Dear Chess Friends,
Here is our response to Mr. Levy’s publication a “A lost Opportunity”
A Lost Scandal
I read David Levy’s article, A Lost Opportunity, with lively interest. [The] respected author, expected arbiter of the match Rybka – Junior in fact accused us in thwarting the match, which was initiated by ourselves (moreover, we provided the prize fund [of] $100,000 USD for the match). The accusation in 8 pages cites private correspondence between the Rybka and Junior teams without our consent. We’ll try to be more concise in our response.
First let us brief [you] on the story of the matter. Early in June Elista hosted the computer match Deep Fritz – Deep Junior. Though the friendly nature of the match was evident (two representatives of the same chess computer company took part), it was widely spread that the winner will have the right to challenge the FIDE World Champion. In such a way the friendly match suddenly turned into qualification for a rather prestigious competition.
Although Rybka showed interest, it was not allowed to participate in this selection, in spite of the fact that this program sits firmly at the top of the rating lists of all independent testing organizations. The result was Vasik Rajlich’s Open Letter, in which he challenged the winner of the match Deep Fritz – Deep Junior.
[The] Presidential board of FIDE (27th of June, Tallinn) supported the idea proposed by Vasik Rajlich and recommended that the match Rybka – Junior would be played during the World Championship in September 2007, Mexico. We also conducted the negotiations with Mexican organizers and they agreed to absorb part of costs for organizing the match.
Initially, we had proposed a “winner-takes-all” approach, i.e. each side should deposit USD $100,000 towards the prize fund and the winner would get the entire prize fund. However, we were aware of Shay Bushinsky’s standpoint, expressed by him in Elista, that such a match “bet” is unacceptable for Junior. The Israeli side was ready to play with guaranteed share in the prize fund only.
Early in July we sent the challenge to Junior, where this standpoint was taken into consideration – we guaranteed the prize fund of USD $100,000 and suggested sharing it between the winner and the defeated side in proportion 70:30. For almost three weeks we had no reply, finally (19th of July) the negotiations started.
One of the sponsors of the World Championship in Mexico is “Intel”, which was willing to provide two identical state-of-art computers for the match. The engineers had the opportunity to arrive in Mexico 4-5 days before the match with ample time to test the equipment. The other option for the teams was to bring the computers with them. An up-to-date 16-core computer costs 10 thousand dollars or slightly more and weighs no more than 40 kg.
It is difficult for us to judge why New-York spending for Junior team in 2003 were 30-40 thousand dollars. Now, as you can see, everything is much cheaper and simpler. Besides it, several respected competitions feature local play. This list includes: Mainz 960 World
Championship, Fritz vs. Kramnik match, and even Junior vs. Kasparov match. To our mind, remote game is needed for open events to not exclude anybody – for invitational events, this issue disappears.
However, Junior’s team insisted on remote game only. Let’s return to Elista again. The match Deep Fritz – Deep Junior had 2 press conferences with engineers. One of them saw the innocuous, one would think, question to be asked: what chess players consulted the programs and who made necessary adjusting between the games? (the rules allow it).
However, this question made the representatives of both programs to panic a bit. They were confused and claimed promptly something of that sort – there was no interference in the course of the game and such interference was impossible. Besides this, both teams preferred to keep in strict secrecy the assistants’ names, as if the matter concerned the development of a new nuclear bomb.
Where in fact, which post address had the basis computers of Deep Fritz and Deep Junior and who was the operators of the remote computers remained sealed information. We wished to avoid in every possible way any suspicions of unfair game and any scandals like that one, which broke out after the ending of the second match between Kasparov and Deep Blue.
As you remember, Kasparov accused the IBM team that the computer used human assistance. IBM dismantled the computer in a hurry; however the computer’s triumphant result went down in history, while IBM stocks, according to experts, improved to 11 billion dollars.
In this issue, however, we met the wishes of Junior’s team and were ready to carry out the match with remote computers. The only conditions we had was transparency of the way computers made their moves and the checking for “assistant free thinking”.
However, with regret, we were convinced that our suggestion of open and comprehensive control was not supported by both our rivals and Mr. Levy. That’s why we had to resume our previous position and insisted on [an] on-site game in Mexico. While it didn’t matter for us, whether both sides bring the computers with them (there were no insurmountable financial or organizational obstacles) or opt for using the computers, which would have been kindly provided by Intel in Mexico. Unfortunately, none of these suggestions were acceptable to the other side.
