Computer Chess Grandmaster Title?

[lucasart]

You wrote int main, then copy kurt eg, stock, ect, You only get to International Master, being generous.

You are a notorious troll on this forum as well as Open Chess. And you are not even an engine developper. You have not contributed anything to computer chess: your derivative of IvanHoe is not only weaker than the original, but it's closed source and has nothing more than some eval tuning, so it is a zero contribution.

That is why, I am not interested to debate with you.

On the other Gerd is someone intelligent who has contributed greatly to the community, in particular by writing the Chess Prorgamming wiki. So I will answer to him alone, if he wants to continue this debate.

Feel free to troll, but do not expect any further answer.

[Gerd Isenberg]

It is not the fault of the CSVN apparently stronger programs did not participate or are not original.

My point is that such titles are meaningless. It may not be the fault of CSVN, but at the end of the day, neither, nor Komodo, nor Critter, nor Stockfish, not dozens of other genuine programs that are stronger than Rookie have shown any interest in this tournament. And it's not against CSVN or Rookie that I'm saying that. It's *in general*, and I think that ICGA is as much of a useless dinosaure as the CSVN.

Do you think Rookie, The Baron and The King et al. are weak programs?

It depends what you call weak. In absolute terms they are strong, but so are lots of other programs. As you can on this list (which is probably not complete) there are at least 62 different programs that are stronger than The Baron (I couldn't find Rookie on there unfortunately)
http://www.computerchess.org.uk/ccrl/4040/

Can you tell me what is original on DiscoCheck?

Perhaps the fact that I wrote it from scratch over the course of 3 years, starting from int main() onwards. Would it make you happy if I submitted it to the signature test of Richard Pili ? After all why not. Let's see the results, and we will know if I would have qualified for their meaningless competition. I can run it and send you the results if you PM me your email (or you can do it yourself if you do not trust me, since my program and source code is freely available, see my signature).

Ok, thanks, I already had a look to your sources. Your statements came a bit respectless and arrogant. People have different motivations, and one motivation is competition and to play tournaments, to meet each other and to discuss and share ideas. What is meaningless to you, is not meaningless for others. The papers by Marcel with the description of Rookie and some pseudo-code snippets etc., most recently the upcoming repetition detection, are imho much more worth than the whole bunch of quite similar open source programs which kills computer chess competition.

[Henk]

If it costs a lot of development time to create a strong chess program then you want some compensation.

I do not understand how people spending a lot of time in development can afford that. Do they get payed ? Where does the money come from. Breathing air is not enough to stay alive.

[velmarin]

I feel that the truth offends you. But you're a copion. Apart from that no arguments only offend

Thanks MI.

[lucasart]

The papers by Marcel with the description of Rookie and some pseudo-code snippets etc., most recently the upcoming repetition detection, are imho much more worth than the whole bunch of quite similar open source programs which kills computer chess competition.

I think the era of people competing with each other, and developping their engines in secret for the sole purpose of competition is over. It ended in 2004 with Fruit. RIP.

I think it's a good thing, as it has made computer chess evolve a lot more when people started sharing their code and combining their ideas and those of others.

But I can understand that some of you are nostalgic about this past era. It's life, and we just need to accept that things have changed.

That being said, I don't agree that open source programs are similar. I don't see why there would be more similar than closed source ones. Of course some are similar because they are branches and forks of the same thing. But yes, they kill the competition.

[hgm]

Actually these kind of "titles" exist in a way. Some people create some fake tournaments, delivering fake trophees, like the CSVN folks for example. This year there were about 6 participants, and the winner of their "International Chess Tournament" was ... Rookie !

This kind of thing really makes me laugh, and I can only conclude that these people are desperate, and create such events as a way to draw attention and bring their work to a level where it does not belong.

Are you running for the "moron-of-the-year contest", or what?

The whole idea that we would be 'desperate people' is utterly ridiculous. You seem to suffer from some kind of narrow-mindedness that precludes you from understanding that there exist people with other interests than yourself.

ICT is the best event of its kind, and so thoroughly enjoyable that people take the trouble to travel to it all the way from Germany and even Kiev. There is no experience like live discussion with authors of original engines, and all 8 participants had their programmer present on-site.

