ChessBase: A Gross Miscarriage of Justice in Computer Chess

[Uly]

So YOU want to perpetrate that lie as well? NO big surprise there, I don't suppose.

Then how you call this?



In another post in Rybka Forum, you accepted that you posted that message, "if I were you I'd do X" isn't open to interpretation, you are giving advice to another person to do X.

[MoldyJacket]

Only at Open Chess can one follow along the whole story with out a bunch of forum deletes or hiding the place to see. Like all the other chess forums do. As a chess enthusiast I am glad this site opened up. Txs Jeremy for the readers sake.

BT

I second (or is it third by now?) that emotion. Whole major relevant sub-forums and threads and in two widely viewed CC forums have been moved to secret squirrel nether regions even as I was trying to read and comprehend them. I have no other CC forum accounts; if the general public is not allowed to view these posts then they are of no value to me (or anyone else except clique club members). And why take the time to seriously post where it is subject to suppression at anytime?

Perhaps a well written collaborative point-by-point response to these articles is in order, will ChessBase give equal voice and publish such? If not, perhaps in another popular publication such as ChessVibes noting the denial.

[Uly]

if the general public is not allowed to view these posts then they are of no value to me

Not that I'm trying to defend concealed subforums or anything but if the general public won't register in the forums to read such threads, then they don't care enough.

[kingliveson]

if the general public is not allowed to view these posts then they are of no value to me

Not that I'm trying to defend concealed subforums or anything but if the general public won't register in the forums to read such threads, then they don't care enough.

To the contrary, hidden discussion forums for a chess community are useless, serve no purpose, and make absolutely no sense at all. Exactly what is there to hide on computer chess forum? Not to mention how it hinders referencing serious discussions... So yes, I too am grateful of this place.

[Jeremy Bernstein]

if the general public is not allowed to view these posts then they are of no value to me

Not that I'm trying to defend concealed subforums or anything but if the general public won't register in the forums to read such threads, then they don't care enough.

Today's just our day to disagree, I guess. This is like saying: That the Chinese don't acquire forbidden literature in large numbers demonstrates their lack of interest in that body of work. If you can't see the information, you don't know that there's a reason to join the club to gain access to it. These issues are _the_ issues of the computer chess community at the moment, _not_ which engine has a temporary 30 Elo advantage +- 15 Elo. That Rybkaforum hides them makes commercial sense, but is unfortunate. That Talkchess hides them doesn't make any sense, except to either assuage their corporate sponsors, or to give the impression that it's a civil environment, where hillbillies from around the world can join together to discuss hot topics in computer chess, such as white power and the international conspiracy of world jewry. Oh wait, that forum's hidden, too...

Seriously, though, thanks for noticing that OpenChess does it differently. The mods here deserve everyone's (but most especially my) gratitude and respect for their hard work of doing nearly nothing. Restraint requires patience, intelligence and good judgement, and I continue to be pleased and impressed by the restraint demonstrated here on a nearly-daily basis.

[MoldyJacket]

Not that I'm trying to defend concealed subforums or anything but if the general public won't register in the forums to read such threads, then they don't care enough.

Or, perhaps these forum establishments don’t care enough for the general public.

[Jeremy Bernstein]

The point being: I think we can easily demonstrate that Bob's no freakier, and no more desperate, than the guys in that list.

Please easily demonstrate it, what I'd expect you to find is:

bob replying to most posts of those people, therefore, if each of these posted 1000 posts about it, and bob replied to all of them, bob would have 5000 posts about it, looking 5 times as "freaky" and "desperate" (your words) as any of these individuals.

I'll need access to the forum posting stats for this. As a randomly-chosen example, Jeroen has posted 500 mostly Rybka/ICGA-related messages in the last 20 days (I can't see more than his last 500 posts, though).

[Jeremy Bernstein]

The Rykba 1.0 Beta PST tables are generated by that code. That is, they are reproduced exactly. I tend to think that you are having a language comprehension issue, Ed.

