An idea for a new WCCC format - what do you think?

[bob]

'Rajlich/Cozzie' is just a fraction whose value is greater than 1.

Vas

A dimensionless constant fundamental to Chess programming!

But to get back on topic: I don't think a shady concept like 'known' is something that could be formalized in the rules for an official event. What would you require? A certain minimum number of postings on TalkChess? Trivial to comply with. Te contents of the postings to reveal some minimal level of technical skill? Who is to judge that? The program must have been playing in Chess War or CCT? This would defer authoroty to others, and make your tourney subsidiary to those events. Not a good thig if you have the ambition to organize a World Championshp...

I mean _known_. Not just someone that posts anonymously here. But someone that is actually known by someone that is known, etc. I would vouch for anyone I know. Others that are well-known would do the same for people they know or have met. I've never met, as an example, Bruce Moreland. But we have had dozens of phone conversations, and thousands of emails/discussions in r.g.c.c and here, so even if he had not met someone in a real WCCC he would be acceptable. One can pretty well tell whether someone is actually writing a chess prrogram or not, based on various forms of discussion, interaction, or game play...

A "world championship" does not need to be open to everyone. It could be a more selective event. In past years you had to submit games to the ICCA if you were not well known so that the "quality" of your engine could be assessed to see if it was worthy to participate. CCT events are open to all. A WCCC should be more selective... Just like the human WCC used to go thru the zonal/inter-zonal qualifications, etc...

[Vasik Rajlich]

'Rajlich/Cozzie' is just a fraction whose value is greater than 1.

Vas

A dimensionless constant fundamental to Chess programming!

But to get back on topic: I don't think a shady concept like 'known' is something that could be formalized in the rules for an official event. What would you require? A certain minimum number of postings on TalkChess? Trivial to comply with. Te contents of the postings to reveal some minimal level of technical skill? Who is to judge that? The program must have been playing in Chess War or CCT? This would defer authoroty to others, and make your tourney subsidiary to those events. Not a good thig if you have the ambition to organize a World Championshp...

We just have to accept that there are a bunch of things which can't be formalized. This includes how 'well-known' an author is, the exact things which have to be kibitzed and logged, etc.

In practice, we have had plenty of events (live and online) in the past and some common sense guidelines do seem to work.

Vas

[Vasik Rajlich]

'Rajlich/Cozzie' is just a fraction whose value is greater than 1.

Vas

A dimensionless constant fundamental to Chess programming!

But to get back on topic: I don't think a shady concept like 'known' is something that could be formalized in the rules for an official event. What would you require? A certain minimum number of postings on TalkChess? Trivial to comply with. Te contents of the postings to reveal some minimal level of technical skill? Who is to judge that? The program must have been playing in Chess War or CCT? This would defer authoroty to others, and make your tourney subsidiary to those events. Not a good thig if you have the ambition to organize a World Championshp...

I mean _known_. Not just someone that posts anonymously here. But someone that is actually known by someone that is known, etc. I would vouch for anyone I know. Others that are well-known would do the same for people they know or have met. I've never met, as an example, Bruce Moreland. But we have had dozens of phone conversations, and thousands of emails/discussions in r.g.c.c and here, so even if he had not met someone in a real WCCC he would be acceptable. One can pretty well tell whether someone is actually writing a chess prrogram or not, based on various forms of discussion, interaction, or game play...

A "world championship" does not need to be open to everyone. It could be a more selective event. In past years you had to submit games to the ICCA if you were not well known so that the "quality" of your engine could be assessed to see if it was worthy to participate. CCT events are open to all. A WCCC should be more selective... Just like the human WCC used to go thru the zonal/inter-zonal qualifications, etc...

Historically most of the weird problems have been from people who just popped up out of nowhere.

On the other hand, some people are just very private.

Anyway, for a WCCC, new entrants should be either disallowed completely or put through a rigorous vetting procedure (which would at a minimum involve submitting an executable).

Vas

[CThinker]

I propose a hybrid.

The tournament would be online (ICC), but the participants would meet locally.

For example, Bob and others could congregate at UAB (this has been done in the previous ACCL). Dann, Kerwin and me would meet at UW or somewhere in Redmond.

This way, travel cost and travel time is really minimized, while at the same time, you get the eye ball experience of the traditional (read archaic) WCCC.

