Subject: The ICGA's rebuttal to Soren Riis's article on Chessbase.com re
the Rybka scandal
This week Dr Soren Riis posted a four part article on Chessbase.com in a
somewhat belated attempt to defend Vasik Rajlich. Regular readers will
recall that Rajlich's actions led the International Computer Games
Association (ICGA) to find him guilty of breaking a crucial tournament rule,
as a result of which the chess program Rybka was stripped of its World
Computer Chess Champion titles and Rajlich was banned for life from ICGA
events.
Dr Riis gave his article a title to suggest that a miscarriage of justice
has taken place. The ICGA now responds with two rebuttal articles, one by
myself (as President of the ICGA) concerning some of the legalistic points
raised by Riis's article, and a robust detailed and thorough technical
rebuttal by Mark Watkins.
Everyone interested in the Rybka scandal should read both of these
rebuttals and then decide for themselves who and what they believe - Dr Riis
or the ICGA's investigation report.
Dr David Levy
President - ICGA
No Miscarriage of Justice - Just Biased Reporting
By David Levy [ICGA President]
Introduction
In his four-part article on Chessbase.com about the Rybka scandal (see www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=7791 et seq.) Dr Søren Riis has tried very hard to defend Vasik Ralich’s actions that led the ICGA to find him guilty of breaking ICGA Tournament Rule 2. As a historical review of progress in computer chess Riis’s article contains important and interesting information and comments. Unfortunately, however, his thesis lacks objectivity because it circles the core question and attempts to defend Rajlich by attacking the rule he was accused of breaking, attacking the investigative process in various ways and attacking some of those involved in that process.
When a defendant is brought before a court of Law, what is in question is whether or not (s)he broke the Law and not whether the Law itself is appropriate. And so it is with the ICGA rules. In considering the Rybka case the ICGA’s task was to decide the matter on the basis of its Tournament Rule 2, not to question the rule itself. ICGA Tournament Rule 2 applies to the World Computer Chess Championships and states:
“Each program must be the original work of the entering developers. Programming teams whose code is derived from or including game-playing code written by others must name all other authors, or the source of such code, in their submission details. Programs which are discovered to be close derivatives of others (e.g., by playing nearly all moves the same), may be declared invalid by the Tournament Director after seeking expert advice. For this purpose a listing of all game-related code running on the system must be available on demand to the Tournament Director.”
Note that this rule requires programmers to list all authors and the source of code, even “derived” code. Entering a competition such as this brings with it the obligation to abide by the competition rules.
Any readers of Riis’s articles who wish to understand the ICGA’s stance in this matter should visit the ICGA web site at www.icga.org where they will find a link to the full report of the ICGA Investigation Panel together with its supporting evidence and the judgement made by the ICGA based on that report.
How the Scandal Started
The Rybka scandal came about because when Vasik Rajlich submitted his entry applications for the World Computer Chess Championships in 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010 he failed in his duty to include the name of Fabien Letouzey, the programmer of Fruit, in his authorship statements. The correct procedure would have been to obtain Letouzey’s permission to use the Fruit derived code and to name Letouzey within the authorship statement, thereby advising the ICGA of the provenance of the derived code. Sadly Rajlich did neither. Had he conformed to the rule it would then have been up to the ICGA either to accept Rajlich’s entries as they stood or to ask him to remove the Fruit derived code for the purpose of the tournaments.
These are the bare facts of the case and are, I believe, beyond dispute. It was upon these facts that the ICGA based its decisions regarding Rajlich being stripped of the World Championship titles awarded to Rybka and being banned for life from ICGA events.
Incidentally, even if the later versions of Rybka contained reduced amounts of Fruit-derived code, the historical roots of an engine are of import. For as long as Rybka engine development was continual, Letouzey’s name should not have been omitted on the ICGA entry information, it then being at the discretion of the ICGA as to how to classify the level of Fruit’s involvement.
Some Comments on Søren Riis’s Arguments
Søren Riis is a moderator on the Rybka forum and clearly a big Rybka fan. Nothing wrong there. But when one examines the detail of Riis’s arguments one finds that his enthusiasm for Rybka has outweighed his objectivity, causing him to make points that do not affect the simple basic need for laws (and tournament rules) to be adhered to.
A detailed and robust technical rebuttal of Riis’s article is in preparation by the ICGA and will be posted shortly. Here I shall point out the irrelevance to the ICGA rules of some of his key arguments and correct some of his erroneous assumptions.
[1] Riis states that the matter was not investigated by the ICGA until:
“over five years had elapsed since the alleged offense, and four consecutive world computer chess championships had been decisively won in head-to-head competition by Rybka.”
In fact when the ICGA was formally requested to investigate (early 2011) it was only a few months after Rajlich’s fifth WCCC violation of rule 2. And prior to 2011 no complaint had been made to the ICGA regarding Rybka, so there was no call for the ICGA to launch an investigation earlier than it did. The ICGA started its investigation within a month or so of a complaint being made by Fabien Letouzey, the author of Fruit.
[2] Riis states that:
“It is clear that Rybka is an original program by any reasonable standard.”
Rajlich has also stated, in a CCC post of Dec 16 2005:
http://www.stmintz.com/ccc/index.php?id=470751
"As far as I know, Rybka has a very original search and evaluation framework.”
And in an interview Rajlich said:
http://www.superchessengine.com/vasik_rajlich.htm
“Anyway, if I really had to give a number – my wild guess is that Rybka would be 20 rating points weaker had Fruit not appeared.”
Let us now consider the above comments in the light of the evidence. We shall first repeat the last quotation (by Rajlich) because it is so astounding.
“Anyway, if I really had to give a number – my wild guess is that Rybka would be 20 rating points weaker had Fruit not appeared.”
Rajlich himself has admitted that “I went through the Fruit 2.1 source code forwards and backwards and took many things”. Is he here really expecting us to believe that only 20 Elo points of Rybka’s improvement were due to what he took from Fruit, especially as this contradicts Riis’s statement that, after the publication of the Fruit source code, “everyone else” gained much more?
