Komodo and WCCC

[Rodolfo Leoni]

I agree Stockfish should be allowed to partecipate. ..............

..........While doing so, what's the cost of congratulations?

I am basically repeating things here, but since I have been encouraging Stockfish to participate, I want to make it clear that I know of nothing that would prevent them from participating except Marco and some of the authors saying they do not want it to. I do not understand the reasons, so it is best to ask them directly.

It has been my fault to think Stockfish was excluded from participating. I'm sorry for that and I'm happy to heve my ideas more clear now.

Preparing for the WCCC is a lot of work. You need to make a good book suitable for your program. You need to find suitable hardware (a mere quad will not suffice). You need to pay for travel, hotel and other expenses. If you enter all three competitions, it is basically 7 days of continuous work. In the evenings you are not playing you have to modify your book to not repeat lines. It is a big undertaking and I am glad we had Erdo as our operator and book maker. I hope that Stockfish will compete in the future. They have a great program.

I think Erdogan has been great. I want to congratulate to him too, because I think he contributed a lot. Not only with book, with heart too. You're lucky to have such a man in the team.

...................................

People have made wild claims here about strength, but only a few people have access to current Komodo and Shredder development versions. You cannot compare fast games with old programs with long games and new programs. I know Komodo has gained a lot of elo since the 11.01 release.
I would guess that Shredder has as well since Stefan's last release. And claims Rybka was 600 elo stronger than all other programs at the time is just not backed up by the available data. It is not hard to look up ratings on the various lists. Try to do that and be more factual.

You seem angry and I don't understand it. I started this thread because there was a lot of indifference about WCCC and, while doing so, I repeated my congrats to the team. If you want, I can repeat it again.

While I was spending my evenings (and a part of nights) at Olivier's Chesswar and Openwar broadcasting. it was clear enough how Rybka was superior at those times. The 100% performance was boring too, and people often gave their attention on other than Rybka games, like the fact a pizza was their dinner and so. Spike 1.3 has been of some interest, but at its first Openwar it was clear the strenght difference. Not 600 ELO, but 300+ for sure.

Perhaps someone will start a poll asking if Stockfish should enter these tournaments? If there is a huge demand, maybe they will change their minds and enter next year.

Mark

I hope it's clear I'm not against Komodo or business from chess or anything else. I wanted to underline business is far more difficult today than it was ten years ago. But maybe it's true in every field of activity.

Stockfish absence is a damage for Komodo, I guess. People will always say "Stockfish!" when Komodo wins. If someone has a way to convince Marco & C. to participate I'll be happy and I'm sure a lot of more people would follow the event.

Regards,
Rodolfo

[hgm]

Year sure, computer chess tournaments are dying, but then there is much bigger interest in tournaments such as TCEC than what WCCC ever had in its history.
Just keep living in your bubble and keep blaming everything else. Such a dystopian view...

So how much you think people would be willing to pay to watch TCEC?

[Lyudmil Tsvetkov]

I always assumed that WCCC had a computer science conference attached to it, but that seems to not (no longer?) be the case.

The ICGA event consists of a scientific conference, some Chess championships, and the Computer Olympiad for other games than Chess. (This year there were Chinese Chess, Shogi, Go, Draughts, Othello, Hex, NoGo, Dark Chinese Chess, Einstein Wuerfelt Nicht, Amazons, and Breakthrough tournaments, and then I probably forgot some.)

The conference lasts 3 days, also this year, and attracted some 40-50 participants (my guestimate, I did not actually count, and not everyone might have been present in the room when I took a peek anyway). About 30 people came over from Taiwan alone, where games programming seems to be a thriving research area. Most tournaments last one or two days. Most conference participants also participate in some game tournaments.

scientific conferences killed science.

40-50 participants, of which 30 Taiwanese, very representative indeed.

somehow, I can not think of a Taiwanese chess engine.

Somehow, I don't believe you exist, probably a troll bot experiment...

looming larger now, looming larger...

[Lyudmil Tsvetkov]

scientific conferences killed science.

40-50 participants, of which 30 Taiwanese, very representative indeed.

If that's where the research is happening, then it very well could be.

somehow, I can not think of a Taiwanese chess engine.

It's not a computer chess conference.
Also, computer chess is not scientifically interesting anymore.

well, it is obvious, since Van Gogh, no more great painters,
since Mozart, very few great musicians,
since Newton, very few great mathematicians, etc.

all those people never attended any kind of conference or took artistic advice, but still their names are carved in gold.

people who attend scientific conferences mainly remain unnoticed, at least I can not think of a single worthy name.

and it is only about natural, in order to create, you need tabula rasa, no knowledge whasoever about the past; once you know about the past, all you can do is repeat things already well known.

that is why scientific conferences are extremely detrimental to any kind of creative activity.

[Lyudmil Tsvetkov]

oops, fearful of another Guenther attack, I forgot to note that not only computer chess science is not dead, but it has had one of its greatest achievements with SF framework development, and, what is even more important, the most substantial progress is still ahead.

