Computer chess champ stripped of its four titles
By Claire Courchane
The Washington Times
9:40 p.m., Thursday, June 30, 2011
Yet another world champion has been brought low for suspected use of a banned performance-enhancing substance.
Rybka, the chess-playing computer program that won the past four World Computer Chess Championship titles, was summarily stripped of its silicon crown this week amid charges its programmer plagiarized the software of two rival programs.
David Levy, president of the International Computer Games Association (ICGA), announced the action against Rybka on Wednesday and imposed a lifetime ban on Czech-American programmer and Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate Vasik Rajlich. He accused Mr. Rajlich of ripping off the coding of two other software programs marketed as Crafty and Fruit. Mr. Levy also demanded the return of trophies and prize money the program won.
“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,” an ICGA letter states.
As accusations have mounted in recent months about the sources of Rybka’s phenomenal playing strength, Mr. Rajlich has steadily maintained his innocence on various online chess forums but given no formal denial. Now reportedly living in Warsaw, he did not respond to email requests for comment Thursday.
Mr. Levy also released eight comprehensive evaluations of the programs in comparison, put together by specialists who used Mr. Rajlich’s own words on how easy it is to copy programming source code to emphasize their point. The evaluations show identical coding in numerous aspects of Rybka and the earlier programs.
“The Rybka code base was without doubt derived directly from other people’s work and this was never revealed, so this is [a] case of taking credit for the work of others and it shows a lack of respect for the other major talents in computer chess as well as the ICGA and organizers of these events,” Don Dailey, a fellow computer chess programmer, wrote in one report.
Mr. Dailey was also one of 14 co-authors of a letter sent to the ICGA in March accusing Rybka of copying Fruit, an “open-source” program created by Frenchman Fabien Letouzey that was runner-up world computer champion in 2005.
Rybka won four consecutive World Computer Chess Championship titles from 2007 to 2010. But questions of programming ethics and stolen codes still bedevil the field.
Full article here.
He’s innocent. He was set up by the thugs.
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 of 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.
Chessbase still list Rybka as World Champion on there products page, perhaps Chessbase consider the ICGA unimportant ?
Could some others weigh in on this?
If Rybka’s creators cheated I would like a refund and do not want to use the program.
However I know quite well the actions described in the first two posts are commonplace.
Fide has 10 vice presidents and the chess world doesn’t care.Now suddenly the chess world is talking about cheating etc. It doesn’t make any sence.
This was coming for a while. The thief has been caught. The evidence was there. He ripped of Fruit and Crafty, this has been known for awhile. Great to see action being taken.
If you cannot beat your opponent at chess some will do anything to get their hands on the World Title. Turns out that this was a completely flawed witch-hunt (which any court would tell you). The plaintiffs were judge, jury and executioners and not one legal expert was part of the panel (or consulted). Some panelists are now asking for their names to be removed, only 14 of the 34 actually voted, and many of those who did vote are Rybka’s direct competitors and will now receive World Champion titles as a result.