ICGA WCCC and WCSC in Santiago de Compostela

[AlexChess]

I have heard from Erdo this morning who is operating Raptor. He says there will be no more playoffs. Raptor, Stoofvlees and Jonny will share the title and prizes.

All people knows that Fritz is 300 ELO weaker than Stockfish and his derivatives and there are also much better engines. The rules of this event must be changed.

[Harvey Williamson]

I have heard from Erdo this morning who is operating Raptor. He says there will be no more playoffs. Raptor, Stoofvlees and Jonny will share the title and prizes.

All people knows that Fritz is 300 ELO weaker than Stockfish and his derivatives and there are also much better engines. The rules of this event must be changed.

TCEC is like the premier league in football after many games the best will, probably, always finish top. The WCCC is like the World Cup in Football. There is some luck and and you can get a surprise.

[hgm]

But what about part 1? "Each program must be the original work of the entering developers" ? To every reasonable person this kind of suggests that some very major or +extremely+ relevant part of the engine is original - something like 50%+ feels natural.This is something I can't even imagine the Shashchess author to claim.

That reasoning would exclude programs written as a cooperative effort by a large number of people with similar contributions. While it obviously cannot be the intention of the rules for a championship to exclude any program. What you want to exclude is duplicats.

BTW, the rules for the WCCC were made by the ICGA, not imposed on them by any higher authority. So it should be obvious they can interpret, or even change those as they see to best serve their goals. If you made rules in the past which would interfere with what you would want to achieve because of an altered situation, it would be really stupid to adjust your goals, rather than the rules...

[Gian-Carlo Pascutto]

TCEC is like the premier league in football after many games the best will, probably, always finish top. The WCCC is like the World Cup in Football. There is some luck and and you can get a surprise.

This analogy works even better if you compare the Premier League with the UEFA European Championships.

You will not see Gridchess and Jonny on TCEC for obvious reasons, and even for me being able to pick better scaling hardware makes a big difference. Similarly the Belgian or Spanish national team don't play (as a team) in the Premier League.

But both competitions are worth watching.

[Jouni]

Who was behind Raptor engine? Frédéric Louguet?

[IanO]

Who was behind Raptor engine? Frédéric Louguet?

No, it is the the later engine by Steve Webber.

https://www.chessprogramming.org/Raptor_LU

Congratulations to the winners!

P.S. I also want to clarify that Fritz is using Frank Schneider's Ginkgo engine. I didn't see that was stated elsewhere. I also noticed that Robert Hyatt was credited. Was he involved in the GridChess implementation?

[mclane]

many thanks. this was an event that was worth following.

here my first summary on the event (in german):

https://schachcomputerwelt.blogspot.com ... etzte.html

[Viz]

No thanks. This was an event that was never worth following.
Great that this stuff that was a disgrace for like 1,5 decades at this point finally is dead.

[AlexChess]

many thanks. this was an event that was worth following.

here my first summary on the event (in german):

https://schachcomputerwelt.blogspot.com ... etzte.html

Thank you!
Translated all in Italian with Google

[johnhamlen65]

TCEC is like the premier league in football after many games the best will, probably, always finish top. The WCCC is like the World Cup in Football. There is some luck and and you can get a surprise.

A very good analogy Harvey; and that's what makes it so exciting!

In the accompanying CHESS conference, I was asked to give a 5 minute talk about my remembrances of the 1995 WCCC in Hong Kong.

Of course I had to talk about Fritz's win over Deep Blue Prototype in the final round made more nerve wracking by Murray Campbell and Feng-hsiung Hsu being in the room ready to give their talks about 1997!

That game is still being talked about almost 30 years later because it was such an upset and that's a good thing!. Giant killing possibilities add a lot of spice to these events and make them very attractive to spectators