World Computer Chess Championship ?

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MM
Posts: 766
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Re: World Computer Chess Championship ?

Post by MM »

Houdini wrote:
Rebel wrote:
Houdini wrote: These source codes legally ARE public domain.
They are challenged:

http://rybkaforum.net/cgi-bin/rybkaforu ... #pid190922

You are just lucky you are not challenged and Houdini can exist by the grace (or lack of interest) of Vasik.
In what kind of fantasy world do you live if you believe that "Houdini can exist by the grace of Vasik"?

Robert
Hi Mr Houdart, sorry if i ask you a very easy question: did you ever use, for building Houdini, parts of Rybka of some other engines that some laws don't allow to use?

Best Regards
MM
Carotino
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Re: World Computer Chess Championship ?

Post by Carotino »

Laskos wrote:
rvida wrote: Rybka3 - I never looked into the binary. I have R3 equivalent source code from Yuri O.
Rybka4 - Yes, but I did not disclose anything specific besides the fact that it has much lighter eval than R3 (which is much more similar to Ippolit than R3 eval was)
Is it possible that Vas took from Ippos for his Rybka 4?

Kai
My dear, ALL take something from someone. Some people take an idea, there are those who copy and paste the entire program, some people just copy some tables, and those who copy a few procedures... How do you know? And, most importantly, how do you prove? Purity only exists in the world of fairy tales.
Now, fairy tales are a beautiful thing and teach the beautiful ideal ... But they are not the reality. The reality is dirty, ugly and bad. :wink:
MM
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Re: World Computer Chess Championship ?

Post by MM »

Carotino wrote:
Laskos wrote:
rvida wrote: Rybka3 - I never looked into the binary. I have R3 equivalent source code from Yuri O.
Rybka4 - Yes, but I did not disclose anything specific besides the fact that it has much lighter eval than R3 (which is much more similar to Ippolit than R3 eval was)
Is it possible that Vas took from Ippos for his Rybka 4?

Kai
My dear, ALL take something from someone. Some people take an idea, there are those who copy and paste the entire program, some people just copy some tables, and those who copy a few procedures... How do you know? And, most importantly, how do you prove? Purity only exists in the world of fairy tales.
Now, fairy tales are a beautiful thing and teach the beautiful ideal ... But they are not the reality. The reality is dirty, ugly and bad. :wink:
+1
MM
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Laskos
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Full name: Kai Laskos

Re: World Computer Chess Championship ?

Post by Laskos »

Carotino wrote:
Laskos wrote:
rvida wrote: Rybka3 - I never looked into the binary. I have R3 equivalent source code from Yuri O.
Rybka4 - Yes, but I did not disclose anything specific besides the fact that it has much lighter eval than R3 (which is much more similar to Ippolit than R3 eval was)
Is it possible that Vas took from Ippos for his Rybka 4?

Kai
My dear, ALL take something from someone. Some people take an idea, there are those who copy and paste the entire program, some people just copy some tables, and those who copy a few procedures... How do you know? And, most importantly, how do you prove? Purity only exists in the world of fairy tales.
Now, fairy tales are a beautiful thing and teach the beautiful ideal ... But they are not the reality. The reality is dirty, ugly and bad. :wink:
I was referring to Richard's specific statement about R4 lighter eval "which is much more similar to Ippolit than R3 eval was".

Kai
Uri Blass
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Re: World Computer Chess Championship ?

Post by Uri Blass »

Dr.Wael Deeb wrote:
rvida wrote:... about RE:
Houdini wrote:Curiously enough, the authors of Critter and Komodo have no problem with that and actively pursue this course.
Please don't put my name nor my engine into your mouth. I am in no way an advocate of reverse engineering a closed-source engine. In fact, it is partially your fault that I decided to look into H1.5. It was because of your repeated denial (or avoidance of answering) to the question of Houdini origins despite the almost identical output of the pre-1.5 versions (1.0 & 1.03). I would have given up after a brief look if the underlying framework were much different from Ippolit, but alas it was not. Almost all of move generators / make / undo etc. were identical. And I never published any Ippo/Robbo sources with your innovations included. Apart from a very brief and incomplete description on this forum I kept them confidential.

Want to know why I think my Critter is more honest work than your Houdini? Because I wrote all the code myself. I got through the pains of porting my (then weak) engine from pascal to C. I went from 0x88 to bitboards. I tried almost all known board representations and choose one that gave the highest NPS. I tried and tested almost all ideas presented on the old CCC forum (btw. have you ever tried the botvinnik-markoff extension? - it is very powerful but very fragile). After the publication of Ippolit (due to heavy censoring on fora I was aware of it much later than most others) I was amazed by the elegance of it despite the horrible code readability. I took many things from it and tested idea after idea in _my own_ framework, and kept all the ones which worked. Sometime after version 0.90 (which was not exactly a weak engine) it started to behave in some positions like the engines from Ippolit family.

Can you see the difference?

Btw. my curiosity was entirely satisfied with H1.5. I never touched the later version.
Richard,everyone know that you're a talented and honest programmer....

Of course the same can't be said about Robert....he's a money-hungry bully with no limitations when it comes to the moral aspect....
Dr.D
I disagree with you about Robert Houdart.

The fact that you do not agree with him about what is moral does not mean that he has no limitation about the moral aspect and I clearly understand his point.

From his point of view the IPPOLIT source is public domain so he has the right to start with it and do with it what he likes and the same for other people.
You can disagree with this opinion but it does not mean that he has no limitation when it comes to the moral aspect.

Using something that is considered to be public domain is no problem for him.

reverse engineering of some program to get ideas is a different case
so Robert is against Reverse engineering of houdini.

