Ippolit and derivatives will never be favorably accepted.

[Chan Rasjid]

Ippolit, as well as all its derivatives, will not be accepted by the established computer chess community in the way a "usual" chess program is accepted by "reputable" people, rating lists and tournaments. Those who develop engines based on them should accept being given special treatment.

We live in a world with social norms and there is nothing we can do about it. There is no ideal human society, only the "usual" human community govern strongly by social norms. If you are gay and believes in gay marriages, don't ever expect society at large to accept your viewpoint and don't ask about equality and equal treatment for your viewpoint. There is no such thing as social equality. Yes, there is and should be social justice which is not the same thing as equality.

The current opposition to Ippolit stems mainly from:-
1) reversed engineering of Rybka 3.
2) By anonymous or amorphous (possibly non-human) entity.
3) personal dislikes, etc...

The first thing to note is IPPOLIT IS NOT A CLONE OF RYBKA 3. It seems many programmers have established this finding. A well known "cloner" Osipov Yuri said clearly he tried and failed to clone Rybka. Cloning here means using some software tools to decompile an engine to C codes, make some little or "considerable" changes, recompile it as whatever_wini_dini_ . Those who talk about clones should take a test and, given the binary of TSCP, produce a clone for us to see.

About 1), many don't like the idea of someone prying into the private details of another's program, write the C source codes for an engine with knowledge gained this way and make it public. It exposes the details of the inner workings of another's top engine. But there is almost no way to strictly determined if someone steals ideas from another's program. Rybka's supporters are vehemently against others stealing the secrets of Rybka and exposing them to the public domain.

The usual practice of writing a chess program is you "belong" somewhere and known to "well known" people - at least through posting in a chess forum like CCC. When you release your chess program that is 200 elo stronger then Rybka 4, no one question you nor prevent you from entering your program in tournaments. But when you release a program all of a sudden, anonymously, beating all the other top programs and plays like Rybka 3 and with binaries that show similarity with _not_so_well_known_ techniques only found in Rybka 3, then expect that many would accused you of reverse-engineering of Rybka and the program will be ostracized.

About 3), well we all have personal dislikes of many things - like ... I just don't like chess programs with elo greater then 2800...

There is almost no way Ippolit would be accepted. Even if someone would come forward, he has too many things to answer and has to demonstrate he did no reverse engineering of Rybka 3. So this would not happen.

This Ippolit thing would slowly disappear as others would quickly catch up and when those who develop Ippolit lose interests. For the time being, enjoy Houdini - it sets a new benchmark and makes chess programming more interesting and challenging.

Best Regards,
Rasjid

[Hood]

It depends .
It is enough to have competitive ratinglists and the matter will be over.
That lists can be marketed on the not chess sites, and not only. There are many ways of populating information.
Lets start to promote open-chess in our environments.

There were article about on chessvibes, so the silence agreement can be broken.
Chessbase has competitors.

rgds Hood

[thorstenczub]

sorry to say but a rating list that is not testing ALL engines, is no rating list
i would take in any way serious.

Those rating lists censoring some engines are laughable. they have no reason to exist.
the makers should give up their job.

[Chris Whittington]

sorry to say but a rating list that is not testing ALL engines, is no rating list
i would take in any way serious.

Those rating lists censoring some engines are laughable. they have no reason to exist.
the makers should give up their job.

anyone running a rating list who interferes with the programs allowed and not allowed for political and/or prejudiced reasons is running an unscientific list and who knows what other little adjustments and interferences are being done by such a person.

ignore politically manipulated rating lists

[kingliveson]

sorry to say but a rating list that is not testing ALL engines, is no rating list
i would take in any way serious.

Those rating lists censoring some engines are laughable. they have no reason to exist.
the makers should give up their job.

anyone running a rating list who interferes with the programs allowed and not allowed for political and/or prejudiced reasons is running an unscientific list and who knows what other little adjustments and interferences are being done by such a person.

ignore politically manipulated rating lists

Exactly my attitude about the whole thing. Your job is to be an independent tester/observer. Capitalist Controlled Rating List will not survive when they begin to take political views.

[Peter C]

Capitalist Controlled Rating List

I agree that a rating list that does not test engines that are legal for "political" (can it really be called that in computer chess? ) reasons isn't an accurate rating list.

Peter

[Chris Whittington]

sorry to say but a rating list that is not testing ALL engines, is no rating list
i would take in any way serious.

