Weyerstrass

Originally posted by Fat Lady
But Weyerstrass must have beaten countless engines on this site and he hasn't lost to a single one. For example his score in the eight games he played against the now banned SeaDevil was 5.5-2.5.

Do the players in the ICCF tournaments have better engines than Fritz and Rybka?

And that's assuming that Weyerstrass doesn't use engines himself in ICCF tournaments (which is completely allowed by their rules).

I assume there's a slight discrepancy in level of play between an ICCF engine user and an RHP "I'm tired of being 1700" engine user 😛

Originally posted by heinzkat
I assume there's a slight discrepancy in level of play between an ICCF engine user and an RHP "I'm tired of being 1700" engine user 😛

Weyerstrass was good enough at correspondence chess to be Dutch Champion in 1990 and to be invited to the 15th ICCF Championships in 1996 (? that's from memory). Back in those days commercially available chess playing computer programs were not yet as good as a strong human player.

Since then many more players seem to have overtaken him in the ICCF. This might be because he is not using engines himself and tries to beat the other players using only his own abilities, or it might be that the human/engine combination doesn't work quite as well for him as it does for other players.

On this site Weyerstrass is not allowed to use engines in his games. However he still manages to remain undefeated against the cheats who do, as well as against the strong human players we have here.

This is what I can't quite understand, he can beat the engine users here, but not in the ICCF tournaments, despite the fact that he is allowed to use engines himself in the latter. It suggests that the human part of the human/engine combination is much more important than we might think.

Some of the cheats who have been booted from RHP have been pretty strong players (e.g. SeaDevil was around 2000 OTB) and none were good enough to topple Weyerstrass. One day one of those top engine-using players from the ICCF might join this site and destroy everyone.

There is a strong chance that players who are proven banned cheats
switched off their engines v Weyerstrass because beating him would
cause a lot of unwanted attention.

What would be interesting if a banned cheat came on and told us all the
people he used an engine against that beat him.

I'm not surprised Weyerstrass is toiling on a site that allows engine use.
Everyone would struggle. A site that allows box use is stupid, what's the point?

There will be 1000's of computers playing other computers and all the human
will be doing is simply entering in their moves.
Who is the slave, who is the master?

Originally posted by greenpawn34
There is a strong chance that players who are proven banned cheats
switched off their engines v Weyerstrass because beating him would
cause a lot of unwanted attention.

each and every one of them??

Originally posted by wormwood
each and every one of them??

The clever and crafty one's will. *

I'm just putting a case forward for the brain instead of the box.

The fact Weyerstrass has not lost to a proven user is not proof
without looking at the games and I bet Weyerstrass has been
examined more than anyone on here.

*(Though I admit my argument falls flat when you see some of the
blatant users on here who don't seem to give a damn if they get caught or not.)

Originally posted by greenpawn34
There will be 1000's of computers playing other computers and all the human
will be doing is simply entering in their moves.

It's not as simple as that.

On the Rybka forum, people - with engine help allowed - can arrange to play against the Rybka cluster which is a machine running 50 or so cores (i.e. much more powerful hardware than your typical home PC) using the latest private version of Rybka (the one being developed for release version 4).

Now if it were only a case of plugging in moves and sending replies, nobody using their home PC would stand a chance, but yet some people are beating the cluster and not just a once off fluke either. These players know when to follow the engine analysis or not. They know when to analyse lines deeper. They appreciate potential weaknesses of the engine. Etc, etc. This is not easy to do well and some people are vastly better than others at it.

Also, the wide variation in ICCF ratings for those using engines also confirms that there's more going on that just plugging in moves.

Originally posted by Fat Lady
Weyerstrass was good enough at correspondence chess to be Dutch Champion in 1990 and to be invited to the 15th ICCF Championships in 1996 (? that's from memory). Back in those days commercially available chess playing computer programs were not yet as good as a strong human player.

Since then many more players seem to have overtaken him in the ICCF. This ...[text shortened]... ne of those top engine-using players from the ICCF might join this site and destroy everyone.

I don't think it is possible to tell what's going on with ICCF CC any more. The current British CC championship is a case in point.

http://www.iccf-webchess.com/EventCrossTable.aspx?id=19551

In this list you will see a few players with current or lapsed ECF grades.

One of the highest rated players with an CCIM title who has never had an OTB grade over 100 ECF is in there 50 or more points over John Anderson (200 ECF) who I saw beat a Russian GM (Cherniaev) over the board at the Bury St Edmunds congress at the weekend. It is clear from the more honest annotations that "advanced chess" is being played with games being more about attempts to find weaknesses in engines assessments of specific positions which really require access to, and analysis with, several different engines. No wonder we see forum boards cluttered with posts about the merits of various engines and which one you need

Originally posted by greenpawn34
A site that allows box use is stupid, what's the point?

The point is that they believe that they can't accurately detect engine usage, so to prevent cheating, they allow engine usage.

It's like allowing database lookups on RHP. Imagine trying to ban it... how would you enforce the ban? Likewise, I don't think the ICCF allows engines through preferred choice. They just decided they couldn't enforce a ban. Whereas RHP thinks it can detect and control engine usage and everyone can decide for themselves if that's proving to be feasible or not.

Man, it's gettin' hot in 'ere.

Originally posted by greenpawn34
There will be 1000's of computers playing other computers and all the human
will be doing is simply entering in their moves.
Who is the slave, who is the master?

That was beautiful. Thank you for this remark, dear Greenpawn.

The post that was quoted here has been removed

Start a new topic on this completely different subject, please. This is a topic about Weyerstrass vs. Nowakowski and ICCF.

it looks like the two subjects are related, somehow.

Originally posted by Macpo
it looks like the two subjects are related, somehow.

The moderator thought otherwise. I apologize to everyone.

Paul

Originally posted by Paul Leggett
The moderator thought otherwise. I apologize to everyone.

Paul

So, off topic posts are removed?