Author: Djordje Vidanovic
Date: 10:18:57 02/16/99
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Bob, you talk about Voyager as 100% Crafty, actually indistiguishable from Crafty. For all I know it may well be true. Please submit evidence for everyone to see. As its tester and operator on FICS, Chess.net and ICC I will tell you what I know, fair and square. Voyager's author (in our initial stage of cooperation) did inform me about the book format (mainly taken over from Crafty) and about the hash routines (again stemming from Crafty). That was all. The situation was such till version 3.10 I believe (now we have a new version, 3.14). I simply had no grounds for any suspicion. Why didn't I suspect anything here? Two reasons: 1. I trusted the author, I took it all in good faith; 2. Voyager seemed to play different kind of chess, so much so that some chess programmers and I, while watching Voyager play on the servers, were astonished by the freshness and deep tactical abilities of the program. It was a _completely_ different style of play, I can assure you all. I am not going to quote the names of the people who witnessed hundreds of games, observing them together with me, who would, I am rather sure, confirm what I am saying now. With this kind of style, I did not for a moment contemplate analysing Voyager's PVs, doing test-suites, etc. All I cared for was the quality of its play. The advice that I relayed to the author seemed to have been heeded. It looked to me that I was partly "responsible" for Voyager's success in blitz and bullet and that my advice was woven into Voyager... Another thing: in _each_ and _every_ match on equal hardware Voyager beat Crafty, and sometimes it was a lot of fun to watch! At first I could not believe what I was seeing, but it became normal later. Not for a moment did I suspect that there was some kind of plagiarism in the Voyager project. For instance, Voyager once beat Crafty 12-0 at bullet. It was not any Crafty, but a 4-processor Crafty on ICC (Singacrafty) and I was running Voyager on my PII-350 from home!! No small feat this. Then I had scores like 24-4 against Singacrafty, Razzle and Sienna (all Crafty clones and all running on faster hardware). How could anyone in my place have suspicions about Voyager being a Crafty clone, as Bob is contending? Who would, given points 1 and 2 above, on top of this. I was proud and happy about Voyager. There is a completely independent, highly sophisticated source, which I may be in position to quote, that has lots of test-games performed on state-of-the-art machines which confirms my results. In their own batch of test games, Voyager beat Crafty in every single match too!! After talking really sincerely and in good faith to Bob on ICC the other day I decided to test Voyager 3.08a, the Fritz/Nimzo compliant engine. Please rest assured that I saw NO resemblance in the two programs regarding either PVs or style of play! (Mind you, we are not talking about the Winboard incarnation of Voyager that served only as some kind of testing ground!) Voyager 3.08a is in a class of its own -- it can stand up to just about any Fritz/Nimzo engine, plays fresh, sometimes very "youthful" chess, striving for perpetual pressure, advancing all the time and playing "intuitively"... These are not only my observations either... If Bob can REALLY prove that Voyager is a dead ringer of Crafty's after comparing the performances of the two mentioned programs -- and if there is an independent, intersubjective agreement on this, then I am sure that Voyager's author ought to apologise publicly both to Bob, the real author, and me as someone who did one hell of a job, testing, analysing, jotting down remarks and helping out with the book. But, let us not focus only on the book format or hash format (which is completely rewritten now, starting with version 3.10). Let us talk about different or identical programs. There have some other examples -- programs created on the basis of another program becoming truly original and completely different from the model program itself. So, Bob, out with your evidence, state clearly what you have, you may have a point. Enough with oblique statements -- I don't think that anyone rational will take them for granted. Your respected name and distinguished career in computer chess are not evidence. Otherwise, an age of paranoia is just round the corner where each programmer is going to be wary and on the lookout for a fraudulent program. I, for one, would LOVE to know where I stand having put in so much effort and free time in the project. Best regards to you Bob, Djordje
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