Next consider the investigation report where it refers to Zach Wegner’s analysis found at https://webspace.utexas.edu/zzw57/rtc/eval/eval.html
“From looking at the piece evaluation of both engines, we find that they are almost identical.” A partial listing of Fruit identical terms:
Identical formulas for calculating piece-square tables for:
. pawns
. knights
. bishops
. rooks
. queens.
Highly similar formulas for piece square tables for kings.
Identical procedures for calculating king safety:
. count of pieces attacking squares around the opponent king
. adding in an attack factor based on piece type then multiplying by a weight based on attack counts
Identical simple mobility counting for:
. knights
. bishops
. rooks
. queens
Identical measurements of pawn features:
. isolation
. doubling
. open
. highly similar backward, candidate and passed pawns
Rook Evaluation:
. identical methods for R on the 7th
. rooks on half and opened files
. king file proximity
Queens:
. identical Q on the 7th.
Blocked Bishop and Rook terms
And to quote the summary in this part of the report:
“Nearly the entire evaluation function is derived from Fruit. This includes the formulas for calculating piece-square tables, methods and features of evaluating piece mobility, rook king file proximity, rook and queen on the 7th rank, and king safety.”
I shall leave it to readers to study the evidence presented in the investigation report, in Riis’s article and in the ICGA’s forthcoming technical rebuttal, and decide for themselves who they believe.
[3] Riis states:
“Here’s the main point: to convict and sentence a man due to his presumed ethical failings and then attempt to ruin him on a world stage you need a very high standard of evidence.”
I take great exception to the suggestion that the ICGA attempted “to ruin” Rajlich. The ICGA made no such attempt, it merely reported accurately on the evidence it had considered and on its findings. It is also not true that the ICGA convicted and sentenced Rajlich “due to his presumed ethical failings” – the ICGA’s verdict and sanctions were because he broke Tournament Rule 2.
[4] Riis points out that:
“Rybka maintained unbroken supremacy on the chess engine rating lists for five years. However its performance in dozens of competitive tournaments held all over the world was, if anything, even more spectacular. Rybka did not merely win nearly every tournament it entered; it won them with a near-90% success rate. It is difficult to overstate the degree of superiority that the Rybka team exhibited in these years in chess software, mastery of hardware, and even in opening theory.”
All of this paragraph is perfectly true but totally irrelevant when considering Rajlich’s guilt or innocence. How would we view an Olympic athlete found guilty of taking performance enhancing drugs if he performed superbly, winning races by huge margins, breaking world records and taking gold medals? Would he be forgiven his drug taking just because his performances were outstanding? No, of course not!
[5] Riis’s article includes quotes by Vasik Rajlich in which he publicly praises the work of Fabien Letouzey. Riis comments:
“If these acknowledgements were insufficient to satisfy WCCC Rule 2, then we must return again to arguments made earlier on the inadequacies of the rule itself and how it is applied.”
Clearly any such acknowledgements made by Rajlich on Internet forums or other public postings are in no way related to his obligations when submitting his applications to participate with Rybka in World Computer Chess Championship tournaments. What counts when making an entry submission is the information that the entrant submits with his application and any relevant information which he fails to submit. Suspecting that these acknowledgements are insufficient to satisfy Rule 2 Riis then reverts to another of his defensive claims, that Rule 2 itself is inadequate. But as I have pointed out earlier, disagreement with a rule or a law does not serve as an adequate defence for breaking it.
[6] Riis points out that, of the sixteen programmers who petitioned the ICGA early in 2011 to investigate Rybka:
“many . . . were in direct competition with Rybka”.
The implication here is that programmers who were competitors of Rajlich might be biased in their call for an investigation. So if one athlete reports a drug-taking rival to the athletics authorities, should the authorities discount the report because the whistle-blower is a rival? Surely not?
All six of the above points are, I submit, irrelevant to the core question – did Vasik Rajlich break ICGA Tournament Rule 2 or did he not? That is what the investigation panel considered, and it was on the basis of their findings and conclusions that Rajlich was sanctioned by the ICGA. Rajlich was given ample opportunity to present a defence to the allegations – as President of the ICGA I invited him to do so before the investigation started, then again during the investigation when I sent him some of the evidence being considered, then again after the panel’s report had been completed (attaching the report and all of the evidence to which it referred) but before the report was considered by the ICGA executive, and yet again after the ICGA executive had considered the report but before we decided on the appropriate sanctions. These prompts by me were sent (inter alia) on February 2nd, March 2nd, April 4th, May 13th, May 31st and June 9th. But despite being given all these opportunities to provide a serious defence to the allegations against him, over a period of five months, Rajlich consistently declined to do so. What could he reasonably expect to happen as a result?
Biased Reporting
I should now like to turn to some aspects of Søren Riis’s article that I regard as biased reporting.
I regret the bias in Riis’s writing, I also regret Chessbase’s attitude to the Rybka scandal. When this scandal erupted early in 2011 I sent my first posting on the matter to Chessbase but they decided not to publish it. Yes, I know that Chessbase sells Rybka, and therefore they might have worried about losing sales, but as a web site of record in all matters chessic it would surely be good journalistic practice to publish important criticism of parts of one’s own “empire”, together with any comments on that criticism which they feel is appropriate. As an example, consider the recent phone hacking scandal that has engulfed News International, the London based company that publishes ‘The Times’, ‘The Sunday Times’ and other newspapers, and caused News International to close down one of its titles, ‘News of the World’, in the middle of 2011. In the midst of the hacking scandal News International itself and its famous proprietors Rupert Murdoch and his son James Murdoch were all castigated in the media, and extensive reports of the scandal were published throughout the News International media empire itself, even though the criticism faced by the Murdoch group of companies was the worst in the history of the UK media. That was responsible and unbiased reporting, no attempt being made to sweep the hacking scandal completely under the carpet. In contrast, when the Rybka scandal erupted Chessbase.com acted as though no Rybka scandal existed.
On now to some examples of the bias in Riis’s article.
[a] The link Riis provides to the ICGA report does not give his readers access to the important evidential documents on which the report was based. A knowledge and understanding of the evidence is needed by any of Riis’s readers who want to consider both sides of the arguments, and many visitors to Chessbase.com will not yet have seen them. I was rather sorry to see that Riis failed to provide such links, the more so because he did provide many links to the “defense” side.