If you claim that Ippolit is result of reverse engineering then you are probably right but I think that when the victim did nothing to stop Ippolit then it became public domain.

Same is going to be for houdini if people reverse engineer it and Robert houdart does not try to prevent publishing the information.
chrisw
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Re: World Computer Chess Championship ?

Post by chrisw »

Rebel wrote:
Houdini wrote: These source codes legally ARE public domain.
They are challenged:

http://rybkaforum.net/cgi-bin/rybkaforu ... #pid190922

You are just lucky you are not challenged and Houdini can exist by the grace (or lack of interest) of Vasik.
Well, there's a comes a time when entropy has done its work. There are numerous examples of stolen material in general circulation, an unpleasant example being the stolen gold teeth of concentration camp victims. If you have a gold ring, a PC circuit board, some gold in your teeth, a gold coin or a gold bar, it is likely some atoms or more of the stolen gold is contained within. Yet we freely trade and use this material. Why? Because it is all so mixed up and mixed in we can't tell the difference any more. This is not to say that the original thieves are not to be still hunted, but the subsequent users?

Likewise, and I never researched the history, if Houdart uses some entropically decayed and altered information from somebody else's disassembly of Rybka, presumably as do ALL serious developers now; then it would seem he does no more than what is generally accepted by the whole world: stuff that is not uniquely identifiable as "stolen" is accepted as useable. So, unless you can point to specific code examples, Houdart should be left alone to get on with his work.
Carotino
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Re: World Computer Chess Championship ?

Post by Carotino »

Rebel wrote:
mcostalba wrote:
Houdini wrote: I would be interested in participating in a tournament similar to the excellent TCEC organized by Martin Thoresen, which had a very well-thought format:
I have to second this. I have no interest in partecipating in tournaments (and this surely will not change in the future), but I really enjoyed Martin's one ! At the fun level it was really much more awesome than the traditional ones. The fact that it didn't pretend to attribute void "titles" to the winner, but just fun to the people watching was a big plus !
Marco, this is all true. However every sport that takes itself seriously has a world championship. We once had an organization that did a good job but then ICGA recently decided to commit suicide, not realizing the times they are living in, not willing to change, and in the hypothetical case they finally would see the light there is this Rybka verdict that will be a millstone around their neck to make any change.

So we are on our own.

What if:

A new organization that organizes a yearly online WCCC. Webcam obliged to avoid cheating, life coverage of every move plus depth, scores and mainlines. Participants have to undergo the similarity tester to be accepted.

Would you play?

Robert ?

Don ?

Richard ?
Mr. Houdart, Mr. Costalba, Mr. Richard...
What do you think of this idea? it's a possible thing? it's something of interest to you?
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Laskos
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Re: World Computer Chess Championship ?

Post by Laskos »

mcostalba wrote:
http://www.grappa.univ-lille3.fr/icga/t ... php?id=239

Code: Select all

1	Junior	
2	Hiarcs	
2	Shredder	
4	Pandix	
4	Jonny		
6	The Baron	
7	Booot	
8	Rookie3.4	
9	Woodpusher 1997
It's curious that folks who would like everyone to be like them (constantly re-inventing the wheel) are not voicing their concerns towards engines which shouldn't be allowed to participate in WCCC like Woodpusher, Rookie, etc., engines which are too weak or cannot even play chess. They often make analogies with some sports, but the general picture is of some incompetents promoting idiocy as a norm.

Kai
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Kingghidorah
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Re: World Computer Chess Championship ?

Post by Kingghidorah »

mcostalba wrote:Ok this arrogant and fossilized organization called ICGA really made me get angry and I looked a bit in their site to know a bit more about them. Apart that it really seems "dead and buried", last interesting content is years ago old, I was really impressed by what they call: "World Computer Chess Championship" , the last edition of this farsa was in 2011 and below the list of participants:

http://www.grappa.univ-lille3.fr/icga/t ... php?id=239

Code: Select all

1	Junior	
2	Hiarcs	
2	Shredder	
4	Pandix	
4	Jonny		
6	The Baron	
7	Booot	
8	Rookie3.4	
9	Woodpusher 1997
Now the first question that comes to my mind is to what "world" they refer in the title of the event ? Mars ? Underwater world ? Surely not chess engines landscape in 2011, this is clear even to the dumbest. So how they have the presumption to call this marketing event, for the only benefit of legacy commercial engines, "World Computer Chess Championship" ? Because of historical reasons ? Sorry, this is not enough IMHO.

... I am not talking of the engine authors (which I respect all) but of the organization that shameless call itself "computer chess world" !
Amen to that brother. :D
En passant,

Lonnie

"Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself."

Harvey Fierstein
rodolfoleoni
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Re: World Computer Chess Championship ?

Post by rodolfoleoni »

mcostalba wrote: Current situation is hypocritical (to say the least), police regime is impractical (and deeply idiotic).

I think before to find "solutions" it is more important to understand the boundary of the issue.

What it means to steal code ? What it means "I have only taken ideas not code" given that copy & paste is in 99,9% of cases techincally impossible and that "to take ideas" in many cases it means to scan at the microscope level the grabbed sources looking for the minimal diffference and quickly (monkey) testing anything seemingly different (and finally asking for hints to the forum when the test result is not what was expected).

...................................................................................
Should everybody assume that, factually, every top engine BECAME part of Ippo family, due to this approach to Ippo code?
That could explain the huge difference between the top ones and the rest of the "company", which remains the vast majority. That contributes to legitimate Junior as the ICGA World Champion, I guess.
Rodolfo (The Baron Team)