2022 World Computer Championship [ICGA]

Yes, Virginia, there is a World Computer Chess Championship and it was last seen on this blog in 25th World Computer Championship (May 2020; ICGA). No, Virginia, not many people consider the event to be a *real* World Championship, because the strongest chess engine in the world, Stockfish, doesn't participate. That '25th WCCC' post mentioned,

The next [2020] ICGA championship was announced at the beginning of the year. It was subsequently postponed because of the coronavirus Covid-19.

What's happened with the WCCC since then? Until recently, not much. At the end of last month, in WCCC 2022 (icga.org), the ICGA announced,

After a lengthy play-off of two faster matches and an Armageddon game, Komodo Dragon is the new World Champion Computer Chess. Congratulations to Mark Lefler, Larry Kaufman, Erdo Gunes and the rest of the team.

I dutifully added the info to my page World Chess Championship : Computer Chess (m-w.com), and made a few tweaks. The ICGA appears to have stopped numbering the events since '22nd WCCC', so I followed their lead, starting with the latest WCCC. I also reversed a decision made for 23rd World Computer Championship (January 2018), and stopped listing Don Dailey as a member of the Komodo team; RIP. For more about the event as told by the official scribes of the chess engine universe, see:-

• World Computer Chess Championship (chessprogramming.org), and
• ICGA (ditto)

Why doesn't Stockfish participate in the ICGA WCCC? See, for example, Stockfish @ WCCC - Good or bad idea? (groups.google.com/fishcooking; May 2015). I doubt the reasoning has changed much since then.

In its heyday, the ICGA issued detailed reports about the WCCC events. For a third party report on the 2022 WCCC, see Komodo and Ginkgo are 2022 World Champions! (chessbase.com; Albert Silver). Re Ginkgo, the report explains, 'Ginkgo AKA Fritz'. Both Komodo and Fritz are sold by Chessbase; I'll say no more.

Small Projects for 2021

This year's 'Small Projects' could almost be a carbon copy of last year's post, Small Projects for 2020 (February 2020). The main topics a year ago were:-

- 2017-02-22: Missing Months
- Renewed interest in 1983 for London

- Posts with label Computers
- Posts with label Correspondence
- Posts with label zFLUP
  * 2020: Currently 26 posts
  * 2021: Currently 33 posts

I made no progress on those first two bullets, so they are still outstanding. As for label 'Computers' and 'Correspondence', there is no significant activity to report in either category. The ICGA cancelled nearly everything in 2020 because of the covid pandemic. The ICCF started one new World Championship, the 32nd, but finished none. It might be worthwhile to write a post about three time ICCF winner Aleksandr Dronov, so I'll keep that in mind.

As for label zFLUP ('Follow-up') the increase from 2020 to 2021 is partly due to posts that were followed-up, but not closed. Add that to the list of small projects.

Another idea that's been in the back of my mind for a few years is to clean up the Index of Zonals. The country codes could be standardized and the columns of counters, 'GMG' etc., could be moved into the background. At the same time I could investigate events that are still marked '?'. There are currently 16 of them.

25th World Computer Championship [ICGA]

Getting back to Small Projects for 2020 (February 2020), one project was:-

Posts with label Computers • The ICGA home page mentions two topics worth a deeper look -- 'World Computer Chess Championship 2019' and 'A Welcome from the [new] President, Jonathan Schaeffer'

Details of the so-called 'World Computer Chess Championship' are on Komodo World Champion Computer Chess 2019 (icga.org; August 2019), and WCCC 2019 (ditto). I also added a mention of the event to my page Computer Chess : World Chess Championship, although the events have long ceased to be considered World Championships by objective observers.

As for the new president, see the ICGA pages A New President (December 2018; 'announcement by David Levy', the outgoing president), and Welcome by the New President (September 2019, Jonathan Schaeffer). For a bit of ICGA history, see Ben Mittman (October 2018; 1928-2018, 'Founding President of the ICCA, forerunner of the ICGA').

