2009 WCRCC: Bright/Spark issue

[CRoberson]

Last year I added a rule that the tournament doesn't allow unheard of authors to enter unheard of programs. They must become
recognized first and they can do that via ICC, FICS, CCRL, RWBC, WBEC, OpenWar, ChessWar or any of those. This new rule has
worked rather well in multiple tournaments and has been adopted by CCT.

Is Allard not a recognized author?

Yes, Allard is. That is why Spark is in the tournament even though Spark is a barely recognized program (it is very new). It is making its
premiere in OpenWar. Both his programs were originally entered because the early sparse data from OpenWar suggested Spark was
far weaker, but the latest data (much less sparse) says they are nearly the
same strength. Thus, the 3 year old rule doesn't allow both.

[hgm]

One of us is, that is for sure. Please cite an example where in prior CCT or ACM or WCCC or WMCCC events, one author has been allowed to enter _two_ programs. Then we can discuss it. However, you are going to have a small problem coming up with the programs and author names...

Not at all. I myself was that author, of course. Participating in CCT 10 With Joker and micro-Max. As you can see here:

http://www.cctchess.com/cct10/participants.html

In CCT 11 and CCT12 there was Charles Roberson with Telepath and Noonian:

http://www.cctchess.com/cct11/participants.html
http://www.cctchess.com/participants.html

As usual everything you say is based entirely on ignorance and laziness (you could have looked up the partcipants list of the last three CCTs yourself), and failure to read what others post (it was mentioned several times already in this thread)...

[krazyken]

You buy 30 cars from the same dealer over a 40 year period of time. Do you read the _last_ contract just as carefully as you read the first 29, particularly when the first 29 were always the same???

Poor analogy, but I get your point. Repetition breeds laziness. But I still feel a person should take responsibility for their own mistakes, even ones caused by laziness. If I signed that 30th contract and later learn there were changes in terms, I will still be held legally liable for that contract.

[bob]

One of us is, that is for sure. Please cite an example where in prior CCT or ACM or WCCC or WMCCC events, one author has been allowed to enter _two_ programs. Then we can discuss it. However, you are going to have a small problem coming up with the programs and author names...

Not at all. I myself was that author, of course. Participating in CCT 10 With Joker and micro-Max. As you can see here:

http://www.cctchess.com/cct10/participants.html

In CCT 11 and CCT12 there was Charles Roberson with Telepath and Noonian:

http://www.cctchess.com/cct11/participants.html
http://www.cctchess.com/participants.html

As usual everything you say is based entirely on ignorance and laziness (you could have looked up the partcipants list of the last three CCTs yourself), and failure to read what others post (it was mentioned several times already in this thread)...

For at least the last event, we had a discussion about Charles' second entrant, with the intent of avoiding having a bye.

I've given my reasons for not wanting more than one entrant per author or team of authors. The reasons are well-founded, have been well-discussed, and have been in place for almost 40 years now.

I've never considered entering two programs, while I have certainly had enough of them to do so. It is unfair to other participants since multiple entries increases that author's chances of winning or finishing higher than expected. It is unfair to beginners. It offers chances for interference that can't be ignored based on past events. It is simply a bad idea. The ICCA allowed this for a couple of years in the commercial WMCCC tournaments only. And even those led to enough problems that it was discontinued completely. All for good reason. Those of us that have been doing this long enough can grasp the reasons why it is a bad idea. A few of us that have not been doing it for very long simply don't have a clue about the issues and problems. Nothing new there at all...

If we allow this, we should simply open the doors and allow the clones and derivatives that we have been denying entry to as well. And accept the consequences. After all, multiple entrants from a single author, multiple clones from a single author, what more could one ask for?

I intend to "vote with my feet" on the issue. I don't want to play in events with clones _or_ multiple entries from one person or team. If enough disagree with me, the events will do just fine without me. If enough agree, then we can start over again and hold some events with rational rules.

Having two or more entrants from a single author or team simply makes absolutely no sense, no matter which angle you look at it from. There are some ideas that are simply bad ideas. This is one of them.

[bob]

You buy 30 cars from the same dealer over a 40 year period of time. Do you read the _last_ contract just as carefully as you read the first 29, particularly when the first 29 were always the same???

Poor analogy, but I get your point. Repetition breeds laziness. But I still feel a person should take responsibility for their own mistakes, even ones caused by laziness. If I signed that 30th contract and later learn there were changes in terms, I will still be held legally liable for that contract.

Agreed. But "rules" are not a contract. We have _always_ had discussions about various rules at the beginning of a tournament, and have changed one or more rules at that point in time on more than one occasion. ICGA events have the "player's meeting" for this specific purpose. So this isn't a contract. It is a "come to the ball court on saturday for a game football or basketball. And once we get there we finalize the rules before we begin, and if someone is unhappy with the changes, they are free to go home, or accept them.

This one entry per author or team has been so ingrained in computer chess for years (look at any of the ICGA rule sets for past events) that it never occurred to me that rules contrary to those would even be considered. There are some things one takes for granted unless real money is involved.

I can guarantee you I will be more diligent in the future and will simply not participate in events that are going to fall into this multiple-entry/single-author trap.

[hgm]

I intend to "vote with my feet" on the issue. I don't want to play in events with clones _or_ multiple entries from one person or team. If enough disagree with me, the events will do just fine without me. If enough agree, then we can start over again and hold some events with rational rules.

