't be bothered moderating.

Graham you have just done exactly what you are criticising others for. You bend what happened with the panel to go with the 'Ed' agenda you then interprate what Vas said to Jeremy again in a way that suites the 'Ed' side of the story.

Harvey,

For a long time this whole debate is no longer about truth-finding but about WINNING, keeping positions, stick to it and throwing mud without offering real content, your above words being the latest example of that.

Here is the pattern I noticed, my pages are online now for a couple of months, it offers a technical refutation on programmer level and as you can see from the added counters these are well visited.

What I expected did not happen, a point to point refutation of what is offered over there as an alternative view.

What I received from the ICGA in email is basically saying the web-page is CRAP this a couple of hours after I announced the web-page release to them, later publicly repeated by Harvey and Bob. No intellectual content, just crap being the best possible description. With permission from Bob and Mark Lefler I am happy to show those short email correspondences.

But more important, surely you can argue about the contents over there, this is a complicated case, but I don't write crap, that's for sure. And the silence simply is deafening. And I don't believe for one moment people like Zach and Mark W. feel so sorry for me they out of pity have decided to spare me.

Now, I have seen statements by Bob like, "we have been playing with the idea to refute your web-page point by point".

On this I would like to say:

JUST DO IT.

Sometimes you get what you ask for, and then wish you hadn't asked in the first place. I'll make this happen soon. It is not exactly hard work.

[bob]

Your legal facts are WRONG. Fabien and the FSF CAN take Vas to court over ANY version of his software that was distributed. Does NOT have to be just the most recent version. ANY version that infringes can be dealt with via a copyright infringement suit. Don't know where you get your legal information, but it is badly flawed.

[h1a8]

So you are saying that you won't use Rybka 5 if you play serious chess (or are a professional which you make a living off of chess) and it has been found to be the strongest thing out with high quality analysis that all of you competitors are using?

And even if you are constantly losing games because your competitors are using Rybka and you not?

Be honest and answer directly (yes or no).

i will not buy rybka5. i will not buy ANY product from vas rajlich anymore.
i was once betrayed and do not trust anymore. i do also not believe that rybka5 will come out. if a company sells rybka5, this company will soon or later be a target of a sales-boycott and ugly details about the "new product" will be published.
i doubt any serious company will stand this.
if chessbase (or any other company) really believes they could come out with a product rybka5, they will end in a desaster and courts will shut down that business soon. it will be a waterloo from a marketing point of view.

You are avoiding my question. Are you trying to be slick with me?

My question is a hypothetical one:

If you were a professional chess player and made a living off of playing chess and your competitors were using Rybka 5 which put you in a losing streak because you were not using it, would you then use Rybka 5?

That is the question, a very simple yes or no. So don't talk about BUYING Rybka 5 (with your slick self) or what would you do right now as you are (you don't make a living off playing chess).

[natasha]

Vas has not helped himself with the ridiculous answers he is giving but you still blindly defend him while claiming you are impartial.

How can I be defending him if I can't say whether the ruling is right or wrong?
All I am interested in is that what people say is not twisted and then misrepresented in an impartial manner. That's all.

I'm really disappointed in the way that several people on both sides of the argument have turned this forum and the Rybka forum into cesspools though. Not sure why either forum bothers to have moderators wen they can't be bothered moderating.

Graham you have just done exactly what you are criticising others for. You bend what happened with the panel to go with the 'Ed' agenda you then interprate what Vas said to Jeremy again in a way that suites the 'Ed' side of the story.

Harvey,

For a long time this whole debate is no longer about truth-finding but about WINNING, keeping positions, stick to it and throwing mud without offering real content, your above words being the latest example of that.

Here is the pattern I noticed, my pages are online now for a couple of months, it offers a technical refutation on programmer level and as you can see from the added counters these are well visited.

What I expected did not happen, a point to point refutation of what is offered over there as an alternative view.

What I received from the ICGA in email is basically saying the web-page is CRAP this a couple of hours after I announced the web-page release to them, later publicly repeated by Harvey and Bob. No intellectual content, just crap being the best possible description. With permission from Bob and Mark Lefler I am happy to show those short email correspondences.

But more important, surely you can argue about the contents over there, this is a complicated case, but I don't write crap, that's for sure. And the silence simply is deafening. And I don't believe for one moment people like Zach and Mark W. feel so sorry for me they out of pity have decided to spare me.

Now, I have seen statements by Bob like, "we have been playing with the idea to refute your web-page point by point".

On this I would like to say:

JUST DO IT.

Sometimes you get what you ask for, and then wish you hadn't asked in the first place. I'll make this happen soon. It is not exactly hard work.

@ Ed


let it bleed about sums up the wound you make

[mclane]

you really believe professional chess players would buy a chess program that is from dubious origin ??

guy we are here in germany !
people die in their cars behind a broken traffic light because they wait for the light to show green.

i tell you what will happen. there will be articles in the big media
about the origin of rybka5 and how ICGA took away the titles because
of a copyright problem, and all this negative PR will fall on the company that tries to sell the problematic engine.

the professional chess players i know use freeware (stockfish, houdini 1.5, ...) and they all have found out that these programs are stronger then rybka4.

rybka4 is overtaken by other freeware engine and i doubt that rybka5 will ever be capable to change this situation.

[bob]

Vas has not helped himself with the ridiculous answers he is giving but you still blindly defend him while claiming you are impartial.

How can I be defending him if I can't say whether the ruling is right or wrong?
All I am interested in is that what people say is not twisted and then misrepresented in an impartial manner. That's all.

I'm really disappointed in the way that several people on both sides of the argument have turned this forum and the Rybka forum into cesspools though. Not sure why either forum bothers to have moderators wen they can't be bothered moderating.

Graham you have just done exactly what you are criticising others for. You bend what happened with the panel to go with the 'Ed' agenda you then interprate what Vas said to Jeremy again in a way that suites the 'Ed' side of the story.

Harvey,

For a long time this whole debate is no longer about truth-finding but about WINNING, keeping positions, stick to it and throwing mud without offering real content, your above words being the latest example of that.

Here is the pattern I noticed, my pages are online now for a couple of months, it offers a technical refutation on programmer level and as you can see from the added counters these are well visited.

What I expected did not happen, a point to point refutation of what is offered over there as an alternative view.

What I received from the ICGA in email is basically saying the web-page is CRAP this a couple of hours after I announced the web-page release to them, later publicly repeated by Harvey and Bob. No intellectual content, just crap being the best possible description. With permission from Bob and Mark Lefler I am happy to show those short email correspondences.

But more important, surely you can argue about the contents over there, this is a complicated case, but I don't write crap, that's for sure. And the silence simply is deafening. And I don't believe for one moment people like Zach and Mark W. feel so sorry for me they out of pity have decided to spare me.

Now, I have seen statements by Bob like, "we have been playing with the idea to refute your web-page point by point".

On this I would like to say:

JUST DO IT.

Sometimes you get what you ask for, and then wish you hadn't asked in the first place. I'll make this happen soon. It is not exactly hard work.

BTW, I will be interested to see your response to your "I ran and hid" comment on Rybka Forum. You failed to do any research. I only made 26 posts that day. I was traveling and posted during lunch, and then later in the day. Now I suppose it will be your turn to run and hide since you really can't do any research on your own using the RF search command to back up your statements, and thus end up looking foolish. again.