The next ICGA championship was announced at the beginning of the year. It was subsequently postponed because of the coronavirus Covid-19:-

• 2020-01-15: 2020 ICGA Events • 'ICGA events will be hosted by ECAI, the European Conference on Artificial Intelligence. The dates are June 7-12 in beautiful Santiago De Compostela, Spain'
• 2020-03-16: Events postponed • '[ECAI] have moved their annual meeting from early June to August 29 - September 2'

[For my blog post on the previous ICGA championship, see 24th World Computer Championship (August 2018)].

Small Projects for 2020

This year's 'Small Projects' post is almost six weeks later than last year's Small Projects for 2019 (January 2019), but it's never too late for a plan. This year will see the final two events of the current World Championship cycle (C29) -- the Candidates tournament and the title match -- which will dominate the WCC news.

An exercise for the current cycle is still not finished. Starting with C29 Regulations for World Cup Qualifiers (September 2019), through C29 Zonal Qualification Paths (December 2019), there remains 'C29 Zonal Rating Reports' and 'C29 Zonal Links'.

Two of the 2019 projects turned out not to be so small and I've documented their progress and completion at the end of the post (after '***'). Two more received no attention in 2019 and remain open:-

• 2017-02-22: Missing Months
• Another aspect of 'Championships in London' was the renewed interest for the English city in 1983.

Three of the 2019 projects are ongoing and need to be reviewed periodically. The current status is:-

• Posts with label Computers • The ICGA home page mentions two topics worth a deeper look -- 'World Computer Chess Championship 2019' and 'A Welcome from the [new] President, Jonathan Schaeffer'.
• Posts with label Correspondence • The last post here was ICCF 25th to 27th World Championships (September 2016), where I wrote, 'I imagine the next update will be in another four years or so'. Indeed, the 28th thru 30th ICCF championships have finished since then.
• Posts with label zFLUP • Currently 26 posts.

Which one of these will I tackle first? Right now I'm thinking the C29 zonal posts or 1983 London.

***

'The history of the World Championship in the 1840s-1880s, a period spanning nearly 50 years, was centered on London. That important era deserves a closer look.'

• 2019-01-23: Acknowledging an Important Source
• 2019-01-30: 1862 London (on the Web)
• 2019-02-06: 1851 London (on Google Books)
• 2019-02-13: 1851 London (the Tournament Books)
• 2019-03-06: 1840s Staunton Matches
• 2019-04-10: 1834 London : How Many Matches?
• 2019-04-24: 1860s Anderssen Matches

Continue '2017-06-07: Zonal Qualifiers C01-C12 : Archive.org'

• 2019-05-22: Zonal Qualifiers C01-C16
• 2019-05-29: Zonal Qualifiers C13-C16
• 2019-06-12: Zonal Qualifiers C12
• 2019-07-17: Zonal Qualifiers C11
• 2019-07-24: Zonal Qualifiers C09-C12
• 2019-08-07: Zonal Qualifiers C01-C12 Crosstab
• 2019-08-14: Zonal Qualifiers C01-C08
• 2019-08-21: Zonal Qualifiers C01-C12
• 2019-09-04: Zonal Qualifiers C01-C12 More++
• 2019-09-11: Zonal Qualifiers C01-C12 Wrapup

That last post mentioned, 'There is more I can do with these pages'...

Small Projects for 2019

After two and a half months of blog posts about the latest World Championship events...

• 2018 Carlsen - Caruana; London, XI, 2018.
• World Women's Championship; 2018 FIDE Knockout Matches; Khanty-Mansiysk, XI, 2018.

...it's time to move on to other topics. While I was watching those events, I developed a list of other ideas to cover as soon as time permitted. The last time I did this, Small Projects for 2018 (December 2017), it turned out to be a useful roadmap for preparing several subsequent posts. The first two of the actions on that 'Projects' post are still open:-

• 2017-02-22: Missing Months
• 2017-06-07: Zonal Qualifiers C01-C12 : Archive.org

That first action is ongoing, while the second required permission to reuse published material. This permission was granted recently: 'If you'd like to quote my zonal material, that's fine.'

