Vas Commercial Future

[Dann Corbit]

To date it can be safely said that everybody interested already got the latest Rybka. They already have, then, a 3000 ElO or so engine. That "everybody" is not more than, say, 2000 or 3000 thousands people. With that number of purchasers -i am being optimistic- Vas got 200-300 kbucks. That's good for keeping a little business and live well for, say , two years, perhaps three if you are tight. .
But now, what?
How many of those 2-3 thousands people will purchase just another, even stronger Rybka?
Half?
I, for certain, stopped my purchases of ANY engine. Many, I believe, has done the same thing.
I will purchase something if they offer me not a stronger engine, but an even better gui, teacher, functions, etc.
Is Vas on that?
If not, how much time you believe he has for engaging fully in this business?
My guess: two years at most from now on.
In all times people in this business could endure 10-15 years; today the cycle is lot faster.
Your opinion
Fern

Some people have not bought any engine yet.
Some people will want the strongest engine on the planet, whatever that is.
Some people analyze correspondence chess games.
Some people will be forever happy with Crafty.

The big sales are not driven by any of the things we think of. It does not matter if the engine is strongest. It does not matter if the GUI is best. It does not matter if the database is wonderful. It does not matter if the entire package has every bell and whistle you can imagine and some you cannot imagine.

What matters is shelf space, advertizing, and a nice shiny box.
There will always be a market for chess programs. The biggest markets (China and India) are largely untapped.

For Vas, the future is bright. He hooked up with a big company that will do the marketing for him (Convetka). He wrote the strongest engine in the world, and he has some clever and innovative ideas for the interface.

If he could cut a deal with the ChessMaster folks, he would become a wealthy man.

For sure, Vas will succeed.
IMO-YMMV

[fern]

I had already guessed that your post here was in revenge for the CTF stuff. But it is not a good idea to bring that stuff to this place, neither is a good idea to keep in mind that controversy for so long, not also a good idea to use a tone of belligerence masquerading as opinion and in fact it is an awful idea to be so prone to conflict as you seem to be.
If you are young, you are heading trough and toward the bad way; if old, you should have already learned to behave.

Take all this, this time, as a papa advice
Fern

[fern]

I hope it will be so, but I cannot believe that in even the most favorable scenery he will become rich on this ground.

my bgest
Fern

[Tord Romstad]

The big sales are not driven by any of the things we think of. It does not matter if the engine is strongest. It does not matter if the GUI is best. It does not matter if the database is wonderful. It does not matter if the entire package has every bell and whistle you can imagine and some you cannot imagine.

What matters is shelf space, advertizing, and a nice shiny box.

Another important matter is to choose the right target platform. Since a long time, I've suspected that phones and handheld devices were soon to become a more important target for chess programs than real computers, but I never knew how right I was until the last two days:

Glaurung for the iPhone has been available for approximately 48 hours now. During these 48 hours, Glaurung for the iPhone has seen more downloads than all other Glaurung versions (Mac OS X, Linux, Windows, and source code) combined over the last two years. There's an awful lot of money to earn in this market. It's a pity I have no business sense myself, and give away my program for free.


Tord

[fern]

NOT to have commercial sense talks very well of you, T....
You are a real good guy, a giver, a source of benefits to people, not for you.
Like a water fountain...


Fsern

[Dann Corbit]

The big sales are not driven by any of the things we think of. It does not matter if the engine is strongest. It does not matter if the GUI is best. It does not matter if the database is wonderful. It does not matter if the entire package has every bell and whistle you can imagine and some you cannot imagine.

What matters is shelf space, advertizing, and a nice shiny box.

Another important matter is to choose the right target platform. Since a long time, I've suspected that phones and handheld devices were soon to become a more important target for chess programs than real computers, but I never knew how right I was until the last two days:

Glaurung for the iPhone has been available for approximately 48 hours now. During these 48 hours, Glaurung for the iPhone has seen more downloads than all other Glaurung versions (Mac OS X, Linux, Windows, and source code) combined over the last two years. There's an awful lot of money to earn in this market. It's a pity I have no business sense myself, and give away my program for free.


Tord

In my opinion, you are:
A very brilliant programmer.
A very nice guy.

A rare combination that should be celebrated. If you wanted to make money at chess, I guess you could do it, but I suspect it would take a lot of the fun out of it. I also guess that someone with your talent can make more money by doing something else. I suspect that those who want to be professional chess programmers do it because they love chess programming so much that they simply don't care if they could be making more money doing something else and chess programming is simply at the top of their list on what they want to do for a living.

Much of the money to be made in the world is on mundane things (helping rich people count their beans, for instance). I do think it is a good idea to choose a profession where you enjoy going to work (but it should also be pragmatic enough so that you can at least survive).

To me, I imagine that all of the top chess programmers are truly excellent programmers. I also guess that even the best professional chess programmers could make a lot more money doing something else. But what if that something else is guiding the missile to its target? And what if the target is a residential area full of families? Maybe (for some) there is an objection to that and they would rather do something else that earns less.

I suspect that only ChessMaster has enough volume to deliver wealth to the chess programmer. Everyone else who is a professional chess programmer is doing it because they can't find anything else they would rather do.

IMO-YMMV

[Tord Romstad]

Fernando and Dann,

Thanks for the compliments! The reasons my program is free are more or less as Dann explains, of course.