[Harvey Williamson]

I propose a hybrid.

The tournament would be online (ICC), but the participants would meet locally.

For example, Bob and others could congregate at UAB (this has been done in the previous ACCL). Dann, Kerwin and me would meet at UW or somewhere in Redmond.

This way, travel cost and travel time is really minimized, while at the same time, you get the eye ball experience of the traditional (read archaic) WCCC.

That could work with a few gatherings in different places. However I would not want to play on any server that stops me using a .ctg book easily. I am happy to use an alternative book for tournaments like CCT but our tournament book is maintained in .ctg format and for the World Championship we would want to use this.

[bob]

I propose a hybrid.

The tournament would be online (ICC), but the participants would meet locally.

For example, Bob and others could congregate at UAB (this has been done in the previous ACCL). Dann, Kerwin and me would meet at UW or somewhere in Redmond.

This way, travel cost and travel time is really minimized, while at the same time, you get the eye ball experience of the traditional (read archaic) WCCC.

That could work with a few gatherings in different places. However I would not want to play on any server that stops me using a .ctg book easily. I am happy to use an alternative book for tournaments like CCT but our tournament book is maintained in .ctg format and for the World Championship we would want to use this.

This is the primary reason I have maintained that the GUI should _not_ be handling the book facilities. That should be code inside the engine. Then the GUI one uses has nothing to do with playing the game, choosing book moves, and just serves as a user interface, which is where the "UI" in "GUI" comes from. I also strongly believe that an opening book is every bit as unique and important as the chess engine itself, which means one copy of any author's book is allowed in an event, not the multiple copies we have seen in the past.

For the question about EGTBs I don't care. That is static data everyone has access to, how / when you probe them is an internal engine issue anyway so I could care less about what is used there.

[bob]

I think one point that has to be come to grips with is this:

No matter what you do, it is impossible to eliminate cheating.

And I do mean "impossible". Unless you have a few million dollars to build a giant Faraday cage so that no EMF waves can penetrate the walls (eliminates outside RF influence on a hidden receiver in the computer), provide an A/C to D/C to A/C power supply so that the computers run off of battery power, to prevent RF transmissions hidden in the power line, do not allow any human into this "box" whatsoever, use a completely automated interface, allow no information to pass from the server to the chess computer except for move and time information and that has to be carefully vetted to make sure the interface is not encoding information in the time data somehow, the building has to have no windows so that no I/R or other forms of light-based communication can sneak in.

In short, it is an impossible challenge for a WCCC event. The NSA can get away with this, but it takes a huge budget.

[sje]

Here's how it should be done:

1) Every engine outputs a real time series of status reports in some standard format. The format and frequency are chosen to limit the output bandwidth average requirement to some reasonable figure, say 100 Bps.

2) The reports are also issued by the engine immediately after it receives a move (or a game start) and immediately before it sends a move.

3) The reports, digitally signed, are sent via SSL to a central server for logging.

4) The reports are sent to a web server for conversion into pages that can be served and updated in real time.

5) The GUI/server interface does not involve itself with move selection.

[CThinker]

I propose a hybrid.

The tournament would be online (ICC), but the participants would meet locally.

For example, Bob and others could congregate at UAB (this has been done in the previous ACCL). Dann, Kerwin and me would meet at UW or somewhere in Redmond.

This way, travel cost and travel time is really minimized, while at the same time, you get the eye ball experience of the traditional (read archaic) WCCC.

That could work with a few gatherings in different places. However I would not want to play on any server that stops me using a .ctg book easily. I am happy to use an alternative book for tournaments like CCT but our tournament book is maintained in .ctg format and for the World Championship we would want to use this.

This is the primary reason I have maintained that the GUI should _not_ be handling the book facilities. That should be code inside the engine. Then the GUI one uses has nothing to do with playing the game, choosing book moves, and just serves as a user interface, which is where the "UI" in "GUI" comes from. I also strongly believe that an opening book is every bit as unique and important as the chess engine itself, which means one copy of any author's book is allowed in an event, not the multiple copies we have seen in the past.

For the question about EGTBs I don't care. That is static data everyone has access to, how / when you probe them is an internal engine issue anyway so I could care less about what is used there.