Riis states:
“It really goes without saying that the panel members voted based on the findings of the ICGA report. . .”
This implies that the members of the panel were not privy to all of the evidence, and as such it is misleading. In fact the members of the panel all had access to all of the evidence documents, so they voted not only on the basis of the report but also on the basis of the evidence on which the report was based.
[c] Riis states:
“A panel was formed. Dr. Hyatt served as panel gatekeeper and determined who was and was not allowed to participate.”
Not true. The decision on who was and was not allowed to participate was taken jointly by the three members of the Secretariat and myself, after each of us had had the opportunity to make comments in favour or against particular individuals. With this statement Riis implies that the composition of the panel was somehow skewed against Vasik Rajlich, but that is also untrue. For example, Chris Whittington, a strong Ralich supporter, asked to join and made the comment that he supposed that I would refuse to admit him. Quite to the contrary, I was in favour of admitting him. Unfortunately, when we asked him as part of the registration procedure to verify his email address, which no longer matched those he used for older forums, he responded using phrases such as "wasting humiliation" and "occasional little hitler"? The Secretariat felt he was unwilling to have civil dialog with others and all three of them felt he should not be a member if he was going to be rude. Then, after a brief period, he was invited to re-apply but declined to do so.
Another pro-Rajlich programmer is Ed Schroeder, who was similarly welcomed to the panel when he joined. Sadly Ed then decided that he did not wish to serve and asked for his name to be removed from the panel.
Naturally Vasik Rajlich was asked to be a member of the panel with full access to all the evidence but he refused multiple requests to join.
[d] Riis criticizes Bob Hyatt in various ways, hardly surprising in view of the fact that he also criticizes the rule that Rajlich broke as well as various other aspects of the investigative process. Suffice it to say that Bob Hyatt is one of the world’s leading experts in the field of computer chess, has been so for some thirty years, has twice won the World Computer Chess Championship, and has contributed hugely to the field in various ways, including making his program Crafty open source. Who has a better understanding of computer chess and its minutiae, and who would be more appropriate as a member of the Secretariat of the Investigation Panel – Bob Hyatt or Søren Riis?
[e] Riis incorrectly states that in my first posting on ChessVibes.com I:
“made a preemptive declaration of Rajlich’s guilt”.
Wrong. I wrote about the rumours that had been circulating regarding Rybka and said that:
“But as I have mentioned, at first the Rybka-Fruit case was mere rumour. More recently, however, these rumours have become firm allegations, made by expert chess programmers and supported by evidence which appears on the surface to be rather compelling, both in its nature and in its volume. At this point in time I do not intend to make any definitive statement of my own on these allegations, but will allow the reader to form their own opinion after reading the following.”
So even though I specifically wrote that I did not intend to make a definitive statement of my own at that time, Riis accuses me of declaring Rajlich guilty in that article. In fact I made no public comment at all about Rajlich’s guilt until after the Investigation Panel had completed its work.
[f] Riis states:
“Not even half of the original committee of 34 voted for a guilty verdict. Was it even clear in advance how many guilty votes were needed to convict?”
There was never any compulsion on the members of the panel to take part in the vote that the ICGA conducted when the report had been completed. The purpose of the vote was to determine how the balance of opinion went amongst those panel members who did wish to vote. The result was that not one single member of the panel voted for a not-guilty verdict. Amongst those panel members who were convinced of Rajlich’s guilt was Ken Thompson, a past World Computer Chess Champion programmer, co-author of Unix, winner of the ACM Turing Award (inter alia) and arguably the most august computer scientist who has ever graced our community with his active participation.
[g] Riis’s bias is perhaps at its most telling in the following paragraph from his article:
“While no one questions the fact that the ICGA gave Rajlich ample opportunity to respond to their charges and he did not, there is much more to the matter than “we queried him and he did not respond.” Rajlich was not merely queried. He was publicly accused by the head of the ICGA and publicly excoriated by a group of individuals who stirred themselves up into a crusading lynch mob. A pile of “evidence” was jubilantly thrown together based on a passionately-held predetermined conclusion of code-copying which happened to be wholly at variance with actual reality. And then Rajlich was offered the opportunity to formally respond.”
There is so much to fault with this paragraph that it is difficult to know where to begin. To describe the panel of computer chess experts, many of whom are eminent academics and including a number of former world champions, as a “crusading lynch mob” is, in my view ridiculous and totally uncalled for. The members of the panel were there because they had expressed an interest in following the course of the investigation, perhaps taking some part in it, and because they were assessed as having some expertise that could be helpful to the discussion. To say that the evidence was “jubilantly thrown together” implies an unfair bias on behalf of those who compiled it. To go a little deeper into this particular sentence, the words “thrown together” imply that the evidence was not carefully prepared, whereas anyone reading all of the supporting documents referred to in the report would readily understand that a huge amount of time and assiduous effort had been devoted to the task of collecting and evaluating that evidence. And the words in the final sentence of this paragraph: “And then Rajlich was offered the opportunity to formally respond.” imply, through the emphasis on the word “then”, that the opportunity for Rajlich to defend himself came only after the investigative process had gone a long way towards its conclusion. In fact, as I have shown above, Rajlich was given several opportunities to defend himself, over a period of five months, before the report was considered by the ICGA executive.
Summary
As I have already mentioned, a robust technical rebuttal to Riis’s article will shortly be distributed by the ICGA, so here I have stayed away from the technicalities and commented on the legalistic aspects of the Rybka case. The ICGA would have welcomed an objective appraisal of its conduct of the investigation and its conclusions, but Søren Riis cannot be described as objective in this matter, not by any stretch of the imagination. The resulting article, full as it is of Riis’s bias, does nothing in my view to make the case for a miscarriage of justice to have taken place. It is, put simply, biased reporting.
END
the Rybka scandal
This week Dr Soren Riis posted a four part article on Chessbase.com in a
somewhat belated attempt to defend Vasik Rajlich. Regular readers will
recall that Rajlich's actions led the International Computer Games
Association (ICGA) to find him guilty of breaking a crucial tournament rule,
as a result of which the chess program Rybka was stripped of its World
Computer Chess Champion titles and Rajlich was banned for life from ICGA
events.
