fire and other engines playing style

[muxecoid]

If you want engine with different style try Junior or Thinker. All other engines are too similar to one another.

[BubbaTough]

I do not get that impression from any of the programmers, or people like Larry Kaufman even. I think that would be way too much honour and if he did it would clear Mr. Rajlich of any GPL issues with Fruit.
Eelco

If you went through the process Richard described, you COULD end up with identical or near identical sets of weights and functionality. Richard is just saying that this does not look like a lot of cut and paste, that the functions were written from scratch, not that the program was designed independently. I suspect the weight issue alone would be enough to make Larry call foul, as he has basically said so in another thread. Not everyone agrees where the line is on how much similarity is appropriate. If Larry and me or Bob or Richard or anyone else disagree on something in this area (say whether it is ok to write your own functionally equivalent piece table code but use copied weights) it is not because one of them lacks honour(heck, Richard offered to send his source to Don and Larry, he certainly is not motivated by critter-oriented concerns). It does not mean anything other than its an area where there is no clear line and two intelligent people can easily disagree. Exactly how different one would have to make their programs in terms of functionality and weight settings to meet various people's standards is an interesting and tough topic. One could imagine two programmers going through a very similar process, and one generating approved or legal code and one not. I am trying to avoid in this thread an argument about the legality or appropriateness of Rybka or Houdini or IPPO. That kind of thing is a judgement call based on a lot of details and has been and will be discussed to death elsewhere. I am just interested in Richard's opinion on whether the process of creation looks similar...with the full understanding that the devil is in the details and the same process can certainly lead to different results. Richard has some professional background in this area I believe, and has been willing to dedicate a bit of time to explore in a way I am not, so I find his opinion more interesting than the average discussion participant because of that.

-Sam

[michiguel]

Unfortunately there is not a shred of evidence that it is not copied either. So only people with a serious flaw in their logic department would think it is original. It is a bit like saying: "there is not a shred of evidence that I will die. I never died before..."

Sorry to disturb this thread (and for my bad grammar)... But IMO there is _zero_ evidence that Ippolit is a R3 clone. Sure, there is the BB (Mark Watkins) comparison of R3 vs Ippolit. It was _far less_ convincing than R1.0beta vs fruit case.

Yet, he said the opposite, for the record.

It does not confirm any copying and does not refute any copying.

I took a look at the R4 binary quite soon after its release - expecting that most of Mark's R3 analysis will still hold - and I was very surprised. I will not disclose anything for now, but it looks quite different than R3 (besides the switch from rotated to magic bitboards of course)...

Most shocking thing was that in R4 I found an eval feature I thought so far to be unique to Critter

Now this finding had risen my curiosity - who was first? If it was present in R3 then Vas/Larry, if it is not then me... So I decided to look at R3 for a comparison (But I am not willing to spend more than one week of my free time with this).

After a 3-4 hours of preliminary analysis of R3 - identifying the board structure, move-gens, make/unmake routines, eval entry point etc. - I can say that R4 is quite a bit faster and has a much lighter eval function than R3 had. It looks like that Vasik listened to MANSARI forum post when he wrote about the supposed 'clones' being stronger just because they have faster/lighter eval

Now the situation is very funny - it looks like Vasik learned something new from the supposed 'cloners', and gained ~35-40 elo by throwing out some stuff from R3

It is still too soon for me to make any conclusions, but from what I have seen (only one afternoon with R3) - it seems that R3 eval is much heavier than R4.

My estimate of %time spent in eval:
Komodo > SF > R3 > Critter > Houdini > Ippolit > R4
(yes, R4 eval seems to be _faster_ than anything from IPPO family)

Oh, and don't give too much weight to this post, I had too much beer tonight, but I will report back in 5-6 days about R3 vs R4... (and maybe much wiser about fairness of this ICGA ruling) - btw: R3 still uses the fruity 'setjmp/longjmp' stuff...

You mean, TSCPish, which existed before Fruit.

Miguel

I guess I need some sleep... sorry to bother you all...

Richard

[michiguel]

If you want engine with different style try Junior or Thinker. All other engines are too similar to one another.

Actually, it depends what version, inert, passive etc.

Miguel

[Izak Pretorius]