Just to clear, we are not really talking about not allowing the GUI to pick the moves (in most cases, opening moves). In the Thinker case, I also wrote the GUI.

I think what we should be saying is that the participating computer player should not pick moves using code that is written by somebody else. It does not matter whether that code is in the GUI or external DLL or main engine. If you did not write the code, it should not be allowed to decide moves for you.

Here some examples of acceptable systems:

1. UI and engine from the same author
a. The Shredder UI connets to the server.
b. The Shredder UI picks the book moves.
c. The Shredder UI asks the Shredder engine to pick a move.

2. UI from one author, and engine from another author
a. The Winboard UI connets to the server.
b. The Winboard UI asks the Crafty engine to pick moves.
c. The Crafty engine book code picks book moves.
d. The Crafty engine code picks moves using search algorithm.

Here are some examples of non-acceptable systems:

1. UI and engine from the same author, but book code from another author
a. The Fritz UI connets to the server.
b. The Fritz UI asks the Fritz engine to pick a move.
c. The Fritz engine asks Polyglot to pick a book move
d. The Fritz engine use a search algorithm to pick non-book moves.

2. UI from one author, and engine from another author
a. The Fritz UI connets to the server
b. The Fritz UI picks book moves.
c. The Fritz UI asks the Crafty engine to pick a move.

[bob]

I propose a hybrid.

The tournament would be online (ICC), but the participants would meet locally.

For example, Bob and others could congregate at UAB (this has been done in the previous ACCL). Dann, Kerwin and me would meet at UW or somewhere in Redmond.

This way, travel cost and travel time is really minimized, while at the same time, you get the eye ball experience of the traditional (read archaic) WCCC.

That could work with a few gatherings in different places. However I would not want to play on any server that stops me using a .ctg book easily. I am happy to use an alternative book for tournaments like CCT but our tournament book is maintained in .ctg format and for the World Championship we would want to use this.

This is the primary reason I have maintained that the GUI should _not_ be handling the book facilities. That should be code inside the engine. Then the GUI one uses has nothing to do with playing the game, choosing book moves, and just serves as a user interface, which is where the "UI" in "GUI" comes from. I also strongly believe that an opening book is every bit as unique and important as the chess engine itself, which means one copy of any author's book is allowed in an event, not the multiple copies we have seen in the past.

For the question about EGTBs I don't care. That is static data everyone has access to, how / when you probe them is an internal engine issue anyway so I could care less about what is used there.

Just to clear, we are not really talking about not allowing the GUI to pick the moves (in most cases, opening moves). In the Thinker case, I also wrote the GUI.

I think what we should be saying is that the participating computer player should not pick moves using code that is written by somebody else. It does not matter whether that code is in the GUI or external DLL or main engine. If you did not write the code, it should not be allowed to decide moves for you.

Here some examples of acceptable systems:

1. UI and engine from the same author
a. The Shredder UI connets to the server.
b. The Shredder UI picks the book moves.
c. The Shredder UI asks the Shredder engine to pick a move.

2. UI from one author, and engine from another author
a. The Winboard UI connets to the server.
b. The Winboard UI asks the Crafty engine to pick moves.
c. The Crafty engine book code picks book moves.
d. The Crafty engine code picks moves using search algorithm.

Here are some examples of non-acceptable systems:

1. UI and engine from the same author, but book code from another author
a. The Fritz UI connets to the server.
b. The Fritz UI asks the Fritz engine to pick a move.
c. The Fritz engine asks Polyglot to pick a book move
d. The Fritz engine use a search algorithm to pick non-book moves.

2. UI from one author, and engine from another author
a. The Fritz UI connets to the server
b. The Fritz UI picks book moves.
c. The Fritz UI asks the Crafty engine to pick a move.

Correct. We often diverge into where the dividing line should be between the GUI and the engine. If you write both, you should decide what goes where. My issue is with a GUI that is used by many. In this case, it should be a UI, and only a UI. Not select book moves. Not deal with learning. Nor with EGTBs. etc...

That's primarily an issue with the commercial guys as they share UIs here and there, and in past WCCC events they shared books which is beyond unreasonable IMHO. Xboard is a perfect example of what a GUI should be. It just relays moves back and forth between the engine and the opponent, and otherwise stays out of the way of how the game is actually played.