As for other projects, in December I received an email asking for clarification about certain points related to my page, 1862 London Tournament. While I was looking into the questions I realized that they were related to a recent post on my main blog, World Championships in London (November 2018). The history of the World Championship in the 1840s-1880s, a period spanning nearly 50 years, was centered on London. That important era deserves a closer look.

Another aspect of 'Championships in London' was the renewed interest for the English city in 1983, after lying dormant for exactly a century. That story deserves at least one post, perhaps more.

As part of preparing the first post of this current month, 2018 Women's World Championship PGN, I routinely 'added the names of all 64 players to the Index of Women Players'. While doing that I noticed several inconsistencies across the index and will address those as soon as I can. As for refreshes to existing material, I have to spend some time on:-

• Posts with label Computers, and
• Posts with label Correspondence

The first of those topics was last addressed in:-

• 2018-08-22: 24th World Computer Championship

The second was addressed in:-

• 2016-09-07: ICCF 25th to 27th World Championships

If I manage to get all of that done, there's always a backlog in:-

• Posts with label zFLUP

That's my category for keeping track of follow-ups. There are currently 23 posts in the category, most of them non-trivial.

24th World Computer Championship

Last week, while working on Battles of the Chess NNs, a post about TCEC S13, I was reminded that the 2018 edition of the World Computer Chess Championship (WCCC) had taken place in July. From the Leela blog (archived version):-

• 2018-07-11: Leela Accepted in 2018 WCCC
• 2018-07-13: More Info on 2018 WCCC

That second link took a not-so-subtle swipe at the WCCC:-

WCCC still has a human operator make moves on a board. It's all very punchcard and mainframe and has one expecting to play against Belle and Cray Blitz. Hopefully the remote connection and special ASCII interface won’t lead to any snafus.

As someone who actually worked with punchcards and mainframes, I can say with certainty that they were 1960's technology, while the WCCC references in the rest of the quote were 1980's technology. But point taken, the WCCC is badly in need of a complete makeover.

What about the outcome? Relevant pages from the WCCC organizers are:-

• Undated: WCCC 2018 (icga.org) • List of competitors and their technical characteristics.
• 2018-07-19: Komodo is World Computer Chess Champion 2018

This was Komodo's third straight WCCC title, but the engine has not been as successful in the TCEC against Stockfish. The message is clear: the TCEC is the World Computer Championship in all but name only; the ICGA's WCCC is the World Championship only in name. On my page about the World Chess Championship : Computer Chess, I decided to stop including details (PGN and crosstable) about new ICGA events. From now on, the page will only list the winner.

[For my post on the previous WCCC event, see 23rd World Computer Championship (January 2018).]

23rd World Computer Championship

One of my Small Projects for 2018 (December 2017), was to update my page on the World Computer championship. Besides catching up with the ICGA, it gave me the chance to try out the PGN-extract software on a real PGN file. I noticed two differences with the previous software:-

• a space between the move number and White's move (e.g. '1. e4' instead of '1.e4')
• some lines start with a move instead of a move number (e.g. '1.d4 [...] 8. // O-O [...]' instead of '1.d4 [...] // 8.O-O [...]', where '//' indicates a new line)

Both of these are matters of taste and are probably not dictated by the SAN standard (which I don't remember ever reading anyway). On the positive side, the PGN-extract software does its most important job admirably : checking the validity of the moves in a PGN file. It also allowed me to remove comments from the file in the same step as the checking, which was a separate step with the previous software.

I created the PGN file & crosstable, combined the two into a ZIP file, loaded the result to my site, and updated the index page, World Chess Championship : Computer Chess. For the post on the previous ICGA championship, see 22nd World Computer Championship (August 2016).

