Guess who made it to the New York Times?
Posted: Wed Jan 12, 2011 12:51 pm
Congratulations, Martin!Ted Summers wrote:http://gambit.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01 ... he-screen/
jb
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Guess who made it to the New York Times?
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Re: Guess who made it to the New York Times?
Posted: Wed Jan 12, 2011 1:17 pm
jb
Re: Guess who made it to the New York Times?
Posted: Wed Jan 12, 2011 1:21 pm
Well, what to say... 
This is starting to spin out of proportions though.
I just want to say thank you to all for following the games on my site. Without the fans there would be no TCEC.
Best,
Martin
This is starting to spin out of proportions though.
I just want to say thank you to all for following the games on my site. Without the fans there would be no TCEC.
Best,
Martin
Re: Guess who made it to the New York Times?
Posted: Wed Jan 12, 2011 1:34 pm
congrats guys !! its amazing ! houdini rocks day by day
ps. salute to 5-6 cavemans who try to hide one elephant behind the flower
ps. salute to 5-6 cavemans who try to hide one elephant behind the flower
Re: Guess who made it to the New York Times?
Posted: Wed Jan 12, 2011 1:38 pm
I guess all that work on the new website paid off...Martin Thoresen wrote:Well, what to say...
This is starting to spin out of proportions though.
I just want to say thank you to all for following the games on my site. Without the fans there would be no TCEC.
Best,
Martin
Re: Guess who made it to the New York Times?
Posted: Wed Jan 12, 2011 1:46 pm
The Shop Assistant doth protest too much .......
Steve B
Joined: 31 Jul 2007
Posts: 3200
Posted: Wed Jan 12, 2011 12:39 pm Post subject: Re: Houdini is getting some wider press. Congratulations!
UncombedCoconut wrote:
The New York Times's Gambit Blog has also mentioned TCEC: http://gambit.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01 ... he-screen/.
Well ..gee.. you would think that the CCC would at least get a mention
after all..we are the LEADING CC forum on the net..dwarfing all other CC sites in terms of daily threads,posts and views ..combined
Neglected Regards
Steve
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Steve B
Joined: 31 Jul 2007
Posts: 3200
Posted: Wed Jan 12, 2011 12:39 pm Post subject: Re: Houdini is getting some wider press. Congratulations!
UncombedCoconut wrote:
The New York Times's Gambit Blog has also mentioned TCEC: http://gambit.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01 ... he-screen/.
Well ..gee.. you would think that the CCC would at least get a mention
after all..we are the LEADING CC forum on the net..dwarfing all other CC sites in terms of daily threads,posts and views ..combined
Neglected Regards
Steve
Back to top
Re: Guess who made it to the New York Times?
Posted: Wed Jan 12, 2011 3:55 pm
Shows that if you do things your way, impartial and are independent, you'll earn well deserved recognition.Martin Thoresen wrote:Well, what to say...
This is starting to spin out of proportions though.
I just want to say thank you to all for following the games on my site. Without the fans there would be no TCEC.
Best,
Martin
Re: Guess who made it to the New York Times?
Posted: Wed Jan 12, 2011 4:13 pm
Those damn Liberals at the New York Times...It must be a vast left wing conspiracy.H.G.Muller wrote:Despite all the fuss and mud-throwing contest between Rybka and Houdini fanboys, it seems clear that the publication by chessdom is "politically motivated". The event itself would not deserve any mention. So Houdini played 3 games and won them. Wow, big deal! Laughing Laughing Laughing Someone conducts an engine-engine tourney with 8 top-engines participating. Wow, that's a novelty, real front-page material, even before it is finished! Laughing Laughing Laughing
It seems obvious that someone at chessdom wanted to broadcast that Rybka is no longer the strongest engine, and has been looking / waiting for an opportunity to dress it up. I don't think that any of us seriously believes that chessdom would have published anything about Martin's tourney if Rybka had been leading 3 out of 3 before Houdini. Or if another engine, not believed to have higher Elo than Rybka would have been leading 3/3 before Rybka. (But you never know; fanboyishm / fanatism goes a long way, and can cloud all reason. Wink )
Re: Guess who made it to the New York Times?
Posted: Wed Jan 12, 2011 4:16 pm
No Comment ....AdminX wrote:Well to be fair, Chessbase is not going to do it.hgm wrote: It seems obvious that someone at chessdom wanted to broadcast that Rybka is no longer the strongest engine, and has been looking / waiting for an opportunity to dress it up. I don't think that any of us seriously believes that chessdom would have published anything about Martin's tourney if Rybka had been leading 3 out of 3 before Houdini. Or if another engine, not believed to have higher Elo than Rybka would have been leading 3/3 before Rybka. (But you never know; fanboyishm / fanatism goes a long way, and can cloud all reason.