Dr Riis gave his article a title to suggest that a miscarriage of justice
has taken place. The ICGA now responds with two rebuttal articles, one by
myself (as President of the ICGA) concerning some of the legalistic points
raised by Riis's article, and a robust detailed and thorough technical
rebuttal by Mark Watkins.
Everyone interested in the Rybka scandal should read both of these
rebuttals and then decide for themselves who and what they believe - Dr Riis
or the ICGA's investigation report.
Dr David Levy
President - ICGA
No Miscarriage of Justice - Just Biased Reporting
By David Levy [ICGA President]
Introduction
In his four-part article on Chessbase.com about the Rybka scandal (see www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=7791 et seq.) Dr Søren Riis has tried very hard to defend Vasik Ralich’s actions that led the ICGA to find him guilty of breaking ICGA Tournament Rule 2. As a historical review of progress in computer chess Riis’s article contains important and interesting information and comments. Unfortunately, however, his thesis lacks objectivity because it circles the core question and attempts to defend Rajlich by attacking the rule he was accused of breaking, attacking the investigative process in various ways and attacking some of those involved in that process.
When a defendant is brought before a court of Law, what is in question is whether or not (s)he broke the Law and not whether the Law itself is appropriate. And so it is with the ICGA rules. In considering the Rybka case the ICGA’s task was to decide the matter on the basis of its Tournament Rule 2, not to question the rule itself. ICGA Tournament Rule 2 applies to the World Computer Chess Championships and states:
“Each program must be the original work of the entering developers. Programming teams whose code is derived from or including game-playing code written by others must name all other authors, or the source of such code, in their submission details. Programs which are discovered to be close derivatives of others (e.g., by playing nearly all moves the same), may be declared invalid by the Tournament Director after seeking expert advice. For this purpose a listing of all game-related code running on the system must be available on demand to the Tournament Director.”
Note that this rule requires programmers to list all authors and the source of code, even “derived” code. Entering a competition such as this brings with it the obligation to abide by the competition rules.
Any readers of Riis’s articles who wish to understand the ICGA’s stance in this matter should visit the ICGA web site at www.icga.org where they will find a link to the full report of the ICGA Investigation Panel together with its supporting evidence and the judgement made by the ICGA based on that report.
How the Scandal Started
The Rybka scandal came about because when Vasik Rajlich submitted his entry applications for the World Computer Chess Championships in 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010 he failed in his duty to include the name of Fabien Letouzey, the programmer of Fruit, in his authorship statements. The correct procedure would have been to obtain Letouzey’s permission to use the Fruit derived code and to name Letouzey within the authorship statement, thereby advising the ICGA of the provenance of the derived code. Sadly Rajlich did neither. Had he conformed to the rule it would then have been up to the ICGA either to accept Rajlich’s entries as they stood or to ask him to remove the Fruit derived code for the purpose of the tournaments.
These are the bare facts of the case and are, I believe, beyond dispute. It was upon these facts that the ICGA based its decisions regarding Rajlich being stripped of the World Championship titles awarded to Rybka and being banned for life from ICGA events.
Incidentally, even if the later versions of Rybka contained reduced amounts of Fruit-derived code, the historical roots of an engine are of import. For as long as Rybka engine development was continual, Letouzey’s name should not have been omitted on the ICGA entry information, it then being at the discretion of the ICGA as to how to classify the level of Fruit’s involvement.
Some Comments on Søren Riis’s Arguments
Søren Riis is a moderator on the Rybka forum and clearly a big Rybka fan. Nothing wrong there. But when one examines the detail of Riis’s arguments one finds that his enthusiasm for Rybka has outweighed his objectivity, causing him to make points that do not affect the simple basic need for laws (and tournament rules) to be adhered to.
A detailed and robust technical rebuttal of Riis’s article is in preparation by the ICGA and will be posted shortly. Here I shall point out the irrelevance to the ICGA rules of some of his key arguments and correct some of his erroneous assumptions.
[1] Riis states that the matter was not investigated by the ICGA until:
“over five years had elapsed since the alleged offense, and four consecutive world computer chess championships had been decisively won in head-to-head competition by Rybka.”
In fact when the ICGA was formally requested to investigate (early 2011) it was only a few months after Rajlich’s fifth WCCC violation of rule 2. And prior to 2011 no complaint had been made to the ICGA regarding Rybka, so there was no call for the ICGA to launch an investigation earlier than it did. The ICGA started its investigation within a month or so of a complaint being made by Fabien Letouzey, the author of Fruit.
[2] Riis states that:
“It is clear that Rybka is an original program by any reasonable standard.”
Rajlich has also stated, in a CCC post of Dec 16 2005:
http://www.stmintz.com/ccc/index.php?id=470751
"As far as I know, Rybka has a very original search and evaluation framework.”
And in an interview Rajlich said:
http://www.superchessengine.com/vasik_rajlich.htm
“Anyway, if I really had to give a number – my wild guess is that Rybka would be 20 rating points weaker had Fruit not appeared.”
Let us now consider the above comments in the light of the evidence. We shall first repeat the last quotation (by Rajlich) because it is so astounding.
“Anyway, if I really had to give a number – my wild guess is that Rybka would be 20 rating points weaker had Fruit not appeared.”
Rajlich himself has admitted that “I went through the Fruit 2.1 source code forwards and backwards and took many things”. Is he here really expecting us to believe that only 20 Elo points of Rybka’s improvement were due to what he took from Fruit, especially as this contradicts Riis’s statement that, after the publication of the Fruit source code, “everyone else” gained much more?
Next consider the investigation report where it refers to Zach Wegner’s analysis found at https://webspace.utexas.edu/zzw57/rtc/eval/eval.html
“From looking at the piece evaluation of both engines, we find that they are almost identical.” A partial listing of Fruit identical terms:
Identical formulas for calculating piece-square tables for:
. pawns
. knights
. bishops
. rooks
. queens.
Highly similar formulas for piece square tables for kings.