No

But you are close now, ready for part II, my page is 100% correct, I quote:

With the above values (and now things become technical) the Rybka investigators Zach Wegner and Mark Watkins in order to find traces of copying after all tried Fruit's PST initialization code, tried various parameter settings, found some matches and claimed copying.

VIG at work. Vas is a copy boy. He copied Fruit, period. Now we must find evidence he copied the PST's. But we have a problem, the PST's don't match at all. Someone got an idea, let's try the Fruit initialization code and see how far we come. So following Mark words they changed Fruit's formula a bit, played around with the Fruit parameters and claimed copying, found some matches (not all match) and claimed copying confirm the VIG tunnel vision. A working mechanism if you think VIG and already are convinced Vas copied Fruit. No doubts here.

Then Chris sets the PST's on the agenda (at that time i was still VIG myself), Miguel moves in and demonstrates with DIFFERENT code the SAME can be accomplished. It worked as another eye-opener for me.

However as professor Miguel Ballicora clearly demonstrated with his OWN utilities the same can be accomplished with total different code so the basic premise using Fruit's formula to proof Rybka values is wrong, there are infinite possible formula to accomplish that.

Let's recap this case from a scientific point of view and count the ASSUMPTIONS that are made:

The facts first:

1. Fruit does not have PST data, PST's are created by initialization code at program start.
2. Rybka has PST data inside, there is no initialization code.
3. The PST values totally differ.

The assumptions:

1. Vas is copy-boy and an obfuscator, in order to hide the Fruit origins he obfuscated the depth, nodes, pawn value 100 -> 3200 and for advanced obfuscation added another ingredient 3200 ->3399, he changed the order in EVAL and UCI -> changed time control from float to int, removed all Fruit's UCI options (20) and replaced it with one Fruit does not have. It's all refuted on: http://www.top-5000.nl/evidence.htm There is no fixed pattern of obfuscation and yet with the PST's one has to assume there is to make the case plausible.

2. Second assumption, since there is no PST initialization code in Rybka we must ASSUME Vas copied the Fruit initialization code, made it a standalone C-utility, changed the code somewhat, played around with the parameters then imported the PST data into the Rybka sources. Obfuscation mission accomplished. Oh yes, Vas multiplied the values with 32 for maximum obfuscation, by all means let's not forget that.

3. Third assumption, Vas a no-name in computer chess till december 2005 must have realized that after the release of Fruit 2.1 5½ months earlier (June 2005) he would become so famous his program would be hacked, reverse engineered and therefore all this kind of obfuscations were absolutely needed to hide the Fruit origins and yet was stupid enough to call Strelka his own, the latter actually being evidence for his innocence. An obfuscator would keep his mouth shut. A copy-boy would hide, knowing that by claiming Strelka as his own that is oil on the fire for the accusers since Strelka is half Fruit, half Rybka. Yet we saw a strong and normal emotional reaction from a programmer who discovered his program was cloned. We have seen such strong reactions before, from Bob, from Mark Lefler when someone took his work and called it Scaramanga.

Too much assumptions to my taste and after Miguel demonstrated:

1. That other (non-Fruit) code can accomplish the same;
2. That numbers like (-3,-1,0,+1) are the base of every PST and none can claim copyright on 4 characters;
3. How little information and specific content PST's cells have;

that it's far more logical Vas created his own PST's as he stated last month himself.

Vasik Rajlich: The piece-square table C# code - unfortunately I have only the code which creates my piece-square tables today. The piece-square tables are similar but not exactly the same as the Rybka 1 piece-square tables. Also, I definitely have tinkered with the C# code in the last six years. For example now I use .NET reflection, which AFAIK was not even around in 2005. So, it won't be exact. Plus, I'll probably want to delete a few things. Is this really worth doing? It's hard for me to see this as a major issue. (December, 2011)

Vasik Rajlich: During my tuning I used ints, but much finer than pawn=3200. I needed to be able to "perturb" each eval weight minimally and calculate the delta for the fit between eval scores and game results. This is the "gradient" part of gradient descent. (December 2011)

Vas created the Rybka 1 PST's with his own written code in C# and he (in principle) is willing to show it.

