ICGA WCCC and WCSC in Santiago de Compostela

[Viz]

This is literally perfect - drawish book, low sample size, testing against 4 months old version.
The only way to scam this stuff more would be to test 50 cores vs 1, but this is a bit of an overkill I guess.

[amchess]

ShashChess 36candidate is aligned with Stockfish 16.1, the latest stable version.
This isn't a book, but nuggets positions based on positional traits.
Do you know those BASIC chess concepts?
I have to tell what's your chess level?
People knows mine.
Truly incredibile the absence of moderation against insults....

[amchess]

Only in a previous post did I notice a simple warning to this effect.
We have always respected the work of the community, which includes excellent programmers and wonderful people.
Primarily, the latter are being tarnished by these attitudes and they should intervene as well.
To demonstrate our deep appreciation and in the true open source spirit, we have decided to donate the prize of a possible victory to the community.
ShashChess and Alexander simply have two different purposes. Really, I don't understand what and where the problem is. Alexander contains ONLY the classic evaluation function, the only truly useful one, along with a handicap mode based on the thinking system, for the OTB player.
I don't want to think that, behind these attitudes, there is simple a banal and unmotivated envy.
In any case, we are a software house, we have our legal representative and everything is tracked.

[Rebel]

Truly incredibile the absence of moderation against insults....

1. Hit the report button if you feel insulted, we will look into it then.

2. Regarding ShashChess, starting the engine it states :

ShashChess 35.3 by K. Kiniama, A. Manzo and Stockfish developers (see AUTHORS file)

[Q] - how much elo did you add to Stockfish to justify that you mention your name(s) first ?

If none (or hardly none) it would be more ethical that you tone done a bit, for instance :

ShashChess 35.3 based on Stockfish 16.1 and enriched with several features by K. Kiniama, A. Manzo

You know, this is much more fair to SF team.

In the past there have been many derivatives who did add a lot of elo (contrary to ShashChess) and yet they gave proper credit, most known example is Fruit 2.1 from Fabien Letouzey, some of the many examples :

. Gambit Fruit based on Fruit 2.1 and Toga by Ryan Benitez, Thomas Gaksch and Fabien Letouzey
. Toga II 1.0 UCI based on Fruit 2.1 by Thomas Gaksch and Fabien Letouzey
. Toga II 4.01 UCI based on Fruit 2.1 by Jerry Donald Watson, Thomas Gaksch and Fabien Letouzey.
. Toga II 3.1.2SE UCI based on Fruit 2.1 by Thomas Gaksch and Fabien Letouzey. Settings by Dieter Eberle
. Rebel 15 UCI by Fabien Letouzey, Thomas Gaksch, Jerry Donald Watson, Chris Whittington and Ed Schroder

None of the authors put their names first. And all of them added considerable elo.

3. Regarding the ICGA, there have been several improved Fruit versions played in the WCCC, but not without a written approval of Fabien Letouzey.

Please take the mild criticism to heart.

[amchess]

Thank you for the civil message.
I placed our names before, only out of fear that they would be cut off by certain gui,certainly not to show off.
I'll try to see how to do that.
Thanks also for the suggestion about using the report.

[Peter Berger]

Rebel 15 UCI by Fabien Letouzey, Thomas Gaksch, Jerry Donald Watson, Chris Whittington and Ed Schroder
None of the authors put their names first. And all of them added considerable elo.

On an unrelated note: I feel there is also an issue with engine naming itself, that goes two ways:
1. You make some (maybe very substantial, maybe not so much) changes to an existing engine, say Stockfish – and you call it „Twilight“ now, giving proper credit though.
I still feel slightly uneasy about this approach – a new engine name should mean sth very new IMHO. On the other hand, names like Shashchess and Gridchess make some sense to me (name says what you want to do).
2. The other one is unusual in practice but feels strange to me, too. Rebel 15 puts the engine into a long tradition of engines that you’d expect to be very original. I feel much better about Rebel 16 e.g. Just imagine Bob Hyatt created an interesting Stockfish clone and called it Crafty 17.0 ..

[Engin]

The point isthat Stockfish is only strong on average, because that is what Elo is, an average. It is not reliably strong. Therefore it has a significant probability to loose, in a small number of games. And of course the Elo advantage on the competitors is so small that you would need many thousands of games to see it as an average.

The Stockfish developers don't like that. So they only want to participate in tournaments that measures average performance over an insanely large number of games. Because they know they only stand little chance to win a tournament over 8 games.

I agree. They also like tightly controlled conditions like CCC and TCEC with same books for all engines (slightly unbalanced too), same hardware etc and a long run of games where they have a chance to get slightly more wins to tip the scales. It depends what other engines enter of course, but there is a very real chance Stockfish would not win. With freedom around books (which have a big impact) and hardware etc, they can't control the conditions and they don't like it. I get the impression that they don't enter because they are scared they will not win. Maybe I'm wrong on that but it is the feeling I get.

"with same books for all engines (slightly unbalanced too)"
This means fair conditions (game pairs)
"same hardware etc"
This means fair conditions
"and a long run of games"
This means more statistical significance
"With freedom around books (which have a big impact) and hardware etc"
Freedom around books means -> largest book made with the strongest engine with the most amount of search is the best -> you are likely still getting a draw fest.
Freedom around hardware -> this should simply not happen, a weaker engine running on 256 cores would be stronger than an otherwise stronger engine running on 1 core. It's the software competing, not the hardware. The one exception I can think of is cases like Leela where hardware requirements are wildly different.

i agree with that a long time ago, all engines must have the same conditions and hardware, otherwise its not fair comprasion between the real software strength of the engines.

[hgm]

The purpose of a computer chess championship is not to measure the strength of the engines, any more than formula I racing is only for comparing the skill of the drivers.

[Engin]

The purpose of a computer chess championship is not to measure the strength of the engines, any more than formula I racing is only for comparing the skill of the drivers.

The purpose of computer chess is pure fun only, not the winner !

[hgm]

Sure, but I was talking about the championship. If it cannot produce a winner, it wouldn't be a championship.