What the computer chess community needs to decide

[Adam Hair]

Ivanhoe smp was more buggy than a termite hill.

Chris

Were the bugs in Ivanhoe ones that would affect the Elo rating on a single core? I wonder whether bug fixes alone could account for the higher Houdini rating. Also, the rating jump in Houdini 1.5 corresponds in time to the addition of LMR at PV nodes in Ivanhoe. Assuming this was copied into the latest Houdini, this could account for the large speedup and much of the Elo gain. What do you think?

Everything in Ivanhoe was copied into Houdini progressively.

As Ivanhoe got something.....so did Houdini.

Houdini is nothing more that the dull non-swearing face of Ivanhoe,

Think of it as "their marketing".



Chris

Are you sure about which direction the ideas were being copied?
There is something I have noticed, but I have been uncertain about
whether Ivanhoe was copying Houdini or if Houdini was copying
Ivanhoe.

The direction is Ivanhoe into Houdini. The reason why I say this is the timelines. If you look closely you will discover that one Ippolit derivative gets replaced by another. For all of these authors not one continues when they are "superseded" so to speak.

I and others I know who that are like-minded are looking for anything new. We search for the otherwise undiscovered (at no matter what level). It is because of this that we can see this syndrome develop. We help with a GUI. A GUI needs engines. I suppose you could say that we watch things as they "develop".

At this current moment.....the most palatable Ippolit that has been conjured (both engine and person) is Houdini.

Of course you will not see any of these "authors" at an official tournament. The reason for that is they will never be able to explain "their" creation to the other programmers there. Conversely, that is also the reason why they will never be allowed in to those places.

We can put dates to everything. Exact dates. We are watching you see.

Hope this explains it.

May I go now?

Gotta go tae the dancin'...... So many women so little time......



Chris

Thanks Chris.

Enjoy yourself

[Houdini]

Tom,

Why is it out of line?

People that write pages full about ethics and morality in engine development should not eagerly launch themselves in idle and incorrect speculations about other engines.
An author of a top engine (Don and Larry fit that description) should feel some reluctance towards trash-talking other authors of top engines. It's a matter of common decency.

Robert

[tmokonen]

Otherwise, the history of open source in computer chess and its influence is quite old. Richard Lang had reported he got a push after studying Spracklens Sargon assembly sources from 1978, the Austrian Merlin team started with Chess 0.5 (Pascal) by Atkin/Frey published 1978 in BYTE. I think many started with Turbo Chess (Torbo Pascal) by Kaare Danielsen, and later GNU-Chess, i.e. Uli Türke's Comet.

This may be a very douche bag-ish question, but why is Comet not considered a GPL violator? It's clearly derived from the GPL program GNUChess, and is distributed without source.

[Rolf]

Tom,

Why is it out of line?

People that write pages full about ethics and morality in engine development should not eagerly launch themselves in idle and incorrect speculations about other engines.
An author of a top engine (Don and Larry fit that description) should feel some reluctance towards trash-talking other authors of top engines. It's a matter of common decency.

Robert

What do you mean with other "authors" of top engines? Yourself? Do you mean you "wrote" one of the Hippos? So, are you the author of R3? Excuse me if I ask, but I'm no expert for author copyship. Robert, I read into the direction that you are a good copycoder with some own ideas. Would that be the truth about you? I wanted to ask you another question. Just because Belgium is so small. Do you know Kranium and if yes, did you meet him in real or had some exchanges with him via mail or phone? PM replies are also appreciated.

Just to let you know, as a psychologist I am used to accept everybody with his own special mindframe which is not in doubt by any considerations of ethics or moral. If we would all treat us this wayy, the world would be much more peaceful.
Regards also to kranium

[Don]

For us LMR at PV nodes is significant, perhaps 20 - 30 ELO but I don't remember off the top of my head. We have tried several times to turn it off and try for more aggressive LMR and other things in non-pv nodes but in each case we have failed. LMR at PV nodes is clearly a good thing.
Ivanhoe is a really good program, it would only take a few changes such as this to explain the modest improvement or the first houdini over Ivanhoe.

LMR at PV nodes as is in Ivanhoe is -5 Elo. With little better implementation you can gain +10 Elo. But that's it.
You can't gain 50-60 Elo by bugfixes. As a matter of fact there are no negative Elo bugs in Ivahoe...

This statement identifies you as an amateur at software development. There are bugs in EVERY substantial piece of software and of course they wouldn't be there if the programmers knew about them. Since they don't know about them, they don't know how much they hurt the program.

A programmer might make the statement that they believe with a great deal of confidence there are no substantial bugs affecting ELO, but they can never know for sure. But this would be for the programmers to say, not for you.

And a speed-up in terms of NPS of Houdini vs. Ivanhoe is less than 10% in x64, meaning less than 10 Elo...

[lkaufman]

Tom,

Why is it out of line?

People that write pages full about ethics and morality in engine development should not eagerly launch themselves in idle and incorrect speculations about other engines.
An author of a top engine (Don and Larry fit that description) should feel some reluctance towards trash-talking other authors of top engines. It's a matter of common decency.