Well, I paticipate with two engines in this WCRCC.

So I suppose you have withdrawn Crafty from this one, or will still do so? Because if you don't, any threats like those you are making here will not be very credible to organizers of future tournaments. They would look more like childish lies to get your way, if you don't withdraw Crafty now for this event...

I can guarantee you I will be more diligent in the future and will simply not participate in events that are going to fall into this multiple-entry/single-author trap.

Ah! So it did finally sink in who was out of touch with reality?

[bob]

I intend to "vote with my feet" on the issue. I don't want to play in events with clones _or_ multiple entries from one person or team. If enough disagree with me, the events will do just fine without me. If enough agree, then we can start over again and hold some events with rational rules.

Well, I paticipate with two engines in this WCRCC.

So I suppose you have withdrawn Crafty from this one, or will still do so? Because if you don't, any threats like those you are making here will not be very credible to organizers of future tournaments. They would look more like childish lies to get your way, if you don't withdraw Crafty now for this event...

I can guarantee you I will be more diligent in the future and will simply not participate in events that are going to fall into this multiple-entry/single-author trap.

Ah! So it did finally sink in who was out of touch with reality?

I expected no less and was therefore not surprised. Unwilling to listen to the experience of others, rather than listening to your own self-interest. As far as your last question goes, no I do not plan on participating. Not because of your childish suggestion, but because I am 61 years old and believe I have earned the right to do what I please, when I please, so long as it is lawful. Since I believe this is a poor idea, I've chosen to not deal with it.

BTW, for the record, this was not an issue dealing with your programs. It _was_ an issue directed specifically at (a) a bad idea and (b) the specific case in the title bar on this thread, which I assume you carefully chose to ignore. umax has little chance of doing well. While bright/spark are quite strong and allowing both is more than just problematic.

But I didn't think you'd pick up on the _important_ details, as always... I didn't mind Charles running a second program for a couple of reasons. First, his second program was not very strong. Second, I trust his actions having sat at a table and played in tournaments while he did the same. This can not be said for _all_ operators. And it makes it a bad idea for _all_ tournaments, as a result. But until you can see over your own self-interests, you won't figure that out. And note _I_ have been consistent on this point for years, complaining when the ICGA allowed "Bionic Impakt" to play in Jakarta, even though it was a version of Crafty with maybe 10 lines modified. And the two versions finished in the top 5 at the event, which was not fair to those below crafty/bionic. But you wouldn't get that, with serious tunnel-vision issues.

[hgm]

As far as your last question goes, no I do not plan on participating. Not because of your childish suggestion, but because I am 61 years old ...

If you read back a little, you will actually see that it was _your_ suggestion. Of course we all get shorter memory spans with age, but this really tops it. But at least we agree that it was a childish suggestion.

But Crafty _is_ participating today. So one wonders what you actually mean by "not participating"? It seems it means that Crafty will play anyway, and that it just you who goes off sulking that you didn't get your way...

[bob]

As far as your last question goes, no I do not plan on participating. Not because of your childish suggestion, but because I am 61 years old ...

If you read back a little, you will actually see that it was _your_ suggestion. Of course we all get shorter memory spans with age, but this really tops it. But at least we agree that it was a childish suggestion.

But Crafty _is_ participating today. So one wonders what you actually mean by "not participating"? It seems it means that Crafty will play anyway, and that it just you who goes off sulking that you didn't get your way...

You have some _serious_ problems. I clearly said that I would simply not participate in events where multiple entries per author were allowed. If you look at the post I responded to, you _clearly_ suggested that I withdraw.

So I suppose you have withdrawn Crafty from this one, or will still do so? Because if you don't, any threats like those you are making here will not be very credible to organizers of future tournaments. They would look more like childish lies to get your way, if you don't withdraw Crafty now for this event... Wink

So I wonder who has the _real_ memory problem? You don't suggest anything in the above quote?

edit:

For the record, and Charles can confirm this, last night around 1am after signing off of Xbox live, I sent charles an email telling him I was not going to participate. I also scheduled a script to be run on the remote cluster to terminate Crafty around 6am CDT so that it would not be on when the tournament started. However, we had some sort of LDAP issue where my password would not work, which caused the email to hang on my machine and not get sent out thru our normal mail gateway because the gateway box would not authenticate my account. Nor did the script run for the same reason. I discovered this around 9am, and resent the email. Charles told me Crafty had already played a game and I elected to leave it on rather than wrecking the remainder of the pairings and tie-breaks.

I don't "sulk". I'll leave that to you to bottle up with the other issues you have.

[Allard Siemelink]

Back from vacation...

Since the tournament is well behind us now, I see no point in debating this much further.
All I'd like to add is that I hope that something can be learnt from this episode.

For instance, I'd welcome future events making their rules clear from the outset and stick by them.
Specifically, you might want to update rule 14: "An author may enter more than one program as long
as they are substantially different programs as opposed to a different version of the same program."

BTW, don't worry, I've never considered this a personal issue and I've always understood you meant to act in the best interest of the tournament.
However, not answering my emails for nearly two weeks now is not something I enjoy.
If you can spare the time, any response to my e-mails is still highly appreciated.

The data clearly shows that Spark and Bright are not sufficiently different in playing strength and therefore I can not allow both in the tournament.

...

This decision doesn't have any personal issues in it at all.