Levy's interview on Chessbase about ICGA/rybka

[Rebel]

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

big yawn

As said, problematic.

[michiguel]

Not really.

It was beyond flawed. A member of the Secretariat has been notoriously and publicly biased from the get go. That is unacceptable. He was the same who has declared that "guts" are good to detect clones (in other accusations), the same member who has been leaking information in a process that is supposed to be confidential. Another member of the secretariat is not even a programmer and he is a member of a direct competitor team... To make things worse, at the very moment that rybka 1.6 was found to have Crafty in it, Bob should have recused himself on the spot. That is the same silliness as having Fabien in the secretariat, in charge of writing the report. In addition, the final report misrepresented who signed and who did not and was written... and was not even circulated for final approval. Was it? and do not get me started in how the report was written.

I bet most (if not all) of the members of the panel had good intentions, but the behavior of the ICGA was, at best, incompetent. Several rules that you may expect to have in a cheating investigation were violated.

The only thing I ask myself is... Why do I freaking care.

Miguel

It seems that you are primarily addressing me, so how about getting a few things straight if you want to use my name or imply something about me...

Of course, I told you before you should have recused yourself.

1. I have NEVER said "guts are good to detect clones." Not one time. "gut feel" might be the thing that causes one to look, as in the similarities reported between early Rybka 1.0 beta versions and Fruit. But that does NOT "detect clones" and I have never said nor written such a thing. An outright lie.

http://talkchess.com/forum/viewtopic.ph ... 3&start=36
You smeared 1/4 of the CCT entrants for no other reason than your gut. That is not a lie. By the way, nothing came out of that empty statement.

2. I was not "notoriously biased from the get-go." Another OUTRIGHT LIE. You can find early posts by me on this subject dismissing it as very unlikely. Until Zach and Christophe began to show me evidence, until I looked at Fruit, and Strelka, and then the Rybka 1.0 beta binary. After looking at the evidence for quite a while, THEN I became convinced. So can you PLEASE get something right, at least every now and then, if you want to imply things about me?

Irrelevant what you thought years ago. At the time the process started, you already had formed an opinion already. That is a fact, not lie and it is unacceptable for someone who is responsible for leading the investigation and writing the final report.

Two outright lies in one post.

None.

To continue, we didn't discover the Rybka 1.6.1 stuff until the investigation was nearly completed. It would be foolish to back out at that point.

You knew this before March 2nd
http://talkchess.com/forum/viewtopic.ph ... 405#397405
when the discussion was starting. At the end of the post you even say
"This investigation is not going to be rushed...."

Miguel

In a court case, there are PLENTY of biased people involved. Guarantee you the cops and the district attorneys believe the accused is guilty as sin. The defense attorneys believe he is innocent. Vas just refused to provide any defense. His mistake. Would it have made any different in the final conclusion? Almost certainly not. In the final punishment? Possibly. But district attorneys and police do not recuse themselves if they become convinced of the guilt of the accused. The judge/jury listen to what is presented and come up with a verdict and punishment. ICGA board did just that.

Several certainly assisted us in the final report. Mark Watkins for one. You were not asked since you didn't participate. Should we have sought you out? You have any idea how the final report WAS produced? The final report was developed right on the wiki...

[Harvey Williamson]

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

big yawn

As said, problematic.

No it is not. As I said above the only way the case could be reopened is for Vas to make a direct appeal. You can make as many posts as you want they will change nothing.

[Rolf]

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.

You call others deluded fools, but you are communicating with them and making up your points. Nothing to seek in your own somewhat broken mindframe?

Then you admit that you think that this is a case of exceptionally huge cheat but anyway you are trying to outbalance the two sides of the medal. Nothing to consider here for your own thought process either?

As I said, you are a sort of newbie in such political topics but you claim that you had something objetive to say while in truth you are biased in total.

If you were a true man of science you wouldnt make such a clown out of yourself.

Why dont you see that? I dont even argue that you are completely wrong in all respects but the way you present yourself makes it difficult to follow yaou in serious.

Take the many blind spots you have to bear. You just dont realise that we are talking about a competitive sport where the players are seeking advantages no matter where they can get them. You sound like a priest or sectarian who does always consider if a tiny step is legitimate but CC in the meaning of the sport competition is somewhat like an art, where creativity is dominating,if you want to become best.

Let me give a primitive example. Here a Don Juan is making dates with women wherever he can find them, also nuns or mothers of twin babies. It's all about sex (becoming first in sports).

Don Camillo and Peppone are fitting together well but Don Juan and Mother Mary have nothing in common, if you know what I mean.

Vas is the best player of them all, all others who went crying to Mother Superior Levy are sissies without self respect.

The President David Levy himself has admitted that he is a sexual player; willing to do it even with the machines that are playing in his tournaments! All members of ICGA should therefore consider before they want to deny the importance of sex!

[Rolf]

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

big yawn

As said, problematic.

No it is not. As I said above the only way the case could be reopened is for Vas to make a direct appeal. You can make as many posts as you want they will change nothing.

No sorry. Unless Levy doesnt come crawling on his four limbs and begging Vas to come back there is no chance to stop this ICGA bashing.

[Harvey Williamson]

Rolf you are talking to one of those independent experts that was on the panel. Not a Chess programmer but a very experienced gaming programmer. We did not invite him to join. He heard about the investigation and asked to be part of it.

[Harvey Williamson]

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

big yawn

As said, problematic.

No it is not. As I said above the only way the case could be reopened is for Vas to make a direct appeal. You can make as many posts as you want they will change nothing.

No sorry. Unless Levy doesnt come crawling on his four limbs and begging Vas to come back there is no chance to stop this ICGA bashing.

Rolf you 'bashing the Bishop' once every hour will not change the verdict or the sentence.

[Rolf]

Rolf you are talking to one of those independent experts that was on the panel. Not a Chess programmer but a very experienced gaming programmer. We did not invite him to join. He heard about the investigation and asked to be part of it.

I like him despite his limitations. He's openminded and will change his views if he understood all the aspects. I have often stated that the best AngloAmericans could offer is their open mind and willingness to talk. That alone doesnt guarantee correct judgements but at least they can change! They are no automatic loudspeakers like other functioneers...

[bob]

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 his engines play in their tournaments, if he cheats and has no remorse about it?

Posting your garbage one time wasnt enough?

And what about yours???

[bob]

The Rybka supporters are fools in denial.

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

Typical fact mistake. Only 1/5 of the Nile is in Egypt. You short-change Uganda, Ethiopia and "friends".