In conclusion, we would like to point out that history shows that high-level computer matches grab the attention of chess players all over the world. Additionally, computers have done much to increase the popularity of our ancient and ever young game. That’s why we do hope, that during the World Championship in Mexico, we will see Rybka play a fair and hard fought match against another program which ranks among the absolutely strongest in the world.
Sergey Abramov,
Convekta Ltd, General Manager
Published on http://www.chesstoday.net/
People have to abandon the thought that open information will allow advantages for the other team.
Once you agree to provide as much information to the public as necessary(about how the program is being operated, what computers are running it, etc), then you can start negotiating fair terms.
This nonsense about “trusting” the other team who asks for secrecy only sets us back further. Trust shouldn’t play a factor in this.
Maybe the Junior team needs a private bathroom during the competition!
Who is David Levy?
Quite obviously, the Junior team is afraid.
All the socio-technical issues are resolvable. Not sure that this ‘open letter’ helps as quiet diplomacy is usually the answer.
However, Convecta clearly feel they have to defend against David Levy’s letter – which rather indicates that Levy is not seen as neutral.
Hi Susan, although this has nothing to do with the entry, have you considered doing a podcast on either chess news, or chess instruction? I realize that you have your DVDs, but podcasts may be able to reach more people. Then again, they might not. All depends on if people know about it or not ^_~ Also, do you know of any other chess podcasts? Thank you!
I do not want to see a match between chess programs done remotely.
I want to see a match between Rybka and Junior with computers normal humans can buy. The hardware should cost no more than five thousand dollars, and I’d prefer to see a match between computers that cost around 3K.
Do you suppose Alienware or Dell would offer up some rigs for this event? I’ll bet they would.
Finally, the software has to be off the shelf. None of this custom stuff.
I agree with Albert whole heartedly. I frequently run comptuer matches of Junior vs. Rybka on my home computer (AMD athalon 64 4000+ 2.6, 2 gig RAM)and am quite surprised to see Junior win a good % of the games, although Rybka wins more often. I would love to see this match take place. I think the Junior people are afraid to let it happen.
I’m with Albert on this one: ‘touring cars’ rather than ‘Nascar’ or ‘Formula One’ – something I can relate better to, hardware-wise.
Besides, you can run any software you like under the label ‘ENGINE X’: it could be called ‘JUNIOR’ but it could just be FRUIT, ZAPPA or even RYBKA on a bigger engine. There’s an argument for running an ensemble of engines, and seeing what they all say, taking say 4 processors for each of 4 engines.
So I’d have the software installed off the commercial DVD as well.
It is obvious that nor Chessbase, nor Junior, nor FIDE ever intended to have Rybka match in Mexico City. They actually spent Vasik’s (and his distributor) time and money, to defocus him from marketing of his products. It is clear that David Levy is promoting commercial efforts of Chessbase, disregarding the truth. Mig Greengard published David Levy’s report, but failed to publish Vasik’s response, attempting to manipulate with public opinion. What a circus.
Who is David Levy- apparently not a sane person promoting Ilymzhinov
http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=1976
“Nostradamus” predictions are actually Levy’s “predictions” (read manipulations), which he is apparently paid to make public to believe.
Chessbase – Who is Mig Greengard, just paid for his contracts
http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=429
Perhaps anyone who does not know of David Levy’s place in the history of computer chess and computer chess matches is not really qualified to speak on the entire matter.
For decades all matches, computer-computer and human-computer, have used more or less identical rules for handling remote hardware. This set-up is by far the most convenient, ensuring that hardware can be completely maintained. Security is hardly more difficult than for ATM or EFT transactions, the set-up and changes to the remote computers are easily checked by the arbiter(s).
I guess Rybka got what they wanted; they crashed the match and will use it as marketing to claim Junior dodged. Shades of 1972, also where someone realized it was better to claim you were wronged than risk losing the match and losing your “reputation”. Probably nothing would have gotten Rybka to risk its marketing strategy by actually playing, even if the Junior team had been stupid enough to give Rybka proprietary information that could have been used by Rybka. And playing on someone else’s machine is just idiotic in such a match.
Anyone who understands anything about computer chess can see that Rybka’s people (person?) caused the problems here.
I am pleased to see that Rybka understands how many humans actually could outplay Rybka and help Junior though. Rybka has a far inferior strategic algorithm than Junior does, no matter what the marketing group says; Rybka’s people probably do not understand how this works and would like to get proprietary log details if at all possible.
Champions play be the rules and prove themselves; pretenders claim conspiracies and make unattainable demands to hide. The truth is out there, shame on Rybka.
