Levy's interview on Chessbase about ICGA/rybka

[geots]

Whether or not Vasik used Fruit codes is unsolved. There are debates for, and there are debates against, so what's to believe.

I think it is too easy to say he used Fruit codes and leave it at that, because it is the easiest, more logical thing to do, and hereby condemn him beforehand.

Should we rely on ICGA's version who consists of Vas competitors who btw are commercial, or on Ed, Chris and others version who are studying the code and are trying to compare the differences and similarities between the two programs ?

Unsolved only in your mind. Any competent programmer who understands assembly and actually bothered to read through the evidence, will realize that Vas copied entire chunks of Crafty verbatim, and later copied and adapted to bitboards nearly the entire eval of Fruit 2.1 (one of the strongest open-source engines available at that time).

You seem to think the ICGA banned him for their own malicious conspiratorial reasons. The truth is much simpler: He cheated, he got caught, he lied about his program's originality, and he refused to engage with the ICGA in any meaningful way while the accusations were being investigated and potential responses were being weighed. Why should the ICGA let him

I'm really astonished to read such objectively false statements. In truth Vas has never hidden that he has forefathers in his program. If you care please read all that in the bypack of some early Rybka. But would you be nice and explain to me what relevance this non-registered entity ICGA has for you? THe whole process against Vas is rigged and irrelevant. I cannot imagine why smart people should care at all? There is a wide field of politics.

Are you accusing him of being smart?

[wgarvin]

Because first of all, if I have a rule 2 I must guarantee that this rule is enforcable right from the start and not 10 years later. Otherwise no interesting sport. If you didnt have exact rules for the famous 2 condition then after many years you cant reopen the case.

Damn right, we also wouldn't want to strip Lance Armstrong off of his marvellous seven consecutive wins at the Tour de France.

Dont be surprised, this is my next point. From now on we are living under a false reality of the ICGA with the suspicion that all engines are copies until the holy ICGA has decided otherwise. Meaning that nothing has any importance anymore. That is the bad side of the smear campaign.

Oh, you are definitely living in a false reality, all right.

I understand how people can be passionate about things they believe. What I have trouble understanding is how they can be so wilfully oblivious to the facts when those facts are inconvenient to their world-view. The Rybka supporters are fools in denial. Shouldn't we deal with the world as it really is, not as some fantasy version of the way we wish it to be?

And before you throw my words right back at me, maybe the problem is this: One of us has the facts, and one of us only thinks he has the facts, while being in actual fact completely wrong. Which one are you? Are you sure?? And do you know the true basis of your belief?

[Rolf]

Because first of all, if I have a rule 2 I must guarantee that this rule is enforcable right from the start and not 10 years later. Otherwise no interesting sport. If you didnt have exact rules for the famous 2 condition then after many years you cant reopen the case.

Damn right, we also wouldn't want to strip Lance Armstrong off of his marvellous seven consecutive wins at the Tour de France.

Dont be surprised, this is my next point. From now on we are living under a false reality of the ICGA with the suspicion that all engines are copies until the holy ICGA has decided otherwise. Meaning that nothing has any importance anymore. That is the bad side of the smear campaign.

Oh, you are definitely living in a false reality, all right.

I understand how people can be passionate about things they believe. What I have trouble understanding is how they can be so wilfully oblivious to the facts when those facts are inconvenient to their world-view. The Rybka supporters are fools in denial. Shouldn't we deal with the world as it really is, not as some fantasy version of the way we wish it to be?

And before you throw my words right back at me, maybe the problem is this: One of us has the facts, and one of us only thinks he has the facts, while being in actual fact completely wrong. Which one are you? Are you sure?? And do you know the true basis of your belief?

Damn sure I am. Look, you have your facts but I have mine too. The only difference between us is that I also know about the fact that certain people are making real facts and then they claim as if these facts would exist completely without their help. That is my main critic against the whole smear campaign. I cant thank enough Dann Corbit who let me look behind smokescreens in computerchess, talking about originality. Therefore I tried to incite your interests for politics where you have a paradise for such making up of realities.

[geots]

I'm considered to be a statistician...

+1

The question is: did you fall from your chair laughing while reading Rolf's post?


A.

What part of your brain are you missing? Any group, and I mean ANY group, that would give Harvey Williamson the option to vote on Vas' guilt or innocence should be brought up on criminal charges. That just shows you Levy is either an idiot, or he wanted the proceedings as rigged as possible. I can spit further than I trust him and Hyatt and their fetch-dog.

[wgarvin]

I'm really astonished to read such objectively false statements.

