By Chess Coach William Stewart
ICGA President David Levy stated:
“By a unanimous 5-0 decision of executive members of the ICGA we find ourselves in agreement with the verdict of the Secretariat’s report. We are convinced that the evidence against Vasik Rajlich is both overwhelming in its volume and beyond reasonable question in its nature. Vasik Rajlich is guilty of plagiarizing the programs Crafty and Fruit, and has violated the ICGA’s tournament rules with respect to the World Computer Chess Championships in the years 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010.
The ICGA demands that Vasik Rajlich return to the ICGA… all prize money awarded for Rybka’s performances in those events.”
What is ICGA, what is their stance?
To my understanding, the ICGA allows participant programs to utilize source code from other programs – as long as this copy is properly cited to give credit to the original author. Rajlich did not credit another program and attributed Rybka’s strength solely to his unique programming. His response to these allegations has been lackluster at best, stating:
“Rybkahas does not “include game-playing code written by others”, aside from standard exceptions which wouldn’t count as ‘game-playing’.
The vague phrase “derived from game-playing code written by others” also does not in my view apply to Rybka.”
The Ruling
This ruling was officially published less than 2 weeks ago, so I’m sure Rajlich is putting together a team of lawyers to dispute and appeal these allegations. As to why Rajlich allegedly did it, who knows? He is obviously extremely intelligent, an International Chess Master (IM) who graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). I am not a computer programmer and don’t entirely understand the deep technical aspects of this plagiarism, as some degree of source copying is allowed while other types of copying with respect to actual game play is not – however the ICGA’s statement ended with a line that certainly casts doubt on Rajlich’s innocence:
“During the course of the investigation and upon presentation of the Secretariat’s report Vasik Rajlich did not offer, despite repeated invitations from the ICGA to do so, any kind of defense to the allegations…”
By Chess Coach Will Stewart (USCF 2256, FIDE 2234)
Without Vasik Rajlich’s work on Rybka, the chess engine programs would never ever have progressed so quickly and reached the level that they have now!!!
The ICGA people are a bunch of arrogant academics who have been incapable to compete in chess engine programming against people like Vasik Rajlich and others!!
Most of these arrogant academics are would be (failed) chess engine programmers who are jealous of those who succeed where they have failed so miserably and so conspicuously by producing chess engines that were pathetically very weak for so many years before people like Vasik Rajlich came and really improved dramatically the state of the art in chess engine programming.
That is the pure truth on this matter!
And these ICGA World Computer Chess Championships (WCCC) are completely useless because the number of games played between each opponent is so low that it is pure luck to find out which chess engine is really the true winner at these WCCCs. So much so that Rybka did not even bother participating at the last ICGA World Computer Chess Championship!
Anyone who really wants to know which chess engine program is the strongest can check the various chess engine lists where the strongest chess engine propgrams have played very often more than 300 games against the strongest opponents.
—Check “The CCRL 40/40 Ratings – All engines (40 MOVES IN 40 MIN; TESTED AT DIFFERENT NUMBERS OF CORES; TABLEBASES USED; PONDER OFF; HASH USED?; GENERAL BOOK [UP TO 12 MOVES] )” at http://www.computerchess.org.uk/ccrl/4040.live/cgi/compare_engines.cgi?class=All+engines&print=Rating+list&print=Results+table&print=LOS+table&table_size=12&cross_tables_for_best_versions_only=1
—Check “CEGT home” at http://www.husvankempen.de/nunn/
—Check “IPON-Rating-List” at http://www.inwoba.de/
—Check “(GOOD) The G/90mins Ratings (90 MIN TO PLAY ALL THEIR MOVES; 2 CORES; TABLEBASES USED; PONDER ON; HASH USED; OWN OPENING BOOK USED) (brian.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk)” at http://www.brinan.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/chess/ratings.htm
Again, ICGA is just a bunch of arrogant academics! We do not need you ICGA and your bogus World Computer Chess Championships that are completely useless and irrelevant!!
Please, do not censor this posting.
For one I would like to know if the allegations are true. I bought Deep Rybka 4 but do not want to use it and would like a refund if they did indeed cheat.
Unfortunately in this dog eat dog financial system designed by psychopaths lying and cheating are rewarded and even required in some companies.
So the words of accusers are not to be trusted either.
Would some honest people with the expertise to discern the truth please comment?
Nobody denies Vasik Rajlich’s great contributions to computer chess. However by using code from Crafty and Fruit he violated the rules of the ICGA and so he has rightfully been condemned by this organization.
For the moment everyone is still free to use Rybka. It seems unlikely that there will be any legal challenges against it.
The only party that might launch a lawsuit
is the Free Software Foundation who
owns the copyright on the Fruit 2.1
source code. They may argue that
Vasik Rajlich’s violated Fruit’s
licence (the GPL).