FIDE Ethics Commission ruling on ICGA/Rybka complaint

[Roger Brown]

All the EC said is that a penalty should not be more severe than that allowed by the FIDE rules, UNLESS the ICGA rules specifically lay out such penalties in writing. A reasonable request. But they did not even insist that the ICGA rules be modified, just a warning that they should be.

As far as the entire Rybka affair goes, they dismissed it outright as being outside of their purview. Which most of us expected. The entire basis of the complaint was "The ICGA was a bunch of bad boys and ought to be slapped down." No specifics, as usual. As far as the shortcoming in the rules, that will be addressed. As far as potentially reconsidering the lifetime ban, no idea. I suspect that won't happen.

One thing is for sure.

The ICGA are going to have to get their act together real quick, as they're no longer seen by many as having the same importance, relevance or mana that they used to have before this whole affair.

This can be seen in their so called World Championships, which are now little more than second rate events, currently shunned by many of the top engine authors and therefore sadly often used by the title winners as propaganda to con unsuspecting buyers (if their product is commercial).

In effect, they've lost touch with much of the computer chess community. That should concern them, surely.

mana (Maori word meaning prestige, authority, control, power, influence, status)

Guess I'll cop the usual abuse from the usual offenders for posting this.

Nice post. 100% agree.

PS: don't pay attention to Terry. he's a professional troll. nobody with an IQ>80 pays attention to what he says. It's only background noise we shouldn't respond to (never feed a troll).

Hello Members,

Y'know, we (mods) looked at this thread and decided to let it continue, despite the warning signs that it was going to suffer from forum degeneration, a disease caused by a proliferation of personal attacks, soft slaps and hand-bag tosses.

I mean, if you are going to do something, haul back that right hand and deliver something worthy of the name.

No, that was sarcasm.

Can we not troll, accuse persons of being trolls, indicate that someone has troll in their ancestry, say that perhaps someone is trollish or, my personal favourite, say that some are born trolls, while others achieve trolldom?

Just keep it on chess and preferably, computer-chess.

Later.

[Evert]

Can we not troll, accuse persons of being trolls, indicate that someone has troll in their ancestry, say that perhaps someone is trollish or, my personal favourite, say that some are born trolls, while others achieve trolldom?

Sorry, just wanted to say that this just made my day!
Point well made too.

[bob]

No, "dismiss" usually means that the complaint was without merits.

I don't think that is correct.

We might both be right and wrong. I think it varies from court to court. I know of several courts that "dismiss" an appeal or a complaint if it fails on the merits.

If Bob meant that part of the complaint was dismissed without the merits being investigated in full, then I agree.

The EC did not use the term "dismiss". What they said is "Against this decision, as already clarified, no FIDE organ has appeal competence". In this sentence, "this decision" refers to the disqualification decision based on Rule 2. The ICGA was considered to have "exclusive competence" on the interpretation of Rule 2, because it was a "tournament rule". The EC did consider itself competent to investigate the decision to impose a life-ban. That investigation wasn't too difficult either, since there was no basis for imposing a life-ban at all (ignoring the Charter that was only drawn up in 2011).

Here is the dismissed quote from FIDE:

For these reasons, under this profile, the complaint has to be dismissed.

In US courts, "dismissed" means "tossed out without judicial review". It happens for many reasons. Lack of evidence. Lack of cooperation by side bringing the action (prosecution / plaintiff). Lack of jurisdiction. Technical reasons like double jeopardy, statute of limitations has run, etc. Doesn't imply anything about guilt or innocence. Just "this case won't be heard". Our courts can even dismiss with prejudice which means that not only is it being tossed out now, it can not be brought back to the court again, period.

The lifetime ban was NOT the issue however, the issue was that the ICGA rules did not list that as a potential penalty. Which would mean we then have to fall back to the FIDE rule which limits such a ban to just three years. But they did not say even that was wrong, as they asked the ICGA to reconsider but did not direct them to do so, nor did they try to direct them to rescind the ban. Main point was "fix the rules so that everyone is aware this might happen."

[bob]

All the EC said is that a penalty should not be more severe than that allowed by the FIDE rules, UNLESS the ICGA rules specifically lay out such penalties in writing. A reasonable request. But they did not even insist that the ICGA rules be modified, just a warning that they should be.

As far as the entire Rybka affair goes, they dismissed it outright as being outside of their purview. Which most of us expected. The entire basis of the complaint was "The ICGA was a bunch of bad boys and ought to be slapped down." No specifics, as usual. As far as the shortcoming in the rules, that will be addressed. As far as potentially reconsidering the lifetime ban, no idea. I suspect that won't happen.