Hi,
the Rybka team has guaranteed the prize fund so they can have theirs demands concerning the clear conditions of the game.
The order in computer chess is
Rybka, Hiarcs, Shredder so Junior could be happy that will play vs Rybka for the title but they are afraid.
Rgds
Pony
Anon of 9.49: I suggest you give Mig time; the day is young. Your whole piece could usefully have been prefaced with the magic phrase “In my opinion…”
Anon of 10.31 has either had a sense-of-humour bypass, or has their tongue firmly stuffed up their cheek.
ken [surely not ‘the’ ken] correctly says security is no harder than for an ATM/EFT transaction, but the fact is that this technology has not been deployed in ICCA/ICGA events or was being suggested here.
Note that, whatever I.T. security is used, you still need ‘trusted parties’ to ensure that the servers are not tampered with: IBM had ‘the ken’ sitting in DEEP BLUE’s room throughout, and this still left room for Kasparov to complain.
Ken said:
“And playing on someone else’s machine is just idiotic in such a match.”
So that is why the Junior team insisted on playing remotely on Intel’s machines in London? Great logic.
Playing on local machines is more transparent for everybody involved, including the spectators.
Ken-
What garbage. Yes David Levy has played a large role in computer matches. And yes remote connections are more convenient.
However, it’s not at all unreasonable to ask for information about what the other side is doing. If you think that the Junior team would need to hand out the source code(the only “proprietary” information NOT available to the public), then you’re delusionary.
I think it’s fair to say you haven’t taken the time to see just how strong Rybka is. Rybka is on top of all the rating lists by a large margin, while Junior is well below the top 5 by a large margin. While it’s possible the Junior team could be using a prototype version that’s as good or better than Rybka, it’s doubtful if they haven’t put it on the market already. I’ll believe it when I see it.
So, if Rybka is bad strategically, and Rybka isn’t so good tactically(I’ve read research, it isn’t), then what IS it good at? I’d like to see proof that you’re qualified to speak on the matter over anyone else.
{16-core computer costs 10 thousand dollars }
Any chess engine vs. engine match is much less interesting if the engines are not using identical hardware.
Also, less interesting if expensive computers are used (max should be 2-CPU, $3000).
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respected competitions feature local play. This list includes: Mainz 960 World
Championship, Fritz vs. Kramnik match … remote game is needed for open events to not exclude anybody – for invitational events, this issue disappears.
Agreed.
Also, the atmosphere for human spectating is improved when the computers can be seen side-by-side on site.
The Chess Tigers in Mainz do indeed have one of this eras most watched chess engine vs. engine annual matches, in their chess960 challenge. So the “Mainz event” (pun intended) now has two exceptionally visible annual tournaments thanks to their pioneering efforts with chess960.
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computers have done much to increase the popularity of our ancient and ever young game
Very very true; despite the doomsday view when Kasparov lost to Deep Blue in 1997.
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ken 11:09 wrote:
{many humans actually could outplay Rybka and help Junior though}
in a tangential way, this statement fits in nicely with my assessment of:
OLD QUESTION: Can a human defeat a computer?
NEW QUESTION: Can a human + computer defeat a copy of that computer.
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ken 11:09 wrote:
{not know of David Levy’s place … not really qualified to speak}
Get real.
I am aware of David Levy; yet it has nothing to do with my feeling that these matches can be made dull by hardware that is too specialized or expensive, remote, or non-identical. Tune in to the human element.
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GeneM
Let them play Chess960!
To my surprise Rybka and Junior
are of equal strenght on commercially available hardwares.
Friend and myself gave them
10 games in classical time control.
Result was 5.5:4.5 in Juniors favour.
I conclude that quite probably Rybka has superior
opening theory book implemented
Junior Team is simple scare, like Chicken Little.
I don’t see what’s difficult about everyone using identical hardware.
Team representatives show up in Mexico City. They jointly use a telephone book to select a computer store at random. They travel to the store in a taxi and buy two identical brand new computers. They bring the computers back to the match site and install their software. They have to do this in a room where anyone can watch them at work, i.e. it has to be visible that they’re just sitting there typing and inserting CD/DVD discs, not taking the computer apart. What they’re typing doesn’t have to be visible as long as you can see that someone is just typing at the keyboard with a normal posture. Match officials can examine the computers for hidden wifi and stuff like that if necessary–they only inspect the hardware in view of everyone, not the data.
At the end of the match the teams take the computers home with them, so the data is secure.