1 Houdini 1.5 x64 3001 15 15 1920 77% 2784 30%
2 Rybka 4 x64 Exp. 42 2969 20 19 1240 80% 2719 25%
3 Rybka 4.1 x64 Exp. 79TD v.1 2962 19 19 1240 78% 2743 26%
4 Rybka 4 x64 Exp. 61 2961 21 21 1000 78% 2743 27%
5 Rybka 4.1 x64 2958 16 16 1400 72% 2793 38%
6 Critter 1.2 x64 2955 18 18 1240 76% 2754 34% NEW, + 58
7 Fire 2.2 xTreme x64 2946 19 18 1200 76% 2748 33% NEW, + 9 to 1.5 xTreme
8 Stockfish 2.1.1 JA x64 PHQ 2946 17 17 1360 75% 2757 32% NEW, + 9 to 2.1.1 JA default
9 Houdini 1.03a x64 2944 21 20 1000 80% 2711 30%
10 Rybka 4 x64 2939 17 17 1520 80% 2700 29%
11 IvanHoe B47cB x64 2939 16 16 1360 70% 2791 41%
12 Stockfish 2.1.1 JA x64 2937 16 16 1440 72% 2768 36% NEW, + 30
13 Fire 1.5 xTreme x64 2937 17 16 1400 73% 2763 36% NEW, + 33
14 IvanHoe B49jA x64 2933 17 17 1360 72% 2767 36%
15 Komodo 2.03 JA x64 2929 16 16 1480 70% 2773 33% NEW, + 88
16 IvanHoe B52aC x64 2924 18 18 1160 73% 2756 36%
17 Stockfish 2.0.1 JA x64 2907 18 18 1120 69% 2768 38%
18 Stockfish 1.9.1 JA x64 2906 18 17 1280 73% 2728 33%
19 Stockfish 1.8.0 JA x64 2906 18 18 1200 75% 2715 33%
20 Fire 1.31 x64 2904 19 19 1040 73% 2733 37%
21 Rybka 3 x64 2903 21 20 1000 78% 2686 29%
22 Critter 1.01 x64 2897 16 16 1360 66% 2781 39%
23 Stockfish 1.7.1 JA x64 2896 19 19 1120 76% 2706 34%
24 Stockfish 1.9.1 JA w32 2893 20 20 1000 77% 2692 31%
25 Rybka 4 w32 2891 18 18 1200 76% 2695 32%
26 Critter 0.90 x64 2872 18 17 1200 68% 2741 37%
27 Stockfish 1.7.1 JA w32 2872 18 18 1200 75% 2687 31%
28 Stockfish 2.0.1 JA w32 2872 20 20 1000 76% 2679 34%
29 Critter 0.90 w32 2868 20 20 1000 76% 2679 32%
30 Stockfish 1.8.0 JA w32 2863 19 19 1000 73% 2702 38%
31 Rybka 3 w32 2858 16 16 1520 74% 2687 31%

Last version of IvanHoe is more than 80 points higher than the program from which it was allegedly 'cloned'...
?
relationship kinda looks like Fruit 2.1/ Rybka 1.0 beta at end 2005

yet some here are using the fact that Vas significanty improved Fruit 2.1 as justification for it's legitimacy.
in that case, i guess the ippolit authors are also 'geniuses'...

Hi there everyone.I actually quit computer chess.Just had a quick look here since i registered a month or 2 back on this forum.

Hi Norm

I see you compared Ivanhoe 64 bits to Rybka 3 32 bits.
Now if you look closely you will see the ELO difference between Rybka 3 and Ivanhoe in this rating list is only 36 ELO's which is not really much

Secondly,just a general thought.

Hypothetically speaking... (and sorry for also highjacking this thread,by the way i don't drink bear )

If i were to clone Rybka 3 i would...

1.)Be an expert reverse-engineer.
2.)Be a pretty good programmer.
3.)Be able to rewrite many routines to make it look less clone-like
4.)Remove some evaluation functions to speed up program to also remove even more suspicion.
5.)Be an anonymous team of unknown programmers.
6.)Have a grudge against Vasik (mainly jealousy,since he ruled computer chess for nearly 4 years)
7.)Have my main goal of cloning Rybka to point out that Rybka is the actual clone
8.)Be a member or members of the ICGA investigation panel

This is what i would have done.

I am not for any form of cloning or stealing of any code whatsoever.
But i just want to leave this remark and be honest to myself and fair to Vasik and everyone involved in computer chess.

If Vasik did not rewrite Fruit completely and improved it by more than 200 ELO's then there would not be so many strong chess engines out there now.
Do not take away the work Vasik has done for computer chess from him.
If he has used fruit code or similar code (which many of his accusers also does now anyway,by obfuscating the code to make it look original and call it just using ideas) to create a stronger chess engine,and it's not just a matter of tuning values,i do not buy into that... if he has not done that,computer chess programs would be far behind now in ELO and you would see weaker ELO's in the top.

Suppose his engine was reversed-engineered and the ideas he has added is in the open now,then the computer chess world is richer now.Do you shoot someone who feeds you ? even if he has taken the food from someone else?

Lets get over the past,nobody is perfect,lets judge every single engine in the future then with the same critical views as we did Rybka,and be fair.Stop the damn witch hunt.Vasik is a person,a real person,with a family and even if he is guilty of everything he is accused of,he does not deserve to be treated like DIRT.

This is why i quit computer chess,and any activity on any chess forums.

I am not for or against Rybka or any other clone or chess engine or person.

But i am against trying to destroy an individual that has given the world the strongest chess engine for several years.Yes it's not the strongest anymore.Houdini is now,which is also a clone of Ivanhoe i suspect although the first Houdini was an improved Robbolito clone.But Houdart will have to live with this and his conscience and by stating merely that he used ideas is not the truth.So please,all chess programmers,stop the lies,stop the cloning,and start being original.ELO is not everything.Integrity and honesty and looking in the mirror and seeing the person looking back at you is.

If anyone of you can live with yourself and feel happy by destroying someone else,then so be it,but i will not live with myself any further without stating how i feel.

Lastly,i am against any clones or any form of stealing ideas (but within reason and without hatred)

Peterpan signing out,and wishing all chess engine programmers,peace,prosperity,originality and honesty.