One small question I had during the process was whether to continue listing Don Dailey as a developer for the winning program, Komodo. According to the Wikipedia page, Don Dailey, he died in November 2013. Since the Komodo site, komodochess.com, is titled 'Komodo chess engine by Don Dailey, Larry Kaufman & Mark Lefler', I decided to use that as a guideline. For details about the 23rd WCCC, see the ICGA site:-

• 2017-07-07: WCCC Play-offs
• 2017-07-08: Komodo wins the WCCC

The ICGA is going through some soul-searching about its stewardship of the WCCC. For specifics, see:-

• 2017-06-07: Important announcement: World Computer Chess Championship – A New Format
• 2017-06-19: World Computer Chess Championship – The first success of a new format

That last link, by 'David Levy – ICGA President', includes a capsule history of the WCCC, e.g.:-

It came to pass that the first WCCC took place in Stockholm, at the Birger Jarl Hotel, in the summer of 1974. The British entrepreneur publisher Robert Maxwell donated a medal for the first World Champion, which was won by the Soviet program Kaissa, developed by Mikhail Donskoy, Vladimir Arlazarov and Anatoly Uskov.

It remains to be seen whether the current ICGA initiative is a fresh start or 'too little, too late'. Although a comment to the Levy article acknowledges the existential challenge of the TCEC, the ICGA plans future chess events:-

• 2017-12-18: ICGA Events for 2018

It's also worth noting the group's Facebook page: ICGA - Home.

Small Projects for 2018

This being the last post of the old year, let's set some goals for the new year. I did this nearly three years ago in Small Projects for 2015 (January 2015), and actually managed to accomplish all of them. Perhaps I haven't needed specific objectives since then because of the blog follow-up list: Posts with label zFLUP. Some of the most prominent small projects on that list can be done in small chunks whenever I have some free time:-

• 2017-02-22: Missing Months
• 2017-06-07: Zonal Qualifiers C01-C12 : Archive.org
• 2017-11-08: C28 Zonal Qualification Paths • 'Two more steps that were done for the previous cycle'

'Small Projects for 2015' included updates for both the World Correspondence and World Computer championships, two topics that I tend to forget. Comparing the last time I looked at the first topic, Correspondence Chess 2016 (May 2016), with the current situation reveals two events in progress, neither of which requires immediate attention:-

• WC29/final: Three unfinished games
• WC30/final: 'The start date was 6/20/2017'

As for the second topic, one event has taken place since I looked at the 22nd World Computer Championship (August 2016). Details are on the home page for the ICGA : International Computer Games Association; see especially the post by David Levy, dated 19 June 2017.

On top of those World Championship subjects, I have two technical problems to address. The first is a replacement for my old FTP package. It ran under my browser, but was deemed obsolete after the browser's last major software update. My ISP's 'File Manager' is adequate for small updates to the site, but is too clunky for large updates. The second is a replacement for my old PGN normalization software, which was forcibly retired last summer. I added two recent events without including the corresponding PGN:-

• 2017 World Cup, Tbilisi (October 2017)
• 2017 Grand Prix, Palma de Mallorca (November 2017)

Updates to the correspondence and computer championships will also require PGN normalization.

22nd World Computer Championship

I added the PGN and crosstable for the 21st World Computer Championship (WCCC) held in Leiden (Netherlands) to my page on the World Chess Championship : Computer Chess. Just like the two previous events (see my post on the 21st World Computer Championship, November 2015), both files are packed into a single ZIP file. For more about the event, see

• WCCC 2016 [ICGA; 'From Monday 27 June until Friday 1 July the WCCC will be held in Leiden at the Leiden University, Snellius Building, Turing Room.'], and
• WCCC 2016 [chessprogramming.wikispaces.com]

The ICGA page links to a report that starts,

The 22nd World Computer Chess Championship started on June 27, 2016. Six programs participate in a double round robin tournament of ten rounds. The tournament takes place at the Leiden University and is organized by the ICGA, LIACS and LCDS. The sponsors are Google, Naturalis Biodiversity Center, the municipality of Leiden, Leiden University, Faculty of Science, ICGA, iSSC, SurfSara, Digital Game Technology and NWO Exact Sciences. It is held in conjunction with the 19th Computer Olympiad and the 15th Advances in Computer Games conference.