Sadly, it doesn't astonish me at all to read objectively false statements from you. Or George, or Damir, or any of the other deluded fools that crowd these halls. In your case, the objectively false statements seem to outnumber the truthful ones.

In truth Vas has never hidden that he has forefathers in his program. If you care please read all that in the bypack of some early Rybka.

Then I guess he should have declared that on his WCCC entry forms, as the tournament rules required him to do.

But would you be nice and explain to me what relevance this non-registered entity ICGA has for you?

It's an association of chess programmers, that runs tournaments, publishes a newsletter, etc. Its essentially an international club. I am not a member, nor have I written a complete chess engine before or competed in any ICGA event. I did join the panel, mostly because I had heard there were source-to-asm comparisons being performed and wanted to see what that looked like (having many years of programming experience including plenty of experience reading x86 assembly). I did not have any opinion for or against Rybka before joining the panel and looking at the evidence. But the evidence was shocking, it quite clearly showed that Vas had directly copied some code from Crafty into Rybka 1.6.1, and that later he had copied and modified large chunks of Fruit 2.1 into what became Rybka 1.0 Beta. The evidence was quite strong, there was no plausible explanation other than copying. Vas ignored all of the opportunities he was given to participate and defend himself. I can also state from first-hand knowledge that the evidence was not just 'fabricated' somehow by Mark Watkins and Zach Wegner. I did my own disassemblies and compared them to the annotated ones supplied by Mark. I searched in the binaries for the tables of PST values that Zach had listed in his report. The only deception carried out, was carried out by Vas.

THe whole process against Vas is rigged and irrelevant. I cannot imagine why smart people should care at all? There is a wide field of politics.

As it happens, they bent over backwards to try and give Vas a fair hearing. He refused to show up for it, though. On one side, a mountain of evidence, showing clearly that copying had occurred, and that Vas had a HUGE unfair advantage over his competitors for four years, all the while claiming that his program was totally his own original work (which the evidence clearly showed, was not true). On the other side was... Nothing. No participation, no defense, no explanation, no apology, no remorse.

So yeah, even though I thought then (and still think now) that a lifetime ban was pretty harsh... I can see why the ICGA Board ruled the way they did. This is the most severe case of cheating ever seen in the field of computer chess.

[Rebel]

A couple of your sentences:

OK, then what about the people that come here, ask questions, get lots of ideas and algorithms from active programmers, then they find a new idea, hide it and go commercial. I think they are "hooligans" just as much as this case.

My one and only complaint with Vas was that (a) he spent a couple of years asking all sorts of questions, which I and many others painstakingly answered, (b) then he ran away and decided to not reveal anything he found that was new.

He copied my code!

Puke

That you can't see the logical consequence of such utterances automatically and voluntarily should disqualify you as writer of the Panel report, the base for the (not qualified to judge) Board to rule I consider as extremely problematic.

[Harvey Williamson]

A couple of your sentences:

OK, then what about the people that come here, ask questions, get lots of ideas and algorithms from active programmers, then they find a new idea, hide it and go commercial. I think they are "hooligans" just as much as this case.

My one and only complaint with Vas was that (a) he spent a couple of years asking all sorts of questions, which I and many others painstakingly answered, (b) then he ran away and decided to not reveal anything he found that was new.

He copied my code!

Puke

That you can't see the logical consequence of such utterances automatically and voluntarily should disqualify you as writer of the Panel report, the base for the (not qualified to judge) Board to rule I consider as extremely problematic.

The Panel report is written. The ICGA has ruled. So now we can move on. If Vas wishes to make a direct appeal against the verdict or the sentennce he should contact the ICGA board directly.

[Rebel]

The Rybka supporters are fools in denial.

Don't do this. The Nile is in Egypt.

[Rebel]

A couple of your sentences:

OK, then what about the people that come here, ask questions, get lots of ideas and algorithms from active programmers, then they find a new idea, hide it and go commercial. I think they are "hooligans" just as much as this case.

My one and only complaint with Vas was that (a) he spent a couple of years asking all sorts of questions, which I and many others painstakingly answered, (b) then he ran away and decided to not reveal anything he found that was new.

He copied my code!

Puke

That you can't see the logical consequence of such utterances automatically and voluntarily should disqualify you as writer of the Panel report, the base for the (not qualified to judge) Board to rule I consider as extremely problematic.

The Panel report is written. The ICGA has ruled. So now we can move on. If Vas wishes to make a direct appeal against the verdict or the sentennce he should contact the ICGA board directly.

Which reminds you with your vested interests in Hiarcs should have done the same, voluntarily remove yourself from the position you should not have been given by Levy in the first place.

[Harvey Williamson]

you should not have been given by Levy in the first place.

big yawn