From Russia With Love........

[Dirt]

People should not be too quick to claim it is a clone.

Those that do so may even be entering dangerous ground as the author could take legal action on account of libel? (I'm no lawyer though)

The author could only do that if it was presented as a statement of fact. As long as it is just conjecture, there is no problem with people saying "I think it is a clone". If however, they say it "is" a clone, then they will have to prove it to avoid being guilty of libel.

I'm not a lawyer either, but I don't think stating somethings as an opinion is a complete bar to libel. Considering how harmful it would be for me to tell all your neighbors and co-workers that I think you murdered a previous wife, and sold the children into slavery, I'm confident that the legal system would offer you some recourse.

[Leto]

Vasik Rajlich, the author of Rybka, puts this conspiracy theory to rest:
"I already got some emails about this. Of course, I have no idea what the author has done, but my first impression is a pretty good one. Sure, the engine is totally raw and needs a lot of nuts-and-bolts work, but that's something that any competent programmer can do. The author shows a clear sense of priorities by concentrating on his ideas rather sidetracking himself with all the little things like underpromotions, distances-to-mate, obscure endgame rules, etc.

When you start in computer chess, the first thing you need to do is to figure out if your ideas will work. (Unless you have no new ideas, in which case the result is predictable and any order is fine.)

Re. mate scores, +320.00 is perfectly logical. It's the largest round value which will fit into a signed 16-bit hash entry.

Vas"

In other words, Strelka is not a Rybka clone.

[gerold]

Vasik Rajlich, the author of Rybka, puts this conspiracy theory to rest:
"I already got some emails about this. Of course, I have no idea what the author has done, but my first impression is a pretty good one. Sure, the engine is totally raw and needs a lot of nuts-and-bolts work, but that's something that any competent programmer can do. The author shows a clear sense of priorities by concentrating on his ideas rather sidetracking himself with all the little things like underpromotions, distances-to-mate, obscure endgame rules, etc.

When you start in computer chess, the first thing you need to do is to figure out if your ideas will work. (Unless you have no new ideas, in which case the result is predictable and any order is fine.)

Re. mate scores, +320.00 is perfectly logical. It's the largest round value which will fit into a signed 16-bit hash entry.

Vas"

In other words, Strelka is not a Rybka clone.

In other words it could be a rough clone with a lot of improvments to
be made.
It does not have to be a clone of Vas program.

Waiting for the impoved clone,

Gerold.

[Rob]

I can confirm that Strelka is a clone of Rybka. The evaluations are for 95% identical, based on decompilation comparison.

The search functions are also very similar based on a quick glance.

[Leto]

I can confirm that Strelka is a clone of Rybka. The evaluations are for 95% identical, based on decompilation comparison.

The search functions are also very similar based on a quick glance.

Perhaps you missed my post in which I quote the author of Rybka stating that Strelka is not a Rybka clone.

[Rob]

Vas said:

I have no idea what the author has done


I do have an idea what the author has done.

[gerold]

Vas said:

I have no idea what the author has done


I do have an idea what the author has done.

Thanks for your information Rob. Have you compared it to
the code of the free fruit program.

Gerold.

[GS]

Vas said:

I have no idea what the author has done


I do have an idea what the author has done.

I am sure Vas knows exactly what the 'author' has done.
... and I also have an idea why he(Vas) doesn't admit it yet ;-)

Guenther

[Dann Corbit]

Strelka is a Winboard engine and Rybka is a UCI engine.
So in order to make a clone, it would require the original source (it will not be enough to use a binary editor to change some constants.)

Certainly V.R. can tell us if he sent his code to some other people.

[Alessandro Scotti]

Strelka is a Winboard engine and Rybka is a UCI engine. So in order to make a clone, it would require the original source (it will not be enough to use a binary editor to change some constants.)

There could be other ways, for example using polyglot as a stub and embedding any UCI engine would work as well and is quite easy to do.