[tpetzke]

It may not be the fault of CSVN, but at the end of the day, neither, nor Komodo, nor Critter, nor Stockfish, not dozens of other genuine programs that are stronger than Rookie have shown any interest in this tournament.

Why are you attacking them? What have they done to you. They don't go around and calling themselves World Champions. The event was meant more as a social event than a competition anyway.

I would have participated although I had no chance of winning if it would be closer to my area. Unfortunately it would have been an 8 hours drive (twice).

Since the open source folks have removed most of the fun part in this hobby those social events might be the motivation for some to keep going.

I'm a big fan of open source and there are areas where this concept works perfectly. Computer Chess is not one of them.

Thomas...

[Daniel Shawul]

Since the open source folks have removed most of the fun part in this hobby those social events might be the motivation for some to keep going.

I'm a big fan of open source and there are areas where this concept works perfectly. Computer Chess is not one of them.

Why are you attacking them? What have they done to you. They don't go around and calling themselves commercial engines?

Although I do not agree with Lucas, you assert here open source engines took the fun away from you. If competition is the only thing fun in computer chess, then Lucas is right as you would have to compete with the best engines. If it is for intellectual merit, then don't look into other codes and just do your own stuff. We shouldn't prevent people from publishing their ideas just because we don't like to refer to others work. So there is hypocrasy here.

[Uri Blass]

Actually these kind of "titles" exist in a way. Some people create some fake tournaments, delivering fake trophees, like the CSVN folks for example. This year there were about 6 participants, and the winner of their "International Chess Tournament" was ... Rookie !

This kind of thing really makes me laugh, and I can only conclude that these people are desperate, and create such events as a way to draw attention and bring their work to a level where it does not belong. Everyone knows what the strongest programs are, and who is (or is not) a genuine developper of such programs.

Comparing the hard work and skills required to write a GM strength program and becoming a GM yourself is a very strange idea to say the least:
- it is true that most GMs do not have the skills to write a strong chess program, and some of them would never be able to do it (simply because they do not have a "technical background")
- for someone like me, it "only" took me a year to make a 2500 ELO program from scratch, but I could spend the rest of my life studying chess, I would *never* be a GM.

So these tasks require very different skills sets, and are not comparable.

I disagree about the part that most GMs do not have the skills to write a strong chess program.

The fact that some do not have a technical background does not mean that they cannot learn it.

I believe that most GM clearly have the skill to make a 2500 ELO program from scratch(when I assume of course that from scratch does not mean not learning about null move LMR and many ideas that chess programs use).

Of course they need to learn programming for it(assuming that they do not know) but I strongly believe that it is something that they can do if they want to do it.

I believe that becoming a GM in chess is clearly harder than writing some original 2500 CCRL program.

[Steve Maughan]

(...)I believe that becoming a GM in chess is clearly harder than writing some original 2500 CCRL program.

I agree. However that doesn't mean writing a strong chess engine isn't something of note.

I'm not going to flog this dead horse any more but I will make a couple of points. If it's so much more difficult to become a GM then why are there are much more GMs in the world than people who have written GM even chess programs?

I realize thee could be lots of reasons. Lets look at a few.

It could be that you can make money as a GM. I doubt it - I imagine they don't make a great wage.

It could be that they just love the game. In which case there really isn't a need for the GM title at all.

It could be for the intellectual challenge. Again - no need for a GM title.

Or it could be that they wanted the social acolade of calling themselves a GM.

Some of you may remember James Robertson the author of Insomniac. He made great progress back in 2000 and competed in the WC in London. He was young. I think the chess program was a high school project. I remember following his progress on CCC and meeting him in London. I don't know what he's doing now but I don't think he's active in computer chess. I remember thinking at the time, it would be a fantastic accomplishment to have written such a strong program at his age. I'm sure it made the college application process easy (if the college could understand the accomplishment). Now imagine that there was a formal recognition of this achievement by attaining the title of Computer Chess GM? I think this would be something young authors could aspire to. And I'm sure it would help them get scholarships to colleges and even good first jobs.

I guess I see it as a way to attract others to our quirky hobby.

Obviously the people who have already written a strong chess engine have done so for reasons other than a title or acolade. It's really not them that this is for - it's for the people who we can draw in.

Enough said - it was just an idea. It looks as if it's not going anywhere.

Steve