So much more likely, that is of course if you think VII.

What I dislike about this whole issue (and this is not about you Jeremy) is that the main accusers Mark and Zach are not willing to give in that their PST theory is based on VIG and are not able to admit a mistake. They consistently refuse to give Miguel the credit he deserves for overlooking a couple of things Mark and Zach could not imagine at the time they wrote down the PST accusations in their documents.

I think we just have to agree to disagree. Your position appears to rule out what Bob might call "Occam's Razor" and what I would call "common sense" -- it looks, walks and quacks like a duck, Ed -- the chances that it's a stallion are pretty slim. Not just in the PST area, but in the eval and search domains, as well.

Yes, there are a million other possible, but all very unlikely, scenarios which could account for the similarities here, which could, for instance, account for the fact that Fruit's code is capable of calculating Rybka's PSTs (Cabalistic numerology is my top bet). But those scenarios are very unlikely. Your position is, in my analysis, largely concerned with Vas as a person, so much so that you are willing to ignore the technical evidence. The technical evidence tells a pretty compelling story, though, which you apparently aren't willing to take on directly.

I am very disappointed in your website. The PST page pretends to address the PST issue, addresses, instead, a completely different issue -- one that isn't claimed by the investigators. Your insistence on this point, despite the fact that you are aware of the difference between what is claimed (A) and what you refute (B), indicates a willingness to distort and manipulate the available data in order to achieve your desired results, rather than seriously evaluating the evidence on its own merits.

So that's that. Thank you for your response, but I don't find it particularly enlightening or helpful.

Jeremy

[mwyoung]

if the general public is not allowed to view these posts then they are of no value to me

Not that I'm trying to defend concealed subforums or anything but if the general public won't register in the forums to read such threads, then they don't care enough.

Today's just our day to disagree, I guess. This is like saying: That the Chinese don't acquire forbidden literature in large numbers demonstrates their lack of interest in that body of work. If you can't see the information, you don't know that there's a reason to join the club to gain access to it. These issues are _the_ issues of the computer chess community at the moment, _not_ which engine has a temporary 30 Elo advantage +- 15 Elo. That Rybkaforum hides them makes commercial sense, but is unfortunate. That Talkchess hides them doesn't make any sense, except to either assuage their corporate sponsors, or to give the impression that it's a civil environment, where hillbillies from around the world can join together to discuss hot topics in computer chess, such as white power and the international conspiracy of world jewry. Oh wait, that forum's hidden, too...

Seriously, though, thanks for noticing that OpenChess does it differently. The mods here deserve everyone's (but most especially my) gratitude and respect for their hard work of doing nearly nothing. Restraint requires patience, intelligence and good judgement, and I continue to be pleased and impressed by the restraint demonstrated here on a nearly-daily basis.

I am a very active member of CCC, but what Bob Hyatt and the other moderators have done on CCC to hide this issue is shameful. And I am a member that still agrees that ICGA made the correct call. For them to say this issue has already been talked about, and that it is not topical for the general forum. When this issue is front page on a major chess site is a obvious crock. The member at CCC are again trying to post on this subject in the general forum. I will not waste my time there any longer to have the post moved and/or deleted because CCC members dare post about this subject.

Thank again for Open Chess.

[BB+]

the main accusers Mark and Zach are not willing to give in that their PST theory is based on VIG and are not able to admit a mistake.

I re-re-re-re-re-iterate my challenge. Derive the PST of non-Fruit program with as few code changes from Fruit 2.1 as Rybka 1.0 Beta requires. Then I will give in.

Furthermore, I find your assertion that the theory is based on my (and Zach's) preconceived bias of VIG (Vas is Guilty) to be a defamatory slur. I have in no way ever assumed Vas is guilty in the sense you imply. Your continued insistence that I possess such bias is opprobrious.