Rybka is no longer strongest chess engine

IvanHoe is much more polite with analysis over Rybka. There are "technical reasons" why Rybka cannot prove the mainline according to "Vas" but IvanHoe doesn't need this "technique" and still wins by 50 Elo. The Rybka agent Victor Zakharov must say this is not a "critical difference" but for us it is.

Sigh! this topic is up again.

@wilddog, With your comments, I am pretty sure that you have no idea about  marketing theory/compiler basic concepts or you must be a rybka emplyee. Either way, your caveman comments make no sense at all.

Of course I am not from Vatican either, you chipmunk!! 

I am here to hang all you IMPOSTERS on the GALLOWS OF REASON!!

(wild is not quite wild enough, eh!)

By the way, we can hang wilddogs on the gallows too!!

Will chess machines ever be able to dominate human players like calculators dominate human math freaks?

It would be fair to say that machines have been dominating for the last 7 years already. 2002 Kramnik-Fritz game was the last match where a human could hold against a top engine, if I remember correctly.

Today top 5 would be happy to draw against Firebird with white.

But the domination probably will never be like a calculator vs math freak until chess is solved. Even Firebird and Rybka are still far away from the ultimate chess truth, whereas calculators are pretty close .

http://computerchess.org.uk/ccrl/4040.live/...

 The latest update. Testers may apply to join the CCRL, see their homepage for details.

wilddog, don't you realize how pointless it is to try to prove Rybka's superiority over Firebird etc. by referring to rankings that don't involve any of those engines?

philidor_position #94      Their testers can apply so  that they can be included..

Aquarium has some problems loading these engines. Even handicap function does not work in the Aquarium platform (cyclone and toga from the same site chesslogik.com work fine). Try the fritz gui instead.

So whydo they think rybka has been de-compiled ??.


i dont think it is possible to decompile rybka, and produce somthing smarter.
Without its symbol code (i'm a programmer).

The reason for this,
Compilers turn a high level language, like basic or c++ into assembly language.
While chess engines themself are based on math translated down to basic or c++
So even if you could turn assembly back into c++ (almost impossible) then still you need a smartbrain to understand the garbage of C++ code and to translate that again to get the math ideas behind it.. thats just 2 conversions to much.
And then still you have to improve the math, and compile it back into something faster.

Assembly language is the lowest level language, (these days only a few people master it, i did it once). Going from such level back to the high math level as required to improve the program seams an unpossible task to me. To improve a program you need to turn it in readable basic or c+ language as how it was written by the original programmer (prefferable full of comments etc), and then you might read his code. Still left then is understanding the math behind the c+ code, improving the math and compile it into something faster...
But doing that from the bottem, from the assembly code. ..
no, that would be a manhatten project..

I dont even believe that such reverse engineering is likely to produce something better.

The only thing i can think of is Rybka is protecting its marketshare, if a free alternative is better then they loose money on it. So then what do they claim,... that it is unlegal....(seams not sportive)

What might be that some search algorythms are patented and might be in use.
But even rybka as far as i know wasnt orignal, all chess engines use common techniques, bitbild search functions etc etc..
I wonder however, if you use math for searh purposes, then how can math be protected by copyrights??..

Math is something universal, and is accessable to all who study it, i think something like that has happened here, the rybka is bypassed by a team who knew their math a bit better, and they might have been beaten on their own field. In such a case, i think they simply lost it.

What wonders me even more in this case lets claim it was a copy.
Then why didnt the  rybka team improve it too, why didnt they put the improvents into their own software  ??..
Because they are unable to do so?
Because they have been outsmarted ?
Or because, the code is not the same ?
Oscars razor... decide yourself the most easy logical answer.

Anyway patenting is a problem here i think

Its like the math to find prime numbers for breaking security.
The math behind it is not allowed as export.
However joking people made T-Shirts, with the math formulas on it.
These T-Shirt where not allowed for export as it was a military secret.
In reality the T-shirts got sold everywhere and others improved the math.
But around the world there where allready people aware of such math even before such T-shirts, since math is something universal you cannt hide. And people cannot claim math as to be something of their own, math was there even before mankind. Its only us discovering math.

@ peter art, it is actually 'ochams razor' not 'oscars razor'! but on the subject of strongest engine, in my testing i am finding stockfish 171ja (32bit at any rate) is now consistently stronger than rybka 3 and about equal with firebird 1.2. i dont bother much with the ivanhoes because they still have too many bugs and reliability issues and having to manually set the number of chores is tedious, plus it isnt as strong as firebird or stockfish anyway. i also agree with some posters that rybka is bad for analysis because it very often wont show the mainline, only the first move of it. this is not at all helpful for those of us who use engines for analysis and not for playing engine matches on playchess etc. it will be interesting to see how much progress rybak 4 has made when it is 'finally' released at the end of may (so says vas rajilich), although the beta testing that is underway at present doesnt inspire much confidence. i think other engine authors have now caught up and overtaken mr rajilich. whether or not he manages to produce another version of rybka that will be as dominant as previous versions of rybka have been for a long time now remains to be seen, but personally i doubt it. the competion has just got a whole lot harder over the past few months, and i feel there is still much more to come from the stockfish team.

I never heard of stockfish is it free as wel?, if so do you have link to it
I once adjusted an ipolit chess engine, so it was even stronger as the normal version just curious if it would win.

 I'm not at all worried about using a free engine that may possibly be a tweaked derivative of something else.  I'd rather do that than pay £40+ for a derivative based on Fruit

How does Houdini 1.03a fit into this jigsaw I wonder?

http://www.cruxis.com/chess/houdini.htm

Robbolito 32bit didn't even break a sweat against Stockfish 32bit. Very strong engine.

I just played  Robolito and Houdini(stronger than rybka) in 5 games. They drew by three fold repetion three times and then Houdini won twice in a row.

These two are the strongest engines for 32bit run on one second time controls.

Houdini being the strongest. '11

in a way its fun i was playing against a kid this morning no super checking machine, he made some strange moves during an opening, so i had to brake my reportoire as i landed in a complete new type of gedult attack, in a way fun because naturaly i never would have gone to that board possition not with stronger engines and not with stronger people, still i had to pay attention to still win the game. He's a natural talent, but sticks to much to his ideas in chess which is kinda fun to teach him new things.

fuck 

you