Hello to All,
David Levy in his article "Attack of the clones : ChessVibes" at
http://www.chessvibes.com/reports/attack-of-the-clones/ is quite pathetic. He wants to transform himself into a kind of inquisitor and he would like to scrutinize the few other programs that would like to participate to the World Computer Chess Championships (WCCC) but that would be FALSELY or not accused of being clones or of being illegitimate.
And the best, he said it at the end of his article by asking people to waste their time going over the code of the incriminated (FALSELY or not) chess programs! I am sure he could find many volunteers who would like to read the code of competing chess programs and find out, the easy way, how on earth did they manage to become so strong!
He says:
"
The first thing we need is someone willing to set up and operate a bulletin board where members of the forum can “meet” and exchange views. Will someone volunteer to do this to help the ICGA on its way to stamping out these insidious practices?"
And he wants to do this kind of inquisition when even the author of Rybka acknowledges very honestly that he benefited from a lot of ideas that were present in the chess engine program Fruit whose source code was made available on the Internet by its French author Fabien Letouzey.
Once again, and it is worth repeating what I have already clearly said in a previous posting:
-----------------------------------
Many (if not most!!) discoveries in the past have been made by inventors who have changed only a simple detail to the work of many others before them but this tiny change made a huge difference at creating a discovery whereas before the discovery did not exist!!!
Therefore, I could say the same for a programmer who would manage to increase a chess engine program that was at 2700 ELO to say 2800 ELO. This programmer could be considered the true author or the true inventor of this new chess engine program even if he would have changed only very few ideas or very few parts of the source code of this chess engine program! This programmer has added the indispensable "ingredient" that had eluded many other programmers before him and that transformed completely the strength of the chess engine program that he modified, even if it would have modified this chess engine program only very slightly.
CONCLUSION:
Those who want to accuse a chess engine program to be a clone of a previous chess engine program are blind and they certainly have no idea at all how discoveries are made. In any invention or in any discovery or in any new chess engine program whose strength increases dramatically, it is not the amount or the number of changes made to what was previously known that matters, it is the result that is obtained by any amount or by any number of changes made to what was previously known that matters!
In other words, even if a programmer would change only a few lines of code to an existing chess engine program whose source code is available on the Internet, if the new program increases dramatically in its strength by increasing dramatically its ELO, then this programmer should be entitled to claim full credit for his accomplishment, NO MATTER THE FACT THAT HE CHANGED ONLY A FEW LINES OF CODE TO AN EXISTING CHESS ENGINE PROGRAM!!! That is the difference between making a discovery and being stuck with a not satisfying solution!!
-----------------------------------
If David Levy reads this posting, I strongly advise him to change completely the way the World Computer Chess Championship (WCCC) is done where the hardware is the same for each chess program competing.
1) Each chess program must play a match of 24 games against each opponent. This requirement means that the way the WCCC is done must change completely. As these 24 games against each opponent would take time, the way the WCCC is done should be changed.
One way to make this change is, for instance, by doing most of the games between each chess engine program BEFORE the official WCCC. This way, there would still be an opportunity for the WCCC to be held and it would not last longer but, at least, a reasonable number of games between each chess program would have been played so that the WCCC could be really a true test of the strength of the chess programs that are competing.
The number of games played during the WCCC is simply too low to determine the true strength of the chess programs that compete in this WCCC.
2) The chess programs that would like to compete in the WCCC where the hardware is not the same for each opponent should be entitled to participate only if they would have entered the WCCC with the same hardware for each opponent.
In 2010, Rybka only participated in the WCCC where the opponent did not have to stick to the same hardware for each opponent but he avoided participating to the WCCC where opponent should use the same hardware. He had, by a wide margin, the best hardware platform and therefore he did not have any problem winning the WCCC with unlimited hardware.
To conclude, there is NO need at all to prevent any chess program from participating to the WCCC with the same hardware for each opponent. Why? Even if a chess program entering the competition would have only one line of code changed compared to the original chess program, if this tiny change would show a dramatic increase in the ELO compared to the original chess program, this simple change should give the author the right to claim full credit for the dramatic ELO improvement he allowed the original chess program to accomplish, no matter how few changes he made to the original chess program. By simple honesty, the author could be completely honest by simply crediting the source code that he benefited from and/or the ideas from other chess programs that he benefited from. Same as the programmer of Rybka did!
Best Regards to All
MichaelIsGreat
