Komodo and WCCC

[Rodolfo Leoni]

I think this is a wrong perception. Last year there were many more non-commercial participants. Chiron was there because he was willing to come; if one of those 'stronger free engines' would have been willing to come, I am sure they would have been more than welcome.

I refer to David Levy's open letter about this WCCC would have been a 3 rounds tournament with 4 participants. Komodo, Shredder, the winner of WCSC, and a fourth one. What if Andscasc and Equinox asked to participate? Both of them are stronger than Chiron, according to ranking lists. I wonder what engine should have been admitted as fourth.

And I think you are too hard on the participants: The playoffs were played at progressively faster TC, where operator speed and attention start to play a significant rule. So obviously distractions are unwelcome. Have you ever tried to have a chat with Carlson, while he was playing a game, or with Quintana while he was cycling in the Giro? If not, would you also say that these disrespect their audience?

I don't feel (and I don't like to be) hard. Public handling is part of event management. If something went wrong, maybe many things could be improved for future. Not only about the public, but also all the things you discussed with David Levy few time ago.

Another thing... There's a lot of useless spamming here, totally off topic. I want to remember Mr Tsvetkov sent a death wish to Roberto Possiotto about two weeks ago. He wrote "Che tu possa morire". Translated to English, it means "I wish you to die". He also said it was a joke. I think it's really a bad joke, and it should be censored. It'd be also nice if he avoids to post his "blitz" viewpoints about the whole universe.

[hgm]

somehow, I can not think of a Taiwanese chess engine.

Of course not. Why would they waste their time on an already-solved game that almost no one plays?

[hgm]

I refer to David Levy's open letter about this WCCC would have been a 3 rounds tournament with 4 participants. Komodo, Shredder, the winner of WCSC, and a fourth one. What if Andscasc and Equinox asked to participate? Both of them are stronger than Chiron, according to ranking lists. I wonder what engine should have been admitted as fourth.

I am pretty sure that when Andscacs or Equinox would have tried to register, they would not even have approached Chiron. What indication do you have that they would? It just wouldn't make sense yo do otherwise. If you are desperate for participants you take anyone you can get.

Normally there never was a limitation on the number of participants. I don't think something can be a world championship if people are excluded from participating on arbitrary grounds. In this case the official registration deadline had already assed, however. So all not-yet-registered would-be participants had already lost their rights. In that case it is up to the organizers how many participants they still allow to enter, and whether they will do this based on a first-come-first-served basis, or by rating. Note that ratings do not mean a whole lot, as they are measured under unrealistic conditions (same hardware, no own books), and you don't know if the version that would play even is in the list.

Now that David Levy proposed to drastically change the format (for which I have not seen a single positive reaction, I should add), there has surfaced a new argument. Namely that having weak programs participate in the WCCC would corrupt the outcome, as they divert games away from the contenders playing each other directly. If this is a real problem, it seems better to me to play the championship as a two-stage event, starting with a few rounds of Swiss or McMahon pairings to separate the weak from the strong, and then do a round-robin in each of the thus established groups. If the time control would be made much faster, so that you could do 5 or even 7 games per day (which would also help to reduce draw rate...), this is quite feasible.

Look for instance to how the Shogi Championship is organized: This is a 3-day event, played in 3 stages. The best 10 of the first stage (7 rounds of Swiss for 36 participants) are added to 14 engines qualified on previous performance, for a second stage of 9 rounds of Swiss. The best 8 of the second stage then play a round-robin on day 3 to determine the medalists.

[Henk]

Ok computer chess is dead. Not interesting for chess players for they don't understand the games anymore and also not interesting for computer scientists.

Wish you success with finding another hobby.

[mjlef]

I agree Stockfish should be allowed to partecipate. The official Stockfish 8 could be 10 ELO stronger than Komodo. And the fact Marco started this winning project severals years ago makes me feel proud to be Italian. But rules are rules. They are unfair, but still rules.

To let the event dies in silence isn't good for computer chess. We should all congratulate with K team, and then chess programmer should send an open letter to David Levy, if they want different rukes.

They should write:
"Dear David, while congratulating with Komodo we note the absence of..... We then propose 1...2....3....4.....99 as new rules for WCCC". The more programmers will sign it, the more impact it'll have.

While doing so, what's the cost of congratulations?

I am basically repeating things here, but since I have been encouraging Stockfish to participate, I want to make it clear that I know of nothing that would prevent them from participating except Marco and some of the authors saying they do not want it to. I do not understand the reasons, so it is best to ask them directly.

Preparing for the WCCC is a lot of work. You need to make a good book suitable for your program. You need to find suitable hardware (a mere quad will not suffice). You need to pay for travel, hotel and other expenses. If you enter all three competitions, it is basically 7 days of continuous work. In the evenings you are not playing you have to modify your book to not repeat lines. It is a big undertaking and I am glad we had Erdo as our operator and book maker. I hope that Stockfish will compete in the future. They have a great program.

This year there were initially not a lot of entries. ICGA agreed to fund 1k euro for 4 teams to compete. That helps, but in no way covers the expenses of participating unless you live nearby and can sleep at home.

