Computer Chess as it should be

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Harvey Williamson
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Computer Chess as it should be

Post by Harvey Williamson »

original article is here http://www.chess2u.com/t5146-computer-c ... -should-be

THE COMPUTER CHESS AS IT SHOULD BE

Computer chess as it should be, from our point of view.

Chess is a competitive field. And so is computer chess. You try to win as many games as you can. You learn from your mistakes, and you try to improve your skills, so that you will score better in the next event.

Chess is also an open field. You can study the games of every living or dead Grandmaster, they are free for everyone to see. And there are thousands of chess books where all chess techniques are explained. Nothing is hidden.

Computer chess is a bit different.

You can study the games of Capablanca or Kasparov, but you cannot borrow a parcel of their brain. And this is exactly what people do when they copy/paste a part of an open source chess program.

When a programmer studies the source of a chess engine written by somebody else, and implements the ideas his own way for his own chess engine, he is doing the same thing as a chess player who reads a book written by a master, and learns some patterns that will be useful for his future games.

We would prefer computer chess to follow the same natural way chess does. I have stopped using engines that are not an original work of their authors. When I chat with programmers who are following my broadcasts, I can feel the pride when they win, and the sorrow when they lose. Their engine is like their offspring. They wrote it by themselves, putting in it hours and hours of hard work, with the help of ideas and techniques that are known to the whole community.

Where is the pride if your engine is some kind of chimera? Well you found the name, and you tweaked some settings. Is that enough?
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ricard60
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Post by ricard60 »

I recomend to read this article by Soren Riis:

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=7807

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=7811

it shows that the evolution of chess software changed since Fruit came up.
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Post by Harvey Williamson »

ricard60 wrote:I recomend to read this article by Soren Riis:

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=7807

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=7811

it shows that the evolution of chess software changed since Fruit came up.
Soren's article has absolutely nothing new in it and many factual errors a reply will be posted soon.
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mackgra
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Post by mackgra »

Harvey Williamson wrote:
ricard60 wrote:I recomend to read this article by Soren Riis:

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=7807

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=7811

it shows that the evolution of chess software changed since Fruit came up.
Soren's article has absolutely nothing new in it and many factual errors a reply will be posted soon.
Totally agree.

Interesting to me was a point made in an earlier report where he states Hiarcs and others made their biggest leap in playing strength a matter of months after the fruit code became open source.
I believe in the case of Hiarcs he was making reference to the 100 ELO jump between versions 9 and 10. This 'jump' i believe was made after about two years of delelopment and also after an interim 9.6 version which was ~ 60 elo stronger. So not the quantum leap he was suggesting but rather consistant solid improvement over 2 years.
Additionally being the Rybka forum moderator his view can hardly be called unbiased can it? Not like the many programmers involved on the ICGA panel.
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Post by bnc1 »

Dr Soren Riis's 4 part series on ChessBase.com was well written and displayed a civil and mature viewpoint which is sorely missing in todays computer chess world.

I share his view on the ICGA investigation :

"The whole process was an unprofessional disgrace"
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Post by Harvey Williamson »

bnc1 wrote:Dr Soren Riis's 4 part series on ChessBase.com was well written and displayed a civil and mature viewpoint which is sorely missing in todays computer chess world.

I share his view on the ICGA investigation :

"The whole process was an unprofessional disgrace"
He presents 0 new evidence in any of the report and makes some huge errors which can be easily dhown as errors. Not to declare an interest at the top of the report is very misleading.

A reply will be published soon. In the meantime have a read of this http://www.open-chess.org/download/file.php?id=489
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Mark Uniacke
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Post by Mark Uniacke »

mackgra wrote:
Harvey Williamson wrote:
ricard60 wrote:I recomend to read this article by Soren Riis:

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=7807

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=7811

it shows that the evolution of chess software changed since Fruit came up.
Soren's article has absolutely nothing new in it and many factual errors a reply will be posted soon.
Totally agree.

Interesting to me was a point made in an earlier report where he states Hiarcs and others made their biggest leap in playing strength a matter of months after the fruit code became open source.
I believe in the case of Hiarcs he was making reference to the 100 ELO jump between versions 9 and 10. This 'jump' i believe was made after about two years of delelopment and also after an interim 9.6 version which was ~ 60 elo stronger. So not the quantum leap he was suggesting but rather consistant solid improvement over 2 years.
Additionally being the Rybka forum moderator his view can hardly be called unbiased can it? Not like the many programmers involved on the ICGA panel.
Thanks for noting that Graham, you are absolutely right Riis made some very misleading statements about HIARCS 10.

HIARCS 10 was developed over two years and was the first release where I was working full time on it. The Elo improvement was made from 2003 to 2005 and Riis et al made it sound like it just happened after Fruit.

Furthermore if Riis et al had done any genuine research they would of found HIARCS 9.6 was released in 2004 on Mac & Palm and was about 40 elo stronger than HIARCS 9 (despite a slower gcc compile). The SSDF rating list rated HIARCS 10 +96 Elo on HIARCS 9.0, and that included the significant opening book improvements over HIARCS 9. So in two years, three months the improvement was +96 Elo for engine+book. The facts are HIARCS achieved a relatively normal improvement in 2005.

In my opinion the Riis article is propaganda based on rather unsound reasoning. I was disappointed to see Riis et al stoop to "mud throwing" at HIARCS and Junior, I can't think of two more original and distinctive chess programs.