Identical procedures for calculating king safety:
. count of pieces attacking squares around the opponent king
. adding in an attack factor based on piece type then multiplying by a weight based on attack counts
Identical simple mobility counting for:
. knights
. bishops
. rooks
. queens
Identical measurements of pawn features:
. isolation
. doubling
. open
. highly similar backward, candidate and passed pawns
Rook Evaluation:
. identical methods for R on the 7th
. rooks on half and opened files
. king file proximity
Queens:
. identical Q on the 7th.
Blocked Bishop and Rook terms
And to quote the summary in this part of the report:
“Nearly the entire evaluation function is derived from Fruit. This includes the formulas for calculating piece-square tables, methods and features of evaluating piece mobility, rook king file proximity, rook and queen on the 7th rank, and king safety.”
I shall leave it to readers to study the evidence presented in the investigation report, in Riis’s article and in the ICGA’s forthcoming technical rebuttal, and decide for themselves who they believe.
[3] Riis states:
“Here’s the main point: to convict and sentence a man due to his presumed ethical failings and then attempt to ruin him on a world stage you need a very high standard of evidence.”
I take great exception to the suggestion that the ICGA attempted “to ruin” Rajlich. The ICGA made no such attempt, it merely reported accurately on the evidence it had considered and on its findings. It is also not true that the ICGA convicted and sentenced Rajlich “due to his presumed ethical failings” – the ICGA’s verdict and sanctions were because he broke Tournament Rule 2.
[4] Riis points out that:
“Rybka maintained unbroken supremacy on the chess engine rating lists for five years. However its performance in dozens of competitive tournaments held all over the world was, if anything, even more spectacular. Rybka did not merely win nearly every tournament it entered; it won them with a near-90% success rate. It is difficult to overstate the degree of superiority that the Rybka team exhibited in these years in chess software, mastery of hardware, and even in opening theory.”
All of this paragraph is perfectly true but totally irrelevant when considering Rajlich’s guilt or innocence. How would we view an Olympic athlete found guilty of taking performance enhancing drugs if he performed superbly, winning races by huge margins, breaking world records and taking gold medals? Would he be forgiven his drug taking just because his performances were outstanding? No, of course not!
[5] Riis’s article includes quotes by Vasik Rajlich in which he publicly praises the work of Fabien Letouzey. Riis comments:
“If these acknowledgements were insufficient to satisfy WCCC Rule 2, then we must return again to arguments made earlier on the inadequacies of the rule itself and how it is applied.”
Clearly any such acknowledgements made by Rajlich on Internet forums or other public postings are in no way related to his obligations when submitting his applications to participate with Rybka in World Computer Chess Championship tournaments. What counts when making an entry submission is the information that the entrant submits with his application and any relevant information which he fails to submit. Suspecting that these acknowledgements are insufficient to satisfy Rule 2 Riis then reverts to another of his defensive claims, that Rule 2 itself is inadequate. But as I have pointed out earlier, disagreement with a rule or a law does not serve as an adequate defence for breaking it.
[6] Riis points out that, of the sixteen programmers who petitioned the ICGA early in 2011 to investigate Rybka:
“many . . . were in direct competition with Rybka”.
The implication here is that programmers who were competitors of Rajlich might be biased in their call for an investigation. So if one athlete reports a drug-taking rival to the athletics authorities, should the authorities discount the report because the whistle-blower is a rival? Surely not?
All six of the above points are, I submit, irrelevant to the core question – did Vasik Rajlich break ICGA Tournament Rule 2 or did he not? That is what the investigation panel considered, and it was on the basis of their findings and conclusions that Rajlich was sanctioned by the ICGA. Rajlich was given ample opportunity to present a defence to the allegations – as President of the ICGA I invited him to do so before the investigation started, then again during the investigation when I sent him some of the evidence being considered, then again after the panel’s report had been completed (attaching the report and all of the evidence to which it referred) but before the report was considered by the ICGA executive, and yet again after the ICGA executive had considered the report but before we decided on the appropriate sanctions. These prompts by me were sent (inter alia) on February 2nd, March 2nd, April 4th, May 13th, May 31st and June 9th. But despite being given all these opportunities to provide a serious defence to the allegations against him, over a period of five months, Rajlich consistently declined to do so. What could he reasonably expect to happen as a result?
Biased Reporting
I should now like to turn to some aspects of Søren Riis’s article that I regard as biased reporting.
I regret the bias in Riis’s writing, I also regret Chessbase’s attitude to the Rybka scandal. When this scandal erupted early in 2011 I sent my first posting on the matter to Chessbase but they decided not to publish it. Yes, I know that Chessbase sells Rybka, and therefore they might have worried about losing sales, but as a web site of record in all matters chessic it would surely be good journalistic practice to publish important criticism of parts of one’s own “empire”, together with any comments on that criticism which they feel is appropriate. As an example, consider the recent phone hacking scandal that has engulfed News International, the London based company that publishes ‘The Times’, ‘The Sunday Times’ and other newspapers, and caused News International to close down one of its titles, ‘News of the World’, in the middle of 2011. In the midst of the hacking scandal News International itself and its famous proprietors Rupert Murdoch and his son James Murdoch were all castigated in the media, and extensive reports of the scandal were published throughout the News International media empire itself, even though the criticism faced by the Murdoch group of companies was the worst in the history of the UK media. That was responsible and unbiased reporting, no attempt being made to sweep the hacking scandal completely under the carpet. In contrast, when the Rybka scandal erupted Chessbase.com acted as though no Rybka scandal existed.
On now to some examples of the bias in Riis’s article.
[a] The link Riis provides to the ICGA report does not give his readers access to the important evidential documents on which the report was based. A knowledge and understanding of the evidence is needed by any of Riis’s readers who want to consider both sides of the arguments, and many visitors to Chessbase.com will not yet have seen them. I was rather sorry to see that Riis failed to provide such links, the more so because he did provide many links to the “defense” side.
Riis states:
“It really goes without saying that the panel members voted based on the findings of the ICGA report. . .”
This implies that the members of the panel were not privy to all of the evidence, and as such it is misleading. In fact the members of the panel all had access to all of the evidence documents, so they voted not only on the basis of the report but also on the basis of the evidence on which the report was based.
