Author: Moritz Berger
Date: 15:00:55 03/10/98
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In a letter to Thoralf Karlsson (chairman of the SSDF) which was "leaked out" to r.g.c.c. by one other recipe, Ossi Weiner wrote (my comments in square brackets): 4. We have all seen the result of the "cheated cheaters" at the world championship in Paris, a well deserved 17th place desaster! [ IMHO a very intense expression of pure HATRED against his competitor, ChessBase ] 5. The TRUE number one of commercially available programs (without book and autoplayer tuning and all this bullshit) has a name: NIMZO '98. [ Three additional pieces of information: 1. Ossi Weiner placed an ad in the German "Computer Schach und Spiele" magazine, issue 1/98: ----------------------- Nimzo ’98 THE NEW NR. 1! The new nr. 1 on the SSDF rating list with 2560 ELO. Congratulations to Vienna to Dr. Chrilly Donninger ----------------------- I believe there are laws in Germany against spreading such false claims in commercial ads. Maybe Ossi Weiner could clarify what made him publish this incorrect information (after all, there never was a SSDF list with Nimzo #1 and 2560 Elo ...).? 2. Rumors have it that Ossi Weiner forced ChessBase in application of German anti-comparative-advertising laws (funny if you think about the thing I just mentioned ...) to stop publishing the Nunn-test results (games and scores, where Fritz badly crushed every other program) on their German web site (now they are on the ChessBase USA site, outside of Ossi’s reach ...). The Nunn-testsuite of opening positions tries to eliminate the influence of opening books on measuring engine playing strength. Now Ossi Weiner indicates that Fritz obtained its position on the SSDF list with "book and autoplayer tuning and all this bullshit". Certainly he would prefer if Fritz were not tested at all ... 3. Maybe some of you have followed the "M-Chess killer book" discussion here on CCC or read the article by Sandro Necchi on CCR about his work with the M-Chess opening book. I believe (just my personal opinion, mind you), that the perceived threat (no matter how substantial this might be!) of getting book-cooked by commercial opponents (namely M-Chess) led ChessBase to the decision NOT to release the Auto232 driver to the general public, preventing Auto232-aided opening cooks against Fritz. Now the funny part: Ossi Weiner is the distributor for M-Chess in a large part of the world (!!!). Of course he complains, that HE doesn’t have an autoplayer for Fritz ... ] 6. If nothing serious happens the SSDF list will be dead very soon. [ a massive threat: Either stop testing Fritz 5 and play the game according to MY RULES, or I (the BIG distributor of GENIUS, NIMZO, M-CHESS and SHREDDER will DESTROY you)] Most other claims Ossi Weiner makes in his other letter are simply WRONG, as far as I know (see also the post by Enrique Irazoqui). Ossi Weiner set the precedent of making a special autoplayer version available only for the SSDF himself with Genius 4. Some of the consequences: 1. Genius 4/SSDF DOS version got 7 MB hash tables on machines with 8 MB RAM instead of 1 MB hash tables with the commercial Windows version of Genius 4 2. Genius basically always had a "clean" configuration under plain DOS (e.g. always with the maximum hash table size), a thing much harder to achieve in the complex Windows environment, which made ChessBase include some checks (restrictions on the configuration) in the SSDF version of Fritz 5 to ensure proper performance. PLEASE (you!) feel free to speak up and stop this campaign against the SSDF and ChessBase. If Ossi Weiner succeeds and the SSDF agrees to nullify Fritz results, then the SSDF list will be truly dead. It has to defend against this attack to stay free from commercial influence as much as possible in the future. Moritz Berger
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