One thing is for sure.

The ICGA are going to have to get their act together real quick, as they're no longer seen by many as having the same importance, relevance or mana that they used to have before this whole affair.

This can be seen in their so called World Championships, which are now little more than second rate events, currently shunned by many of the top engine authors and therefore sadly often used by the title winners as propaganda to con unsuspecting buyers (if their product is commercial).

In effect, they've lost touch with much of the computer chess community. That should concern them, surely.

mana (Maori word meaning prestige, authority, control, power, influence, status)

Guess I'll cop the usual abuse from the usual offenders for posting this.

If you look carefully, ICGA attendance has been steadily downward since the 80's and early 90's. Attending such an event takes time and money, when there are alternatives like CCT and ACCA events where no travel is required unless you want to make a 500 mile or so drive to get together with a group of participants. CCRL is even worse from that perspective. No participation. Send in your code, and sit back and watch if you want. It is a better way for identifying the strongest program, but it is NOT equivalent to a tournament. Even better, forget these annual events and just use the rating lists to name the strongest program. That is even better. Wonder why FIDE didn't think of that?

There are two groups of computer scientists working on chess engines. One group likes to compete, meet face to face, exchange ideas and publish both ideas and results. The others just want to develop the strongest thing they can, without the "academic trappings". Both have their place. I always enjoyed the face-to-face ACM events every year, both from the perspective of competition and from the perspective of exchanging ideas and making new friends. That event ceased after the 1994 Edition, sadly, as the ACM, like everyone else not directly involved in computer chess, considered that "computer chess had been solved" after the DB project had so much success.

I'll personally always remember those events as the BEST years of computer chess. Quite unlike todays clone wars...

[bob]

This can be seen in their so called World Championships, which are now little more than second rate events, currently shunned by many of the top engine authors and therefore sadly often used by the title winners as propaganda to con unsuspecting buyers (if their product is commercial).

If there is any 'conning' going on, it is really the producers of engines like Stockfish that carry the blame for this. By failing to take their responsibility as major title candidate, for various ideological reasons, they willingly create a situation where unsuspecting buyers can be confused. They are the prime architects of this 'con', duping their would-be users, and driving them in the arms of unsuspecting commercials that just run their business in an honest way.

This is a good point. I never noticed Chess 4.x, or Belle, or Cray Blitz, or deep thought winning an event and then refusing to enter the next one so that they would not "lose" their title. In 1989 I did NOT want to go to Canada for the 1989 WCCC event. I had just started a new job at UAB, was as busy as I could be with the usual publishing, writing proposals, getting funding, doing research, teaching classes, and such. But we had won that event the past two times it was held, in 1983 and 1986. I had little doubt who the favorite was in 1989 since I talked with Hsu and Campbell regularly and knew what they had been doing (more parallel processors). But I felt it would REALLY be in bad taste to not enter and leave that debate open "But the Cray would have won had it entered." I felt it was an actual moral obligation to attend that event, and lose as expected, so that a "proper change of title" would happen with no cloud in the background.

I can't imagine why the SF guys don't enter that event. They don't even have to attend. Then they could win, and actually have another title in hand.

But that's just me thinking...

What would have happened had Kasparov not competed in the WC cycle, just entered tournaments and won every one he entered???

[syzygy]

Let's assume the ICGA had organised a football match between teams of chess programmers.

The TD, acting as referee, awarded a goal even though the ball did not cross the line.

This feels more like a cycle race, where years later you discover someone was taking performance enhancing drugs. Then they might be stripped of any titles they have won.

In cycling, a title will only be stripped if there is a legal basis for that sanction. In addition, the cyclist is entitled to a fair trial. If he is not happy with the outcome, he can appeal to the CAS for a full review of the case. The CAS will not argue that they have no competence to review the application of doping regulations.

(I'm not saying the EC should have acted as a regular appeal body. I just find the fine distinction they make not very justified.)

[syzygy]

Here is the dismissed quote from FIDE:

For these reasons, under this profile, the complaint has to be dismissed.

Oops, you're right. I thought I had searched through the text, apparently not. Anyway, we agree on this part of the judgment.

The lifetime ban was NOT the issue however, the issue was that the ICGA rules did not list that as a potential penalty. Which would mean we then have to fall back to the FIDE rule which limits such a ban to just three years. But they did not say even that was wrong, as they asked the ICGA to reconsider but did not direct them to do so, nor did they try to direct them to rescind the ban. Main point was "fix the rules so that everyone is aware this might happen."