[c] Riis states:
“A panel was formed. Dr. Hyatt served as panel gatekeeper and determined who was and was not allowed to participate.”
Not true. The decision on who was and was not allowed to participate was taken jointly by the three members of the Secretariat and myself, after each of us had had the opportunity to make comments in favour or against particular individuals. With this statement Riis implies that the composition of the panel was somehow skewed against Vasik Rajlich, but that is also untrue. For example, Chris Whittington, a strong Ralich supporter, asked to join and made the comment that he supposed that I would refuse to admit him. Quite to the contrary, I was in favour of admitting him. Unfortunately, when we asked him as part of the registration procedure to verify his email address, which no longer matched those he used for older forums, he responded using phrases such as "wasting humiliation" and "occasional little hitler"? The Secretariat felt he was unwilling to have civil dialog with others and all three of them felt he should not be a member if he was going to be rude. Then, after a brief period, he was invited to re-apply but declined to do so.
Another pro-Rajlich programmer is Ed Schroeder, who was similarly welcomed to the panel when he joined. Sadly Ed then decided that he did not wish to serve and asked for his name to be removed from the panel.
Naturally Vasik Rajlich was asked to be a member of the panel with full access to all the evidence but he refused multiple requests to join.
[d] Riis criticizes Bob Hyatt in various ways, hardly surprising in view of the fact that he also criticizes the rule that Rajlich broke as well as various other aspects of the investigative process. Suffice it to say that Bob Hyatt is one of the world’s leading experts in the field of computer chess, has been so for some thirty years, has twice won the World Computer Chess Championship, and has contributed hugely to the field in various ways, including making his program Crafty open source. Who has a better understanding of computer chess and its minutiae, and who would be more appropriate as a member of the Secretariat of the Investigation Panel – Bob Hyatt or Søren Riis?
[e] Riis incorrectly states that in my first posting on ChessVibes.com I:
“made a preemptive declaration of Rajlich’s guilt”.
Wrong. I wrote about the rumours that had been circulating regarding Rybka and said that:
“But as I have mentioned, at first the Rybka-Fruit case was mere rumour. More recently, however, these rumours have become firm allegations, made by expert chess programmers and supported by evidence which appears on the surface to be rather compelling, both in its nature and in its volume. At this point in time I do not intend to make any definitive statement of my own on these allegations, but will allow the reader to form their own opinion after reading the following.”
So even though I specifically wrote that I did not intend to make a definitive statement of my own at that time, Riis accuses me of declaring Rajlich guilty in that article. In fact I made no public comment at all about Rajlich’s guilt until after the Investigation Panel had completed its work.
[f] Riis states:
“Not even half of the original committee of 34 voted for a guilty verdict. Was it even clear in advance how many guilty votes were needed to convict?”
There was never any compulsion on the members of the panel to take part in the vote that the ICGA conducted when the report had been completed. The purpose of the vote was to determine how the balance of opinion went amongst those panel members who did wish to vote. The result was that not one single member of the panel voted for a not-guilty verdict. Amongst those panel members who were convinced of Rajlich’s guilt was Ken Thompson, a past World Computer Chess Champion programmer, co-author of Unix, winner of the ACM Turing Award (inter alia) and arguably the most august computer scientist who has ever graced our community with his active participation.
[g] Riis’s bias is perhaps at its most telling in the following paragraph from his article:
“While no one questions the fact that the ICGA gave Rajlich ample opportunity to respond to their charges and he did not, there is much more to the matter than “we queried him and he did not respond.” Rajlich was not merely queried. He was publicly accused by the head of the ICGA and publicly excoriated by a group of individuals who stirred themselves up into a crusading lynch mob. A pile of “evidence” was jubilantly thrown together based on a passionately-held predetermined conclusion of code-copying which happened to be wholly at variance with actual reality. And then Rajlich was offered the opportunity to formally respond.”
There is so much to fault with this paragraph that it is difficult to know where to begin. To describe the panel of computer chess experts, many of whom are eminent academics and including a number of former world champions, as a “crusading lynch mob” is, in my view ridiculous and totally uncalled for. The members of the panel were there because they had expressed an interest in following the course of the investigation, perhaps taking some part in it, and because they were assessed as having some expertise that could be helpful to the discussion. To say that the evidence was “jubilantly thrown together” implies an unfair bias on behalf of those who compiled it. To go a little deeper into this particular sentence, the words “thrown together” imply that the evidence was not carefully prepared, whereas anyone reading all of the supporting documents referred to in the report would readily understand that a huge amount of time and assiduous effort had been devoted to the task of collecting and evaluating that evidence. And the words in the final sentence of this paragraph: “And then Rajlich was offered the opportunity to formally respond.” imply, through the emphasis on the word “then”, that the opportunity for Rajlich to defend himself came only after the investigative process had gone a long way towards its conclusion. In fact, as I have shown above, Rajlich was given several opportunities to defend himself, over a period of five months, before the report was considered by the ICGA executive.
Summary
As I have already mentioned, a robust technical rebuttal to Riis’s article will shortly be distributed by the ICGA, so here I have stayed away from the technicalities and commented on the legalistic aspects of the Rybka case. The ICGA would have welcomed an objective appraisal of its conduct of the investigation and its conclusions, but Søren Riis cannot be described as objective in this matter, not by any stretch of the imagination. The resulting article, full as it is of Riis’s bias, does nothing in my view to make the case for a miscarriage of justice to have taken place. It is, put simply, biased reporting.
END
The main part of the reply is here http://harveywilliamson.com/ICGA/Riis3.pdf by Mark Watkins which Robert forgot to copy over.
Great! Thanks. I was hoping to see it posted on Chessbase. At least a copy-that would have been appropriate.
This is another trashy response that starts off with a ridiculous claim of copyright infringement. No court has made this finding, nor is any court likely to make this finding in the future. It is clear that the ICGA is run by nitwits, and Vas and Ed are much better off now that they are no longer members of this corrupt organization.
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>With this post I leave the Rybka forum forever so of course you can have the last word.
http://rybkaforum.net/cgi-bin/rybkaforum/topic_show.pl?pid=388783#pid388783
Forever is less than a week?