I have always said that WCCC cannot tell us who is strongest. The number of rounds is too low, and one extra draw can keep a program from reaching the top. Rating lists are much better, provided hey play enough games. But WCCC does give us some great chess. Where else will you find a program using 2,400 cores competing? People work hard to bring their best program, best hardware and best book. And these events are a great place to trade ideas and meet some damn smart programmers.

People have made wild claims here about strength, but only a few people have access to current Komodo and Shredder development versions. You cannot compare fast games with old programs with long games and new programs. I know Komodo has gained a lot of elo since the 11.01 release.
I would guess that Shredder has as well since Stefan's last release. And claims Rybka was 600 elo stronger than all other programs at the time is just not backed up by the available data. It is not hard to look up ratings on the various lists. Try to do that and be more factual.

Perhaps someone will start a poll asking if Stockfish should enter these tournaments? If there is a huge demand, maybe they will change their minds and enter next year.

Mark

[mjlef]

I refer to David Levy's open letter about this WCCC would have been a 3 rounds tournament with 4 participants. Komodo, Shredder, the winner of WCSC, and a fourth one. What if Andscasc and Equinox asked to participate? Both of them are stronger than Chiron, according to ranking lists. I wonder what engine should have been admitted as fourth.

I am pretty sure that when Andscacs or Equinox would have tried to register, they would not even have approached Chiron. What indication do you have that they would? It just wouldn't make sense yo do otherwise. If you are desperate for participants you take anyone you can get.

Normally there never was a limitation on the number of participants. I don't think something can be a world championship if people are excluded from participating on arbitrary grounds. In this case the official registration deadline had already assed, however. So all not-yet-registered would-be participants had already lost their rights. In that case it is up to the organizers how many participants they still allow to enter, and whether they will do this based on a first-come-first-served basis, or by rating. Note that ratings do not mean a whole lot, as they are measured under unrealistic conditions (same hardware, no own books), and you don't know if the version that would play even is in the list.

Now that David Levy proposed to drastically change the format (for which I have not seen a single positive reaction, I should add), there has surfaced a new argument. Namely that having weak programs participate in the WCCC would corrupt the outcome, as they divert games away from the contenders playing each other directly. If this is a real problem, it seems better to me to play the championship as a two-stage event, starting with a few rounds of Swiss or McMahon pairings to separate the weak from the strong, and then do a round-robin in each of the thus established groups. If the time control would be made much faster, so that you could do 5 or even 7 games per day (which would also help to reduce draw rate...), this is quite feasible.

Look for instance to how the Shogi Championship is organized: This is a 3-day event, played in 3 stages. The best 10 of the first stage (7 rounds of Swiss for 36 participants) are added to 14 engines qualified on previous performance, for a second stage of 9 rounds of Swiss. The best 8 of the second stage then play a round-robin on day 3 to determine the medalists.

The authors of the 4 programs in this years WCCC all agreed they did not like the proposal about next year, which would have limited WCCC to the top two programs that competed this year. David asked them and I am sure he is working on a suitable format. We started a google group to discuss possibilities among the programmers. If you are a chess programmer who has competed or wants to compete in future tournaments, let me know and I can get you added to the group. New ideas are encouraged. You can send me or Harvey a private email here and we can get you added.

[lucasart]

Number of participants is only a matter of money. If you pay large fees almost every engine owner wants to partcipate.

I wonder, if you live near Leiden, why did not you enter Skipper?

I don't live in Leiden and I have no car. Also Skipper still playing too badly.

That's ok. You can easily secure a 4th place at the "World" Championship, thanks to the lack of interest in this (totally uninteresting) tournament

[Milos]

The problem is that having Chess programs battle it out is not a spectator sport anymore. Nothing there you could not do at home for a few dimes of electricity, 100 times more intensely. The days that strong computers were as rare as human super-GMs are long behind us. The only justification to have a special event for this is when the participants use hardware so powerful that no one can afford it at home. This is arguably what has been happening at WCCC, but in fact it turns out a deterrent rather than an attractor of public interest: people are no longer interested in things they cannot do at home themselves.

Year sure, computer chess tournaments are dying, but then there is much bigger interest in tournaments such as TCEC than what WCCC ever had in its history.
Just keep living in your bubble and keep blaming everything else. Such a dystopian view...

[Henk]

Number of participants is only a matter of money. If you pay large fees almost every engine owner wants to partcipate.

I wonder, if you live near Leiden, why did not you enter Skipper?

I don't live in Leiden and I have no car. Also Skipper still playing too badly.

That's ok. You can easily secure a 4th place at the "World" Championship, thanks to the lack of interest in this (totally uninteresting) tournament

There may be many people following this tournament using internet I don't know. At least one other person on my local chess club following it while he did not in previous years.

Skipper didn't join because it is no fun seeing your engine being slaughtered each and every game. Also I don't like carrying my laptop for it weighs too much. Also I am paranoid it would get broke and that I have to buy a new one and do all software installations all over again which probably would take a week or so with all kinds of annoying problems. And of course I make no good backups

[Rodolfo Leoni]

....... What if Andscasc and Equinox asked to participate? Both of them are stronger than Chiron, .......

I am pretty sure that when Andscacs or Equinox would have tried to register, they would not even have approached Chiron. What indication do you have that they would? It just wouldn't make sense yo do otherwise. If you are desperate for participants you take anyone you can get.

................

All right, that's much more explicit than what David Levy wrote, and I'm happy with your answer.