Robert

I am not trash-talking you. I am trying to get an answer to the question of whether you achieved the recent large rating gain by some original idea or ideas, or by adding known ideas to the early Houdini. Either way it is a significant accomplishment, but in the later case credit should be given. Since I can't disassemble code and Don has no interest in doing so, the only way to get answers to this question is to ask others who have done so or to ask you directly. So I ask you, was the large speedup from early Houdini to 1.5 primarily due to an original idea or ideas, or was it due to applying known ideas from other programs that were not in early Houdini versions? I also ask anyone who has disassembled the different versions the same question. You have already indicated that LMR at PV nodes was introduced in an earlier Houdini, but there are many other standard techniques that may have been absent from early Houdini, I wouldn't know.

As to the claim that Houdini is basically Ivanhoe, I don't know this myself, I just have no reason to disbelieve what Chris wrote. I do know that the evals are very similar to my evals in R3 but scaled down a bit.

[tomgdrums]

Tom,

Why is it out of line?

People that write pages full about ethics and morality in engine development should not eagerly launch themselves in idle and incorrect speculations about other engines.
An author of a top engine (Don and Larry fit that description) should feel some reluctance towards trash-talking other authors of top engines. It's a matter of common decency.

Robert

I am not trash-talking you. I am trying to get an answer to the question of whether you achieved the recent large rating gain by some original idea or ideas, or by adding known ideas to the early Houdini. Either way it is a significant accomplishment, but in the later case credit should be given. Since I can't disassemble code and Don has no interest in doing so, the only way to get answers to this question is to ask others who have done so or to ask you directly. So I ask you, was the large speedup from early Houdini to 1.5 primarily due to an original idea or ideas, or was it due to applying known ideas from other programs that were not in early Houdini versions? I also ask anyone who has disassembled the different versions the same question. You have already indicated that LMR at PV nodes was introduced in an earlier Houdini, but there are many other standard techniques that may have been absent from early Houdini, I wouldn't know.

As to the claim that Houdini is basically Ivanhoe, I don't know this myself, I just have no reason to disbelieve what Chris wrote. I do know that the evals are very similar to my evals in R3 but scaled down a bit.

Larry,

The Houdini guy will never answer your question(s) directly (he and Vas share this trait..).

The houdini guy will always give vague non-answers that would most likely protect him in court. And he also has the unique talent of sounding indignant while doing so.

I must admit the houdini guy's evasiveness is at least much more entertaining than Vas' silence and or use of his fall back word, SOON, when asked about updates and such...

[h1a8]

Surely you have seen chess engine open source code (other than your own) by today. If not then you must know that it is unbelievable. All authors who CURRENTLY develop engines have at least seen chess engine open source of another engine. That was my point.

Accepting that, it is understood that from those who currently develop chess engines not only saw other source code but are using some ideas from them as well.
So no current engine is original.

Note: My point is not that all current developers has copied from source code but rather have at least used ideas from them. Dr. Hyatt believes that translating code without exactly copying still renders an engine not original.

[Houdini]

I am not trash-talking you.

Yes, you are. Your incessant suggestions about Houdini are effective trash-talk.

Since I can't disassemble code and Don has no interest in doing so, the only way to get answers to this question is to ask others who have done so or to ask you directly.

This has been a consistent behaviour of yours (now and previously): pushing others to disassemble Houdini to know how or why it's stronger.
Is this behaviour in accordance with the ethical standards of the Komodo team?

So I ask you, was the large speedup from early Houdini to 1.5 primarily due to an original idea or ideas, or was it due to applying known ideas from other programs that were not in early Houdini versions?

There are some new and improved evaluation terms in Houdini 1.5, and a more effective search through various techniques, nearly all of which are original. Your describing this as a "large speedup" is very inaccurate.

As to the claim that Houdini is basically Ivanhoe, I don't know this myself, I just have no reason to disbelieve what Chris wrote. I do know that the evals are very similar to my evals in R3 but scaled down a bit.

Houdini is NOT basically Ivanhoe (and reading Chris C it's obvious that he knows very little about Ivanhoe or Houdini).
And I'm ready to discuss with you all 40 games of the recent TCEC Elite Match with respect to your repeated, but so far unsubstantiated claim that the Houdini evals are similar to R3.

Robert

[Houdini]

Larry,

The Houdini guy will never answer your question(s) directly (he and Vas share this trait..).

The houdini guy will always give vague non-answers that would most likely protect him in court. And he also has the unique talent of sounding indignant while doing so.

I must admit the houdini guy's evasiveness is at least much more entertaining than Vas' silence and or use of his fall back word, SOON, when asked about updates and such...

LOL, here's a hug from the Houdini guy...

I am evasive when authors of competitive engines want to know why Houdini is stronger than their engine.
I am evasive when people make idle speculations about the internal workings of Houdini.
I am evasive when people come with long disassembly listings and then make claims which demonstrate that they haven't got a clue about Houdini.

Looking at the tone of your own post, are you surprised that so few top engine authors are active on this forum?
How much longer do you think I will continue to interact with the truck-load of nonsense that appears on this forum?

Robert