[hgm]

people who attend scientific conferences mainly remain unnoticed, at least I can not think of a single worthy name.

Obviously you never heard about Einstein, Bohr, Feynmann, Higgs, Veltman, 't Hooft...

But I guess no one would expected you could be aware of any of these.

[Lyudmil Tsvetkov]

I think this is a wrong perception. Last year there were many more non-commercial participants. Chiron was there because he was willing to come; if one of those 'stronger free engines' would have been willing to come, I am sure they would have been more than welcome.

I refer to David Levy's open letter about this WCCC would have been a 3 rounds tournament with 4 participants. Komodo, Shredder, the winner of WCSC, and a fourth one. What if Andscasc and Equinox asked to participate? Both of them are stronger than Chiron, according to ranking lists. I wonder what engine should have been admitted as fourth.

And I think you are too hard on the participants: The playoffs were played at progressively faster TC, where operator speed and attention start to play a significant rule. So obviously distractions are unwelcome. Have you ever tried to have a chat with Carlson, while he was playing a game, or with Quintana while he was cycling in the Giro? If not, would you also say that these disrespect their audience?

I don't feel (and I don't like to be) hard. Public handling is part of event management. If something went wrong, maybe many things could be improved for future. Not only about the public, but also all the things you discussed with David Levy few time ago.

Another thing... There's a lot of useless spamming here, totally off topic. I want to remember Mr Tsvetkov sent a death wish to Roberto Possiotto about two weeks ago. He wrote "Che tu possa morire". Translated to English, it means "I wish you to die". He also said it was a joke. I think it's really a bad joke, and it should be censored. It'd be also nice if he avoids to post his "blitz" viewpoints about the whole universe.

Possioto - possa, do not you see the language pun, man?

besides, no one knows Italian here.

gradisca i miei saluti, il tuo giocatore con punti di vista lampo

PS. I will have to search what blitz viewpoints actually means.

[Lyudmil Tsvetkov]

Number of participants is only a matter of money. If you pay large fees almost every engine owner wants to partcipate.

I wonder, if you live near Leiden, why did not you enter Skipper?

I don't live in Leiden and I have no car. Also Skipper still playing too badly.

That's ok. You can easily secure a 4th place at the "World" Championship, thanks to the lack of interest in this (totally uninteresting) tournament

There may be many people following this tournament using internet I don't know. At least one other person on my local chess club following it while he did not in previous years.

Skipper didn't join because it is no fun seeing your engine being slaughtered each and every game. Also I don't like carrying my laptop for it weighs too much. Also I am paranoid it would get broke and that I have to buy a new one and do all software installations all over again which probably would take a week or so with all kinds of annoying problems. And of course I make no good backups

you forget about Windows 10.

[Rodolfo Leoni]

I think this is a wrong perception. Last year there were many more non-commercial participants. Chiron was there because he was willing to come; if one of those 'stronger free engines' would have been willing to come, I am sure they would have been more than welcome.

I refer to David Levy's open letter about this WCCC would have been a 3 rounds tournament with 4 participants. Komodo, Shredder, the winner of WCSC, and a fourth one. What if Andscasc and Equinox asked to participate? Both of them are stronger than Chiron, according to ranking lists. I wonder what engine should have been admitted as fourth.

And I think you are too hard on the participants: The playoffs were played at progressively faster TC, where operator speed and attention start to play a significant rule. So obviously distractions are unwelcome. Have you ever tried to have a chat with Carlson, while he was playing a game, or with Quintana while he was cycling in the Giro? If not, would you also say that these disrespect their audience?

I don't feel (and I don't like to be) hard. Public handling is part of event management. If something went wrong, maybe many things could be improved for future. Not only about the public, but also all the things you discussed with David Levy few time ago.

Another thing... There's a lot of useless spamming here, totally off topic. I want to remember Mr Tsvetkov sent a death wish to Roberto Possiotto about two weeks ago. He wrote "Che tu possa morire". Translated to English, it means "I wish you to die". He also said it was a joke. I think it's really a bad joke, and it should be censored. It'd be also nice if he avoids to post his "blitz" viewpoints about the whole universe.

Possioto - possa, do not you see the language pun, man?

besides, no one knows Italian here.

gradisca i miei saluti, il tuo giocatore con punti di vista lampo

PS. I will have to search what blitz viewpoints actually means.

I know Italian, Roberto knows Italian, all Italian people know Italian, some non-Italian know it too. Your joking with death has a bad taste.

[Lyudmil Tsvetkov]

people who attend scientific conferences mainly remain unnoticed, at least I can not think of a single worthy name.

Obviously you never heard about Einstein, Bohr, Feynmann, Higgs, Veltman, 't Hooft...

But I guess no one would expected you could be aware of any of these.

I have heard about the first one, the others seemingly did not contribute anything sybstantial, just a single brick, maybe on the 6th or 7th floor.

Einstein laid a foundation.

oh, wait, speaking of Bohr, I vaguely remember some German phrases, Bohrmachine, Bohrloch, Bohrmeister...

no one who is not a physicist by profession like would know in detail about those.