The page also informs about the tiebreak,

Play-off between Komodo and Jonny: Two games 45 minutes + 16 seconds: 1-1. Two games with 5 min. + 5 seconds. 1-1. Two games with 3 min. + 5 seconds 1½-½ for Komodo

Chessbase.com published a commercial puff piece, Komodo is World Computer Chess Champion (July 2016), that started,

[Komodo's] stiffest competition came from the German program Jonny, running on a giant 2400-core machine. With only 48 cores the US program Komodo finished the computer tournament in Leiden, Netherlands, equal first with Jonny, then went on to win a hard-fought tiebreak, making it the 22nd World Computer Chess Champion. It may interest you to know that the latest version of our flagship chess engine, Komodo 10, was released just a month ago.

It received some pointed comments from skeptical readers, like

'Why didn’t Stockfish compete?' • 'I thought the TCEC tournament determines the World Computer Chess Champion? ' • 'Please explain how did these engines qualify to this competition, and how does this compare to TCEC.' • etc. etc.

Another resource that once documented the WCCC events but is now little more than a stub, is Leiden 2016 [game-ai-forum.org; formerly www.grappa.univ-lille3.fr]. For more about the computer chess world, see my main blog, e.g.:-

• Houdini, Komodo, Stockfish (February 2015)
• What Ticks Off Engine Users? (Part III; May 2015)
• Chess Engine Summary (January 2016)

How much longer will tradition continue to accept the ICGA events as World Championships?

Stats for Index Pages

When I looked at correspondence chess a few weeks ago in CC 2016, I decided,

Before I update my page, I'm going to look at some statistics to measure the interest in this topic. It might be sufficient to provide ZIP files as I now do for the World Chess Championship : Computer Chess.

I've had a new stats package running on the site since last summer -- see New Stats for M-W.com (October 2015) for details -- which is enough time to account for temporary anomalies. I set the time period to cover six months (November 2015 - April 2016), loaded those results into a database, and analyzed them. The following table shows the results for each of the main index pages.

Since the page receiving the most views is the site's main index page, I calculated views on the other pages as a fraction relative to that index page. For example, the table shows that the page covering events for 'FIDE 1948-1990' gets 18 views for each 100 views that the main page gets.

World Championship	Views per 100 'Main Index' Pages	Link
Main Index	100	WCC-INDX.HTM
FIDE 1948-1990	18	WCC-INDY.HTM
Pre-FIDE	10	WCC-INDZ.HTM
Women	8	WCC-WOMN.HTM
Zonals	6	WCC-ZONL.HTM
Computers	6	WCC-COMP.HTM
Correspondence	4	WCC-CORR.HTM

I was happy to see that women's events and zonals received a decent number of views and this was confirmed by the stats for the individual pages in those topics. Stats for the pages on correspondence chess showed fewer views, indicating less interest in that topic. I'll stop creating separate pages for new events in World Chess Championship : Correspondence Chess and will provide ZIP files only.

21st World Computer Championship

I added the PGN and crosstable for the 21st World Computer Championship (WCCC) held in Leiden (Netherlands) to my page on the World Computer Chess Championship. Just like the previous event (see 20th World Computer Championship), both files are packed into a single ZIP file. For more about the event, see

• WCCC 2015 [ICGA] and
• WCCC 2015 [chessprogramming.wikispaces.com].

The ICGA has announced next year's competition in ICGA Events 2016 in Leiden, including

• The World Computer Chess Championship,
• The World Computer Software Championship, and
• The Speed Computer Chess Championship.