But my point was not really about myself and my program, but about the market: If you want to make money on computer chess, don't write yet another Windows chess program, and especially not yet another UCI engine. That's not where the market is. Everybody already has dozens of free and commercial chess programs which beat them every time. Judging from the download statistics for my program over the first few days, the handheld market is bigger by at least two orders of magnitude.

Tord

[S.Taylor]

To date it can be safely said that everybody interested already got the latest Rybka. They already have, then, a 3000 ElO or so engine. That "everybody" is not more than, say, 2000 or 3000 thousands people. With that number of purchasers -i am being optimistic- Vas got 200-300 kbucks. That's good for keeping a little business and live well for, say , two years, perhaps three if you are tight. .
But now, what?
How many of those 2-3 thousands people will purchase just another, even stronger Rybka?
Half?
I, for certain, stopped my purchases of ANY engine. Many, I believe, has done the same thing.
I will purchase something if they offer me not a stronger engine, but an even better gui, teacher, functions, etc.
Is Vas on that?
If not, how much time you believe he has for engaging fully in this business?
My guess: two years at most from now on.
In all times people in this business could endure 10-15 years; today the cycle is lot faster.
Your opinion
Fern

I don't know if I have ever confessed this recently, but I did not yet purchase any Rybka or any other chess engine for the past few years.
I hope to be getting Rybka 3 and 4. And if I don't get my own corner and some cash for a decent computer, in the next few weeks, it might indeed only be Rybka 4.
I tried downloading engines a few times, but I never have the time and patience to do what is needed to get them running. And this, they don't! So it is all lost on me!
I'm longing for some peace and quiet in life, so I can do what I want.
But chess should not be my final destination in life, and it's taking quite a long time for me get even only that!
I'm sure Rybka 3 will give me more than I ever was used to, when I was free with a computer in own tidy room (some years back).

[Uri]

Whom uses e.g. Deep Rybka 3 with an old Pentium 4-PC? If you want to have the best chess software, you are "forced" to buy in periods of a few years a new computer.

I use Deep Rybka 3 with an old Pentium 4 PC because although I have a new Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200 computer I need a new operating system and I don't have the money to buy one right now. A strong computer without an operating system is worth nothing.

I tried to borrow Windows Vista from a friend but it requires an original activation code and I don't have one right now. Microsoft are smart. They don't want people to copy their software, they want them to buy it and currently I don't have the money to buy this operating system which is quite expensive.

So it's not enough to buy a new computer every 3 or 4 years with a stronger processor and new RAM, you also need to buy a new operating system and all this stuff together is a very expensive business.

With the current worldwide economic crisis (which is only deepening btw) I believe many people can't afford such an expensive thing.

If you really want to improve in chess by exploiting the full power of the strongest chess program available you need to spend a lot of money which is currently unaffordable to me and to many other people.

[Uri Blass]

The big sales are not driven by any of the things we think of. It does not matter if the engine is strongest. It does not matter if the GUI is best. It does not matter if the database is wonderful. It does not matter if the entire package has every bell and whistle you can imagine and some you cannot imagine.

What matters is shelf space, advertizing, and a nice shiny box.

Another important matter is to choose the right target platform. Since a long time, I've suspected that phones and handheld devices were soon to become a more important target for chess programs than real computers, but I never knew how right I was until the last two days:

Glaurung for the iPhone has been available for approximately 48 hours now. During these 48 hours, Glaurung for the iPhone has seen more downloads than all other Glaurung versions (Mac OS X, Linux, Windows, and source code) combined over the last two years. There's an awful lot of money to earn in this market. It's a pity I have no business sense myself, and give away my program for free.


Tord

In my opinion, you are:
A very brilliant programmer.
A very nice guy.

A rare combination that should be celebrated. If you wanted to make money at chess, I guess you could do it, but I suspect it would take a lot of the fun out of it. I also guess that someone with your talent can make more money by doing something else. I suspect that those who want to be professional chess programmers do it because they love chess programming so much that they simply don't care if they could be making more money doing something else and chess programming is simply at the top of their list on what they want to do for a living.

Much of the money to be made in the world is on mundane things (helping rich people count their beans, for instance). I do think it is a good idea to choose a profession where you enjoy going to work (but it should also be pragmatic enough so that you can at least survive).

To me, I imagine that all of the top chess programmers are truly excellent programmers. I also guess that even the best professional chess programmers could make a lot more money doing something else. But what if that something else is guiding the missile to its target? And what if the target is a residential area full of families? Maybe (for some) there is an objection to that and they would rather do something else that earns less.

I suspect that only ChessMaster has enough volume to deliver wealth to the chess programmer. Everyone else who is a professional chess programmer is doing it because they can't find anything else they would rather do.

IMO-YMMV

I suspect that Vasik earns from rybka more than what the programmer of the engine of chessmaster earns.

The reason is that I suspect that in the case of chessmaster the engine author get only small part of the money(when programmers of the interface earn more) when in the case of rybka Vasik earns clearly bigger part of the money because unlike chessmaster the engine is the main point of rybka and in previous versions it was the only point of rybka because rybka came with no interface.

Note that this is only a guess and I do not know nothing about the question how much money chess programmers earn.

Uri