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Subject: Re: Amateur and Professional

Author: Dave Gomboc

Date: 18:51:23 08/31/01

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On August 30, 2001 at 23:59:17, Dann Corbit wrote:

>On August 30, 2001 at 23:43:48, Dave Gomboc wrote:
>
>>On August 30, 2001 at 18:21:39, Dann Corbit wrote:
>>
>>>Why do we have to sock it to the rich guys anyway?  Just because we know that
>>>they have deep pockets?
>>>
>>>Why not charge everybody $50 for admistrative costs and let it go at that?
>>>
>>>Is there some reason that the professionals should be punished?
>>>
>>>Make the entry fee the same for everyone.
>>
>>Then the entry fee would be relatively high, and there would consequently be
>>less entrants.  Also, remember that the ICCA has a journal to publish: from the
>>financial perspective, it's important for them to generate money from their
>>championship tournament to support that.
>
>What's the ICCA membership fee for?
>
>I think that they charge too much.  Let's suppose that 5 programs show up at
>$500 each.  That's $2500.  Is that amount going to make or break a technical
>publication?  If it is, then they should just fold anyway.

I'm not privy to any financial details of the ICCA, but I'd guess that the
sponsor of the tournament (e.g. CMG this year) is covering a good chunk of the
combined cost of running the tournament and publishing the journal.  Perhaps it
would be more difficult to convince a business to sponsor your world
championship tournament if they didn't charge an entry fee?  Let's face it,
computer chess isn't tennis: if the ICCA were getting the kind of sponsorship to
provide $100000 first-place prizes, then they probably wouldn't be charging an
entry fee either.

>I think that the ICCA is a waste of time.
>The professional programmers do not publish useful articles.
>The amateur programmers are almost universally college students or instructors.
>Just publish them as technical reports on a college site.
>
>This eliminates:
>1.  The fact that you can't get the articles unless you become a ICCA member.
>2.  The fee to join the ICCA.
>3.  The fees for these contests.
>4.  The horribly, horribly run contests (with rules appearing and disappering at
>the last possible moment).
>5.  An organization that does not even abide by its own statements (about
>locations of tournaments, etc.)

You can get the articles by going to a library.  Even if your local library
doesn't have them, they could get them from another library that does via
interlibrary loan.

It's very handy to have a stack of ICCA Journals on your shelf.  I know this,
because until last year I didn't have any of them, then I went and bought all of
the back issues.  For me, this beats running around on the internet and to the
library looking for papers hands down.

I'm not a fan of the rules changing every year, just before the tournament.
IMO, that's the most legitimate complaint.  Fortunately, I am not a computer
chess software author, so it hasn't affected me!  Mind you, all the participants
are there, so nobody can claim that they didn't have opportunity to voice their
concerns.

>Then again, you would need *some* kind of sponsoring organization.
>Of course, I have not come up with any good alternative to the ICCA.  So we
>should wait until someone comes up with a realistic idea before we tear the
>walls down.

The alternative is to have a commercial organisation set up a match between some
of its products and declare the winner the best.  That's not exactly what
happened recently, but it wasn't too far away either.  Somehow, I don't view
that as an improvement.

Dave



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