These events might better be named 'The ICGA Computer Chess Championship', etc. A few days ago I posted TCEC Season 8 Superfinal in Progress on my main blog. Many (most?) people who follow computer chess now consider the TCEC events to be the real World Computer Chess Championship.

Having said that, in round 5 of the 21st WCCC, the eventual winner of the event (Jonny) managed to beat the winner of TCEC Season 7 (Komodo). The two engines finished 1-2 in the final standings at Leiden.

20th World Computer Championship

After posting TCEC Season 7 on my main blog, I returned to my post about the 20th World Computer Championship on this blog, WCCC Ain't What It Used to Be, where I wrote,

It's time to acknowledge that the ICGA tournaments are not real World Championships. I'll continue to list the ICGA events, but without crosstables or game scores.

For the sake of completeness I decided to provide the PGN game scores and a text-only crosstable, both in the same ZIP file. I then added the corresponding link to my page on the World Chess Championship : Computer Chess.

Small Projects for 2015

A year ago I set out to accomplish a number of Small Projects for 2014. It's totally out of character for me, but I actually accomplished all of them.

World Computer Championship: I wrote two posts on the topic.

• 2014-02-12: WCCC Ain't What It Used to Be
• 2014-12-31: Guardian of the WCCC

The ICGA, responsible for organizing the events, hasn't kept up with the underlying technical evolution and their champions no longer include the strongest competitors in the world. Can they adapt?

World Correspondence Championship: With the exception of the 27th championship, which finished last year, the list in 'Small Projects 2014' remains the current status. No new events were started in 2014.

Zonals: After completing the tasks listed in 'Small Projects 2014', I wrapped them up with a second set of tasks.

• 2014-07-16: Zonal Index Update

Ditto for the second set, but the third set of tasks remains open.

• 2014-10-15: Zonal Index Update 2014-10-15

Grand Prix: The following pages now show 'Overall Standings'.

• 2011-2012 Women's Grand Prix
• 2012-2013 Grand Prix

As for 'Small Projects 2015', I have nothing beyond the tasks for the zonals.

Guardian of the WCCC

Earlier this year, in a post on the World Chess Championship : Computer Chess (WCCC), titled WCCC Ain't What It Used to Be (February 2014), I wrote,

The three most recent events -- 2010, 2011, & 2013 -- have seen two separate competitions, hardware and software, where the software event is not considered as important as the equivalent TCEC competitions. It's time to acknowledge that the ICGA tournaments are not real World Championships.

The ICGA is the International Computer Games Association, a group more inclined to awarding titles through procedural decisions than through competitions. I was reminded of this in a recent blog post, The New Chess World Champion (with extensive comments) by IM Kenneth Regan, best known in the chess world for his work on computer cheating and last seen in this blog in The 'No Cheating' Jigsaw Puzzle. Dr. Regan wrote,

Today we salute Komodo for winning the 7th Thoresen Chess Engines Competition (TCEC), which some regard as the de-facto world computer chess championship.

The phrase 'De-facto World Computer Chess Championship' bears repeating and echoes the Wikipedia page on the Thoresen Chess Engines Competition.

TCEC is often regarded as the Unofficial World Computer Chess Championship because of its strong participant line-up and long time control matches on high-end hardware, giving rise to very high-class chess. [along with a couple of links to support the argument]

What does the ICGA [link redirects] have to say?

ICGA Events July 2015 • Posted on December 25, 2014 by Aske Plaat • We are expecting to organize the ICGA Events in early July of 2015. • The Events will consist of
- The ACG2015 Advances in Computer Games Conference
- The World Computer Chess Championship
- The World Computer Software Championship
- The Speed Computer Chess Championship
- The Computer Olympiad

We expect to be able to provide more details in January of 2015

The post previous to this is titled 'Complaints against the Chess programs LOOP and THINKER' by 'David Levy : ICGA President'.