Do you have the slightest idea what "keeping promises" and "truth" is?
![[se]](/mwf/v12/flags/se.png "Sweden")
I have seen Harvey promise the same thing some time back at Talk Chess as well and people commenting about it. So nothing new there.
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Had the same feeling, Lukas! But when it comes to holding up lies and fraud to the advantage of Hiarcs, HW's promises are not worth the paper they are written on :-).
To be honest I was quite happy when he promised to leave forever. 
I had the impression he learned his friends turned enemies - and he drew the right concequences.
But now this plague is back - and I know I was wrong.
I had the impression he learned his friends turned enemies - and he drew the right concequences.
But now this plague is back - and I know I was wrong.
He will accept many enemies when it could lead to another Hiarcs world title. I once thought he was a nice guy, but I was hugely mistaken. Well, that's life.
> He will accept many enemies when it could lead to another Hiarcs world title. I once thought he was a nice guy, but I was hugely mistaken. Well, that's life.
A few years back I used to run playchess matches against Harvey and Hiarcs, and used to chat to him daily on google chat. Then his hatred towards and jealousy of Rybka started to really show, and we ceased contact after that. Then much later he played a pivotal role in the ICGA action against Rybka. He is a nice guy actually, but unfortunately where Hiarcs is concerned his passion for it goes too far.
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I too once had a cordial relationship with Harvey. He seems an affable chap, except when the topic turns to The Great Unpleasantness, at which point his conduct mimics an agitated rattlesnake. Things really went south when I defended Robert Houdart about a year ago. Then I became persona non grata.
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It's very easy to join Harvey's blacklist, at Openchess I just said that I wouldn't like to meet bob in person (and I even added a smiley to the joke), Harvey quickly jumped on me calling me a jerk and an idiot
No coincidence that one of the ICGA rebuttal documents (Mark Watkins) is held on harveywilliamson.com
http://harveywilliamson.com/ICGA/Riis3.pdf
http://harveywilliamson.com/ICGA/Riis3.pdf
Well, Harvey is all theater! He gave himself away when he came out and vilified Vas during the fact gathering process here on the Rybka forum. If he had had even an ounce of dignity he and Hyatt would have recused themselves.
The panel was an after thought to the determination of the verdict of guilty. But the real injustice took place when that petition was given credence by David Levy.
The petition was the final coup de grace.
Hyatt manipulated this entire affair going back as far as 2008. John Sidles attempted to present this history.
This is what now needs to be understood in order to bring greater understanding to this issue. Hyatt was already manipulating data as far back as 2008 -and being call on the carpet for it.
This is what the greater computer chess community needs to become aware of and given an education in just how hell bent Hyatt has been over the years to get Vas at any cost- even if it meant his being intellectually dishonest.
I would think it would behoove Dr. Riis, with some help in research to present these facts in a another follow up article.
Hyatt had the greater computer chess community hoodwinked walking into that inquisition. He played Barker to the crowd, telling them of the evidence he had compiled against Vas. He wasn't going to let that f moment go without putting a noose around Vas' neck.
[spell check edit]
The panel was an after thought to the determination of the verdict of guilty. But the real injustice took place when that petition was given credence by David Levy.
The petition was the final coup de grace.
Hyatt manipulated this entire affair going back as far as 2008. John Sidles attempted to present this history.
This is what now needs to be understood in order to bring greater understanding to this issue. Hyatt was already manipulating data as far back as 2008 -and being call on the carpet for it.
This is what the greater computer chess community needs to become aware of and given an education in just how hell bent Hyatt has been over the years to get Vas at any cost- even if it meant his being intellectually dishonest.
I would think it would behoove Dr. Riis, with some help in research to present these facts in a another follow up article.
Hyatt had the greater computer chess community hoodwinked walking into that inquisition. He played Barker to the crowd, telling them of the evidence he had compiled against Vas. He wasn't going to let that f moment go without putting a noose around Vas' neck.
[spell check edit]
Soren had a couple of additional pages on this topic but it was decided that making the article too Hyatt-centric was a mistake and it was edited out. But there is no doubt that 20 pages could be written about Hyatt's history of bias and outlandish remarks on this and other fora.
I think a prior history needs to be stated. If one needs to put it in those terms, it is a Hyatt-centric issue.
+10
Sorry Nelson, but I have just done this mistake in my reply to Trotsky. No idea but it could well becalled a folie a deux.
It was a great article to read. Really well presented.
One thing Soren should have pointed out is that some people in the panel were not aware that they have "signed" this letter. I think someone else also pointed that out here.
One thing Soren should have pointed out is that some people in the panel were not aware that they have "signed" this letter. I think someone else also pointed that out here.
![[no]](/mwf/v12/flags/no.png "Norway")
And who would that be, I mean who are those people in the panel who were not aware that they have "signed" the letter?
![[gb]](/mwf/v12/flags/gb.png "United Kingdom")
believe it or not i remember Levy from late 1960,s.Even then i thought this was a guy that wanted power,he wasn't a bad chess player but had reached his limit.He started to write a lot around this time about how things needed to be improved.i so to speak logged off for 30 years,i come back and cannot believe what i see,this semi-intelligent idiot now thinks he controls computer chess.
David Levy feel free if you wish to sue me,i will provide my name and address to you to make it easy.Remember even in late 60's you were not everyones cup of tea.
David Levy feel free if you wish to sue me,i will provide my name and address to you to make it easy.Remember even in late 60's you were not everyones cup of tea.
Once again David Levy, is wrong on the facts. He states:
Next consider the investigation report where it refers to Zach Wegner’s analysis found at https://webspace.utexas.edu/zzw57/rtc/eval/eval.html
“From looking at the piece evaluation of both engines, we find that they are almost identical.” A partial listing of Fruit identical terms:
Identical formulas for calculating piece-square tables for:
. pawns
. knights
. bishops
. rooks
. queens.
This is just plain wrong. The formula for calculating PSTs in Rybka is NOT the same as in Fruit for any of these PSTs except for the trivial rook PST which has only three values. For each of the others, the third to fifth order generating polynomial is the same, but the coefficients are NOT the same, resulting in significantly different tables. It should be noted that by changing coefficients, a very large number of highly distinct PSTs can be generated. In fact, the only non-trivial PST that has been shown to use an identical formula is the Crafty bishop PST, which is an exact copy from Fruit with a constant offset of 8.