Those rating lists censoring some engines are laughable. they have no reason to exist.
the makers should give up their job.

anyone running a rating list who interferes with the programs allowed and not allowed for political and/or prejudiced reasons is running an unscientific list and who knows what other little adjustments and interferences are being done by such a person.

ignore politically manipulated rating lists

Exactly my attitude about the whole thing. Your job is to be an independent tester/observer. Capitalist Controlled Rating List will not survive when they begin to take political views.

Allegedly (according to Steve B and others) Zach post confiriming status of BB (he met him) has been wiped in a wave of deletions over at Capitalist Controlled Club.

It descends into farce ....

[Kevin Frayer]

sorry to say but a rating list that is not testing ALL engines, is no rating list
i would take in any way serious.

Those rating lists censoring some engines are laughable. they have no reason to exist.
the makers should give up their job.

anyone running a rating list who interferes with the programs allowed and not allowed for political and/or prejudiced reasons is running an unscientific list and who knows what other little adjustments and interferences are being done by such a person.

ignore politically manipulated rating lists

Many are the dictators and despots that believed an iron fist and a jackboot could secure their place in history favorably. All gone now, relegated to the scrap heap of history.

Statistical evaluation of relative chess engine strength is difficult enough with out including a political or economic bias. Rating list that admittedly include these prejudices should be dismiss out of hand.

[Chan Rasjid]

sorry to say but a rating list that is not testing ALL engines, is no rating list
i would take in any way serious.

Those rating lists censoring some engines are laughable. they have no reason to exist.
the makers should give up their job.

anyone running a rating list who interferes with the programs allowed and not allowed for political and/or prejudiced reasons is running an unscientific list and who knows what other little adjustments and interferences are being done by such a person.

ignore politically manipulated rating lists

Exactly my attitude about the whole thing. Your job is to be an independent tester/observer. Capitalist Controlled Rating List will not survive when they begin to take political views.

Actually, BB's report and especially his comments about Ippolit is not favorable to Ippolit. He mentioned specifically that "it is plausible Ippolit is reversed engineered from Rybka 3 ... ", almost exactly the same accusation leveled by Vasik and that the the author seem to know to much of the internal workings of Rybka. The mainstream will never accept reverse engineering when it comes to writing a chess engine. So if there is strong evidence on this, Ippolit would not be acceptable.

The other usual practice is there must be a human face on the engine. It has to pass the test of being accepted to something like the ICGA chess tournaments. To be accepted, there are questions to be answered like "Is your engine original". The "Yes" must come from a person, not just any proxy. So this is an insurmountable hurdle for Ippolit. Robert Houdard has no way to enter Houdini to such a tournament and this would mean Houdini don't belong to the group accepted engines. This is how this world works.

Best Regards,
Rasjid

[benstoker]

sorry to say but a rating list that is not testing ALL engines, is no rating list
i would take in any way serious.

Those rating lists censoring some engines are laughable. they have no reason to exist.
the makers should give up their job.

anyone running a rating list who interferes with the programs allowed and not allowed for political and/or prejudiced reasons is running an unscientific list and who knows what other little adjustments and interferences are being done by such a person.

ignore politically manipulated rating lists

Exactly my attitude about the whole thing. Your job is to be an independent tester/observer. Capitalist Controlled Rating List will not survive when they begin to take political views.

Actually, BB's report and especially his comments about Ippolit is not favorable to Ippolit. He mentioned specifically that "it is plausible Ippolit is reversed engineered from Rybka 3 ... ", almost exactly the same accusation leveled by Vasik and that the the author seem to know to much of the internal workings of Rybka. The mainstream will never accept reverse engineering when it comes to writing a chess engine. So if there is strong evidence on this, Ippolit would not be acceptable.

The other usual practice is there must be a human face on the engine. It has to pass the test of being accepted to something like the ICGA chess tournaments. To be accepted, there are questions to be answered like "Is your engine original". The "Yes" must come from a person, not just any proxy. So this is an insurmountable hurdle for Ippolit. Robert Houdard has no way to enter Houdini to such a tournament and this would mean Houdini don't belong to the group accepted engines. This is how this world works.

Best Regards,
Rasjid

Is it possible for the developers of Stockfish, for instance, (which is currently accepted by the compchess community) to assimilate some of the ideas of IPPOLIT and still have their engine accepted?