The ICGA has received formal complaints against the Chess programs LOOP and THINKER, both of which have participated in the World Computer Chess Championship.

The computer chess world appears to pay little attention to these procedural disputes. Who appointed the ICGA guardian of the WCCC?

WCCC Ain't What It Used to Be

The first project on my list of Small Projects for 2014 is the World Computer Championship. The concern here is whether to continue updating my page for the World Chess Championship : Computer Chess (WCCC). As the following chart shows, the number of WCCC participants has been dropping steadily since peaking in the late 1990s.

Source: www.grappa.univ-lille3.fr

By the time the The Rybka Affair broke in 2011, the ICGA competitions no longer attracted or accepted the strongest programs. The three most recent events -- 2010, 2011, & 2013 -- have seen two separate competitions, hardware and software, where the software event is not considered as important as the equivalent TCEC competitions.

It's time to acknowledge that the ICGA tournaments are not real World Championships. I'll continue to list the ICGA events, but without crosstables or game scores.

Small Projects for 2014

Where does a year go? Looking back at what I accomplished with this blog in 2013, there are many projects left undone. Here's a TBD list for future updates.

World Computer Championship: The previous update was in 2011 for the 19th World Computer Championship. The 20th WCCC was held in August 2013.

• ICGA Events in Yokohama – Success after panic [icga.uvt.nl]
• Yokohama 2013 [grappa.univ-lille3.fr]

World Correspondence Championship: The previous update was in 2012 for the ICCF World Championships (2012 Status). Here is an overview of the current status.

• WC25/final, World Championship 25 Final (finished)
• WC26/final, World Championship 26 Final (ongoing)
• WC27/final, World Championship 27 Final (ongoing)
• WC28/final, World Championship 28 Final (started)

Zonals: (1; Done) Earlier this month I received an email clarifying the circumstances of a playoff match for zone 2 of the Zonals 1984-1987 (C13), and added the info to that page. (2) For the current cycle, I added C26 Zonal Clippings 2013, but haven't added the FIDE rating links for ratings.fide.com to Zonals : Links (and Other References). (3) Early last year I did an analysis of discrepancies in the list of all zonals:-

• Zonal Overview 2013
• Zonal Overview 2013 1.x
• Zonal Overview 2013 2.x
• Zonal Overview 2013 3.x & 4.x

I should follow-up with the goal of removing the 'In process & preliminary' warning from the index page.

***

Later / Grand Prix: The two most recent Grand Prix series are missing the final standings.

• 2012-2013 Grand Prix
• 2011-2012 Women's Grand Prix

Wikipedia's World Championship

A few days ago I posted a piece on my main blog titled A Chess Popularity Contest, which looked at Wikipedia's WikiProject Chess/Popular pages. Since more than 50 of those 1500 pages deal with the World Chess Championship, I list the ten most popular below.

The first column shows the relative position of the topic out of 1500, while 'V', 'A', and 'I' stand for 'Views per Day', 'Assessment', and 'Importance', respectively. For example, the main World Championship topic ranks 29th in popularity over all Wikipedia chess pages, received 550 views per day (in March 2012), is assessed to be of quality 'B' (whatever that means), and has top importance (ditto).

Pos	Topic	V	A	I
29	World Championship	550	B	Top
43	World Championship 2012	415	Start	High
113	World Championship 1972	159	B	Top
220	World Championship 2010	68	B	Top
246	World Computer Championship	60	Start	Mid
247	Women's World Championship	60	Start	High
332	World Junior Championship	44	Start	Mid
378	List of world championship matches	38	List	Mid
387	World Youth Championship	37	Start	Mid
435	World Championship 2006	31	C	High
444	World Championship 2013	31	Start	Low

See the original WikiProject page for links to specific topics and explanations of the values in the columns. Not surprisingly, the 1972 Fischer - Spassky match is the only 20th century match to make the top-10 cut. Very surprisingly, four restricted events -- Computer, Women, Junior, & Youth -- also make the cut.