The rest of David Levy's claims are equally bogus, but it is disturbing that the ICGA won't fix even it's fatally flawed lead-off claim to at least give the appearance of being interested in putting out an accurate report. David Levy should be ashamed of himself for sanctioning this libelous hoax.
Next consider the investigation report where it refers to Zach Wegner’s analysis found at https://webspace.utexas.edu/zzw57/rtc/eval/eval.html
“From looking at the piece evaluation of both engines, we find that they are almost identical.” A partial listing of Fruit identical terms:
Identical formulas for calculating piece-square tables for:
. pawns
. knights
. bishops
. rooks
. queens.
This is just plain wrong. The formula for calculating PSTs in Rybka is NOT the same as in Fruit for any of these PSTs except for the trivial rook PST which has only three values. For each of the others, the third to fifth order generating polynomial is the same, but the coefficients are NOT the same, resulting in significantly different tables. It should be noted that by changing coefficients, a very large number of highly distinct PSTs can be generated. In fact, the only non-trivial PST that has been shown to use an identical formula is the Crafty bishop PST, which is an exact copy from Fruit with a constant offset of 8.
The rest of David Levy's claims are equally bogus, but it is disturbing that the ICGA won't fix even it's fatally flawed lead-off claim to at least give the appearance of being interested in putting out an accurate report. David Levy should be ashamed of himself for sanctioning this libelous hoax.
>I shall leave it to readers to study the evidence presented in the investigation report, in Riis’s article and in the ICGA’s forthcoming technical rebuttal, and decide for themselves who they believe.
From this I gather they have Dr. Watkins hard at work?!
Yes, his latest is linked to in Harvey's post. I stopped reading when I got to the copyright infringement nonsense.
> Yes, his latest is linked to in Harvey's post. I stopped reading when I got to the copyright infringement nonsense.
That's a shame, since it's a very long and quite amusing admission that they have ZERO evidence of any code copying from Fruit to Rybka.
All they base their conclusion on is:
1) That Rybka has more evaluation features similar to Fruit than some other engines do.
2) The PST nonsense.
I find the juxtaposition of elegant prose and totally incoherent logic to be really jarring...
Nice to see you offering an opinion, Dagh. You, better than most, can assess the rank absurdity of the ICGA's central contention. You've been around Vas; like him you have a remarkable skills; it must be intuitively obvious to you that Vas is innocent of this whole thing and has been gang-tackled by a pack of second-raters and hooligans.
> Incidentally, even if the later versions of Rybka contained reduced amounts of Fruit-derived code, the historical roots of an engine are of import. For as long as Rybka engine development was continual, Letouzey’s name should not have been omitted on the ICGA entry information, it then being at the discretion of the ICGA as to how to classify the level of Fruit’s involvement.
Really? Where is this in the rules? Levy is really off his rocker here--he wants to create new rules after the fact and interpret them however he wants.
> In fact when the ICGA was formally requested to investigate (early 2011) it was only a few months after Rajlich’s fifth WCCC violation of rule 2.
This is simply pure, lying bullshit, and should show everyone that Levy simply needs to be forgotten in the computer chess community. There is no need for me to continue wasting my time by reading the rest of his response. I don't think that ANYONE really believes that the entry of Rybka in the tournament in 2010 was a violation of Rule 2. I'm not sure why he has his long prejudiced attitude toward Rybka, but it obviously goes way back to considerably before any protest.
I was in the process of going through each of his claims. They are riddled with holes. He is lost
>Clearly any such acknowledgements made by Rajlich on Internet forums or other public postings are in no way related to his obligations when submitting his applications to participate with Rybka in World Computer Chess Championship tournaments. What counts when making an entry submission is the information that the entrant submits with his application and any relevant information which he fails to submit.
I don't think this guy's elevator goes quite to the top floor!
Rajilich made these statements very public on the computer chess circuit. This stuff was of great interest to those in the hobby. Big news.
Only a few ways to interpret Dr Levy's remarks.
1) The ICGA knew about Rajilich's statements given in interviews about his having taking many ideas from Fruit , but saw no issue and never thought to question his applications over the last five years.
2) The ICGA has been incompetent in regulating its own rules and have had no idea what is going on in the field of computer chess programming and development that only now have they become aware of these interviews.
3) The ICGA waited 5 years to call into question a programmer that has monopolized the top spot and being tired of it, sought to get rid of him by calling into question some vague notion that he failed to note on his application said references to Fruit.
I think I will order a case of toilet paper with the head shot of Hyatt and Levy on each section piece. Then they would be good for something. And a look after use wouldn't change them much.
gts
gts
Maybe I have just been a bit too assuming all along or not been keeping track of what has been going on, but these remarks by Levy really surprise me. I thought that given all sides of the issue, he would actually have given a just response. I had no idea that he is THAT corrupt.
David Levy wrote: Amongst those panel members who were convinced of Rajlich’s guilt was Ken Thompson, a past World Computer Chess Champion programmer, co-author of Unix, winner of the ACM Turing Award (inter alia) and arguably the most august computer scientist who has ever graced our community with his active participation.
This is a typical lie from a less august (?) computer chess member, namely because the most important I heard Ken Thompson allegedly said was the question "did you ask Vas Rajlich for his source code yet?" and we know that this was never asked except by Hyatt in forum talks with me. This question is so important and basic because without such original source code the accusations against Vas are empty.
This is a typical lie from a less august (?) computer chess member, namely because the most important I heard Ken Thompson allegedly said was the question "did you ask Vas Rajlich for his source code yet?" and we know that this was never asked except by Hyatt in forum talks with me. This question is so important and basic because without such original source code the accusations against Vas are empty.
> This question is so important and basic because without such original source code the accusations against Vas are empty.
Yes, and Bob even said this himself, as quoted in Soren's report. Reverse engineering is a one to many relationship, it can give you a source code but not the source code. And then they turned it into fake source code. Some experts.
Of course for a lynch mob such petitesses are irrelevant.
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