Re: Guess who made it to the New York Times?
Posted: Wed Jan 12, 2011 4:17 pm
I saw there were no comments appended to the NYT blog entry yet, so I submitted this for moderator approval. Hopefully it will appear later this morning & give readers who are new to computer chess some additional context ...
As a long-time chess player & computer geek, I've really been enjoying this event for the last few days. This event doesn't have the man versus machine overtones of the 2003 Kasparov-DeepJunior matchup, but it's still interesting to watch this battle of the eight best available chess engines play out.
Houdini is remarkable in that it is a free chess engine developed by one individual (Robert Houdart) as a hobby, but it's also remarkable that the other free engines are doing so well. Any one of these commercial or free chess engines running on even modest PC hardware can now beat any Grandmaster alive.
On various internet chess forums, some of the commercial developers like to cry foul when a free engine beats their for-pay creations, insinuating that stolen intellectual property is the basis of of the free engine's success. But most commercial developers also admit that they freely use ideas and even snippets of code from existing open-source chess engines, and offer no hard proof that developers of free chess engines are doing anything different.
Kudos have to be given to Martin Thoresen, a programmer and computer chess afficionado who set up the TCEC website and the hardware to allow these engines to compete. There are a number of established chess-engine rating sites that will play many blitz games (chess played with very fast time restrictions) to evaluate new engines, but Mr. Thoresen's TCEC site is using a single very high-end PC (a six-core Intel Core i7 980x overclocked to 4303 MHz) and long time controls (initial 40 moves in 100 minutes, per engine). That's unique, and attracting a fair amount of attention. Using one very fast PC to play the games one-at-a-time also adds a bit of suspense to the proceedings, and allows computer chess geeks to chat during the live play on sites like Chessdom/Chessbomb mentioned in this NYTimes blog entry (http://livechess.chessdom.com/site).
Anyone interested in playing chess against one of these free engines can download a free GUI (a graphic interface that displays the chessboard and interacts with the user) and any of the free engines, all of which now conform to a standard protocol to talk to chess GUIs. I'd recommend getting the free gui Arena (http://www.playwitharena.com) which comes with several basic engines built in. After playing with the basic engines for a while, you can download and install Houdini (http://www.cruxis.com/chess/houdini.htm) or Stockfish (http://www.stockfishchess.com).
Have fun watching the competition and playing against these inspiring creations!
- Jim in Austin, TX
As a long-time chess player & computer geek, I've really been enjoying this event for the last few days. This event doesn't have the man versus machine overtones of the 2003 Kasparov-DeepJunior matchup, but it's still interesting to watch this battle of the eight best available chess engines play out.
Houdini is remarkable in that it is a free chess engine developed by one individual (Robert Houdart) as a hobby, but it's also remarkable that the other free engines are doing so well. Any one of these commercial or free chess engines running on even modest PC hardware can now beat any Grandmaster alive.
On various internet chess forums, some of the commercial developers like to cry foul when a free engine beats their for-pay creations, insinuating that stolen intellectual property is the basis of of the free engine's success. But most commercial developers also admit that they freely use ideas and even snippets of code from existing open-source chess engines, and offer no hard proof that developers of free chess engines are doing anything different.
Kudos have to be given to Martin Thoresen, a programmer and computer chess afficionado who set up the TCEC website and the hardware to allow these engines to compete. There are a number of established chess-engine rating sites that will play many blitz games (chess played with very fast time restrictions) to evaluate new engines, but Mr. Thoresen's TCEC site is using a single very high-end PC (a six-core Intel Core i7 980x overclocked to 4303 MHz) and long time controls (initial 40 moves in 100 minutes, per engine). That's unique, and attracting a fair amount of attention. Using one very fast PC to play the games one-at-a-time also adds a bit of suspense to the proceedings, and allows computer chess geeks to chat during the live play on sites like Chessdom/Chessbomb mentioned in this NYTimes blog entry (http://livechess.chessdom.com/site).
Anyone interested in playing chess against one of these free engines can download a free GUI (a graphic interface that displays the chessboard and interacts with the user) and any of the free engines, all of which now conform to a standard protocol to talk to chess GUIs. I'd recommend getting the free gui Arena (http://www.playwitharena.com) which comes with several basic engines built in. After playing with the basic engines for a while, you can download and install Houdini (http://www.cruxis.com/chess/houdini.htm) or Stockfish (http://www.stockfishchess.com).
Have fun watching the competition and playing against these inspiring creations!
- Jim in Austin, TX