19th World Computer Championship

Today, just like a few months ago in Ladies First, I had the choice between two recent world championship events : a computer championship and a Women's championship. This time I let the women wait and added the 19th WCCC - 2011 Tilburg to my page on the World Championship : Computer Chess. The official site at Grappa.univ-lille3.fr (Groupe de Recherche en Apprentissage Automatique at Université Lille 3) hadn't been updated yet, so I relied on the DGT site (DigitalGameTechnology.com) at World Championship Computer Chess 2011 for the PGN game scores and crosstable. Thanks to DGT for the timely information.

Last year I declined (or perhaps neglected) to include the 18th World Computer Chess Championship (Software), which was held for the first time. What's the difference between the two events?

The World Computer Chess Championship (WCCC) for the Shannon Trophy will be contested by teams who have no restriction placed on them as to their choice of hardware.

The World Chess Software Championship (WCSC) tournament will be held at the same location, after the WCCC. This will be a uniform platform event using computers loaned by the host organisation. In each game played in this tournament the two computers will be, so far as is possible, identical with respect to their hardware capabilities: number of cores, processor speed, memory size.

This year's WCCC was the first since The Rybka Affair hit top-level computer chess like a sledge hammer. Was the shunning of Rybka a wise move or a witch hunt? The debate continues on forums wherever computer chess is dicussed; see, for example, World Computer Chess Championship (2011) on Chessgames.com.

The Rybka Affair

Extraordinary events require extraordinary actions. While I normally wouldn't comment on the story reported by TWIC as Rybka banned by International Games Federation, the ICGA action impacts a page I maintain on the World Chess Championship : Computer Chess. The least I could do was to add the statement by ICGA President David Levy to that page, announcing that 'Vasik Rajlich is hereby disqualified from the World Computer Chess Championships (WCCC) of 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010'. Rajlich is the developer of Rybka, the winner of the championships from 2007 through 2010.

Rajlich's first sin was to ignore the ICGA rule that

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.

The phrase 'close derivative' requires a subjective evaluation. The most blatant violation of the rule would be to take an existing engine, do nothing more than change its name, and enter it in competition. It's common sense that Rybka wouldn't have won four consecutive world titles 'by playing nearly all moves the same' as its competitors.

Rajlich's second sin was to ignore the ICGA investigation.

The ICGA regards Vasik Rajlich’s violation of the abovementioned rule as the most serious offence that a chess programmer and ICGA member can commit with respect to his peers and to the ICGA. During the course of the investigation and upon presentation of the Secretariat’s report Vasik Rajlich did not offer, despite repeated invitations from the ICGA to do so, any kind of defence to the allegations, or to the evidence, or to the Secretariat’s report [...]

For these two sins, the ICGA punished Rajlich in every way available to it -- stripped of his titles, 'banned for life from competing in the World Computer Chess Championship or any other event organized by or sanctioned by the ICGA', and asked to return all trophies and prize money -- punishments which, in my opinion, far exceed the gravity of the offense. Add to this the damage to Rajlich's reputation and commercial activities, and it is conceivable that the affair will evolve into a civil lawsuit.

I wonder if Levy and the ICGA realize how much their action has diminished the value and reputation of their WCCC. Knowing that the results can be changed at any time in the future, who can take these events seriously? It is entirely possible that one of the newly promoted winners in the years 2007-2010 will one day be judged to have committed the same offense as Rajlich; then the former no.3 placeholder in the tournament will become the 'winner'. I can even imagine that all participants in an event will eventually be disqualified, as though the event had never taken place. As things were, WCCC events got little attention from the chess world. Now they will get even less. Well done, ICGA, (not).

18th World Computer Championship

I added the 18th World Computer Championship (WCCC) - 2010 Kanazawa to my page on Computer Chess. The official results are available on a page at ICGA Tournaments (www.grappa.univ-lille3.fr).