I understand now that Riis is a Rybka associate and forum moderator, although I see that was not made clear upfront in the article until part 4 some days later where it was burried deep in the text. I found that misleading along with much of the rest of the articles.
Best wishes,
Mark

https://www.hiarcs.com
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Post by Harvey Williamson »

The ICGA responce can be seen here http://hiarcs.net/forums/viewtopic.php?p=53261#53261
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Post by Peter Grayson »

bnc1 wrote:Dr Soren Riis's 4 part series on ChessBase.com was well written and displayed a civil and mature viewpoint which is sorely missing in todays computer chess world.

I share his view on the ICGA investigation :

"The whole process was an unprofessional disgrace"
Whereas I have am a critic of the ICGA's handling of the situation, I could not disagree more with the statement that the presentation was well written.

I have been in engineering for over 40 years and have lost track of the number of presentations I have sat in and given. In my opinion, this has to go down as one of the worst presentations I have ever seen and gave me the impression the presenter had just copied and pasted chunks of someone elses (mainly Ed Schroeder's) work without fully understanding the content.

PeterG
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Post by Harvey Williamson »

I find this post truly amazing http://rybkaforum.net/cgi-bin/rybkaforu ... pid=390718
> Regarding Strelka/IPPOLIT: as the author(s) seem to have typed their own source code (or code to generate this), how are they not "original" under your definition?


I doubt that all of that code was typed by hand. If it was, then sure, it's "original at the source code level".

> Do these Rybka versions [the ones that were cloned] have any additional creative content beyond the source code?


Lots of brilliant ideas! :smile:


Vas
I guess he is saying that because he is claiming he typed the fruit code into rybka so it is original by his definition.
just take a harry potter novel type it up yourself and you can sell it!
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Post by ricard60 »

I believe this is a very technical matter. I ask myself up to what amount of copy you must allowed to say that your work it is not original? if the answer is none.

Then i ask me if we have to ban Isaac Newton from Physics because he used Galileo ideas?

puzzle regards
Ricardo
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Post by Harvey Williamson »

ricard60 wrote:I believe this is a very technical matter. I ask myself up to what amount of copy you must allowed to say that your work it is not original? if the answer is none.

Then i ask me if we have to ban Isaac Newton from Physics because he used Galileo ideas?

puzzle regards
Ricardo
IDEAS yes copying NO. vas is basically saying if you type it in yourself it can never be 'copying'
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Post by ricard60 »

Harvey Williamson wrote:
ricard60 wrote:I believe this is a very technical matter. I ask myself up to what amount of copy you must allowed to say that your work it is not original? if the answer is none.

Then i ask me if we have to ban Isaac Newton from Physics because he used Galileo ideas?

puzzle regards
Ricardo
IDEAS yes copying NO. vas is basically saying if you type it in yourself it can never be 'copying'
But what did exactly vas did? he copied? or he used the ideas from fruit?

If it is a copy then ICGA must show both engines side by side and say if both software are exactly the same or show in which part of each engine vas copied fruit.

The elctromagnetic field theory from Maxwell are a bunch of equations from another guys but the great idea from maxwell was relating these two ideas the electrical field and the magnetic field and came up with something great. The electromagnetic theory.

So evolution is like this you allways use ideas from other guys.

So somebody must show both engines side by side and say where is the copy.

Still puzzling regards
Ricardo
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Post by Harvey Williamson »

ricard60 wrote:
Harvey Williamson wrote:
ricard60 wrote:I believe this is a very technical matter. I ask myself up to what amount of copy you must allowed to say that your work it is not original? if the answer is none.

Then i ask me if we have to ban Isaac Newton from Physics because he used Galileo ideas?

puzzle regards
Ricardo
IDEAS yes copying NO. vas is basically saying if you type it in yourself it can never be 'copying'
But what did exactly vas did? he copied? or he used the ideas from fruit?

If it is a copy then ICGA must show both engines side by side and say if both software are exactly the same or show in which part of each engine vas copied fruit.

The elctromagnetic field theory from Maxwell are a bunch of equations from another guys but the great idea from maxwell was relating these two ideas the electrical field and the magnetic field and came up with something great. The electromagnetic theory.

So evolution is like this you allways use ideas from other guys.

So somebody must show both engines side by side and say where is the copy.

Still puzzling regards
Ricardo
I guess some people are not prepared to read the evidence and will always believe he is innocent. There is no point me typing it all here when you can go and read it,
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Post by ricard60 »

I will read it, but what i believed it happend is that vas got some derivative code from fruit and from that point of view he is guilty from rule number 2.

Look this comment about rule number 2:

"Nelson Hernandez: The ICGA wishes to sustain a standard of property rights that simply does not exist and cannot exist in the current technological milieu, wherein once-proprietary information is a few mouse-clicks away and available to anyone on the Internet. The ICGA's Rule 2 is a relic of the pre-Internet years, superficially simple with its absolutist requirement for originality, yet a dead letter in the actual, irreversible reality that exists today.

The magnitude of the ICGA's error is manifest by simply taking a step backwards and looking at the situation with fresh eyes. Rule 2 is apparently unenforceable on its face by observing that their action required hundreds of "expert" man-hours, a reinterpretion the rule according to subjective ex post facto standards, and through the manufacture of "evidence" to support a publicly preconceived conclusion."

Why Fabian the author of fruit put his engine on the internet as an open source code for public use and now claim vas has copied it?
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