Regarding Strekla and CCT10+...

[Peter Skinner]

I received an email this evening from a previous competitor of the CCT's that I have, run asking if engines "like" Strekla will be allowed to enter CCT10.

As I truly never followed the great debate about the issue or the origins of that particular engine, it would be unfair to give an answer at this time.

I would like to keep this topic clean and free for Authors who have participated in the CCT events, and get their feedback on whether it should or should not be allowed to participate, and why.

If you would rather not post here pertaining to this issue, you can reply to td@cctchess.info.

Thank you.

Moderators:

Please remove any reply that is not from an obvious author or someone with a significant interest in the CCT events. (ie. ICC Admins, myself, sponsors) I don't want this to be a huge debate about whether it is a clone or not, but rather what other author's will do if it is or isn't allowed to participate.

[Harvey Williamson]

I received an email this evening from a previous competitor of the CCT's that I have, run asking if engines "like" Strekla will be allowed to enter CCT10.

As I truly never followed the great debate about the issue or the origins of that particular engine, it would be unfair to give an answer at this time.

I would like to keep this topic clean and free for Authors who have participated in the CCT events, and get their feedback on whether it should or should not be allowed to participate, and why.

If you would rather not post here pertaining to this issue, you can reply to td@cctchess.info.

Thank you.

Moderators:

Please remove any reply that is not from an obvious author or someone with a significant interest in the CCT events. (ie. ICC Admins, myself, sponsors) I don't want this to be a huge debate about whether it is a clone or not, but rather what other author's will do if it is or isn't allowed to participate.

Hi Peter,

I have been following some of the debates. It seems to me that the evidence points to it being a clone. Is it any more of a clone than Toga? I am not sure. However Toga is an honest clone and is released legally.

Would you allow Toga to play in CCT? What has your opinion of that been in the past? If you would not allow Toga to play then I would say Strelka should not be allowed if you would allow Toga then there is a debate to be had about Strelka.

Kirill from CCRL made an interesting post in CCC:

http://www.talkchess.com/forum/viewtopi ... 9112824d9b

The main points were:

There is no doubt in my mind that Strelka is a clone. The ponder hit statistics in our 40/4 list shows that Strelka is more close to Rybka 1.0 than some Rybka versions to each other. However there is no enough evidence that this was done illegally. We have to be very clear about it, otherwise any person with doubts will be able to remove an engine from our list.

What we know from Osipov (assuming the guy who posted that is really Strelka author, which no one can guarantee either) is:

1. He took Fruit as a basis for Strelka, and re-wrote it to bitboards. Re-writing something is not re-using the code verbatim, so I am not sure GPL is violated. It looks like he reused algorithms. Also those who examined Strelka code did not confirm yet that GPL was violated.

2. He said that he did some statistical tuning of Strelka eval trying to approximate that of Rybka. This is totally acceptable way of making an engine, even if I myself don't see much point in doing that.

3. He said that he took some tables from Rybka. This may be problematic, but so far there is no enough information about it. Vasik keeps silence too.

I also remember the argument about same UCI output in Strelka and Rybka. But Rybka source is closed, so we have to assume that Osipov simply imitated Rybka's interface. This itself is not illegal.

Note that I myself dislike Strelka because even if cloning was legal, the author did not acknowledge his use of Fruit and Rybka.

Hot discussions that appear around Strelka every time show that situation is far from reaching any conclusion. I don't agree with the logic to remove Strelka when there are reasonable doubts. Because the data we provide, like correlation between Strelka and Rybka, may be very useful in resolving the issue. Our "ponder hit" stats show that Strelka plays nearly identical to Rybka 1.0. It is interesting to see at least. Without this data we will only have individual positions posted in the forums (positions evaluated the same by both engines), but someone will also say that there are also positions they evaluate differently. But our ponder hit tells us in more precise way how similar they play to each other.

Please note that we also discuss it a lot within the group. We have to think not only about Strelka, but about setting a precedent for future cases. So we really have to depend on some more sound reasoning than that presented so far.

Peter I hope this helps for me if people want to test it at home or CCRL want to test it I have no big objection however I would prefer not to see it in a major tournament.

Best Wishes,

Harvey

[Steve B]

I received an email this evening from a previous competitor of the CCT's that I have, run asking if engines "like" Strekla will be allowed to enter CCT10.

As I truly never followed the great debate about the issue or the origins of that particular engine, it would be unfair to give an answer at this time.

I would like to keep this topic clean and free for Authors who have participated in the CCT events, and get their feedback on whether it should or should not be allowed to participate, and why.

If you would rather not post here pertaining to this issue, you can reply to td@cctchess.info.

Thank you.

Moderators:

Please remove any reply that is not from an obvious author or someone with a significant interest in the CCT events. (ie. ICC Admins, myself, sponsors) I don't want this to be a huge debate about whether it is a clone or not, but rather what other author's will do if it is or isn't allowed to participate.

hi Peter
yes this topic can become quite contentious rather quickly and grow like the medusa's head
i and the other mods will insure that it stays clean to be posted to only by those you mentioned to help you make an informed decision on entrants for your CCT10

Good Luck Regards
Steve

[Peter Skinner]

Hi Peter,

I have been following some of the debates. It seems to me that the evidence points to it being a clone. Is it any more of a clone than Toga? I am not sure. However Toga is an honest clone and is released legally.

Would you allow Toga to play in CCT? What has your opinion of that been in the past? If you would not allow Toga to play then I would say Strelka should not be allowed if you would allow Toga then there is a debate to be had about Strelka.

Peter I hope this helps for me if people want to test it at home or CCRL want to test it I have no big objection however I would prefer not to see it in a major tournament.

Best Wishes,

Harvey

Toga has never been allowed to play in the CCT events, and from the consensus of authors that have replied to me, Strelka will not be allowed to participate as well.

Peter