The EC cannot order the ICGA to do anything, as far as I know. What they can do is rule that the ICGA violated a FIDE rule. And that they did:

Sanctioning Mr Rajlich with a lifetime ban, ICGA violated par. 2.2 and par. 2.2.10 of the FIDE Code of Ethics.

"they did not say even that was wrong"... what do you mean?

[bob]

Here is the dismissed quote from FIDE:

For these reasons, under this profile, the complaint has to be dismissed.

Oops, you're right. I thought I had searched through the text, apparently not. Anyway, we agree on this part of the judgment.

The lifetime ban was NOT the issue however, the issue was that the ICGA rules did not list that as a potential penalty. Which would mean we then have to fall back to the FIDE rule which limits such a ban to just three years. But they did not say even that was wrong, as they asked the ICGA to reconsider but did not direct them to do so, nor did they try to direct them to rescind the ban. Main point was "fix the rules so that everyone is aware this might happen."

The EC cannot order the ICGA to do anything, as far as I know. What they can do is rule that the ICGA violated a FIDE rule. And that they did:

Sanctioning Mr Rajlich with a lifetime ban, ICGA violated par. 2.2 and par. 2.2.10 of the FIDE Code of Ethics.

"they did not say even that was wrong"... what do you mean?

What they said was wrong was our not having a specific penalty statement in the rules. Nothing about whether the ban was too severe or anything, just that it was beyond current FIDE rule limits (3 years) and without having anything more stringent in place, we should have stopped at 3 years. A lifetime ban seems to be perfectly acceptable to them so long as that potential penalty is specified in the rules in writing. Which is certainly a valid point to be fixed...

[APassionForCriminalJustic]

This can be seen in their so called World Championships, which are now little more than second rate events, currently shunned by many of the top engine authors and therefore sadly often used by the title winners as propaganda to con unsuspecting buyers (if their product is commercial).

If there is any 'conning' going on, it is really the producers of engines like Stockfish that carry the blame for this. By failing to take their responsibility as major title candidate, for various ideological reasons, they willingly create a situation where unsuspecting buyers can be confused. They are the prime architects of this 'con', duping their would-be users, and driving them in the arms of unsuspecting commercials that just run their business in an honest way.

This is a good point. I never noticed Chess 4.x, or Belle, or Cray Blitz, or deep thought winning an event and then refusing to enter the next one so that they would not "lose" their title. In 1989 I did NOT want to go to Canada for the 1989 WCCC event. I had just started a new job at UAB, was as busy as I could be with the usual publishing, writing proposals, getting funding, doing research, teaching classes, and such. But we had won that event the past two times it was held, in 1983 and 1986. I had little doubt who the favorite was in 1989 since I talked with Hsu and Campbell regularly and knew what they had been doing (more parallel processors). But I felt it would REALLY be in bad taste to not enter and leave that debate open "But the Cray would have won had it entered." I felt it was an actual moral obligation to attend that event, and lose as expected, so that a "proper change of title" would happen with no cloud in the background.

I can't imagine why the SF guys don't enter that event. They don't even have to attend. Then they could win, and actually have another title in hand.

But that's just me thinking...

What would have happened had Kasparov not competed in the WC cycle, just entered tournaments and won every one he entered???

Well having Komodo and Stockfish both in the up and coming ICGA computer-chess tournament would certainly make it feel more like a real world championship. Could not anyone enter Stockfish into the tournament given that it is open source, and publicly available?

But there are just way too many extremely strong engines such as Fire 4, Gull 3, Houdini 4, Critter 1.6a (although old), etc., that simply would not participate. The times have changed, so obviously a tournament like TCEC should become the new official WCCC fully run on the Internet which is simply expected given what today has become - a society of Internet product(s), communities, and communication. Heck, I think I remember seeing in one new commercial that couples will soon be able to marry online. For better or for worse, the ICGA either will need to adapt to change to meet the standards of today, or simply perish into the history books.

[Roger Brown]

Well having Komodo and Stockfish both in the up and coming ICGA computer-chess tournament would certainly make it feel more like a real world championship. Could not anyone enter Stockfish into the tournament given that it is open source, and publicly available?

Hello Adam,

Should you mean anyone not an author of the engine, say me for instance, the answer is no.

The Stockfish authors have been clear about not entering the engine.

Open source does not mean that the engine has no owner, or that there are no rights over its use...

Later.