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Subject: Re: I don't believe that Ruffian is a new engine

Author: Peter Skinner

Date: 07:30:10 09/21/02

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On September 21, 2002 at 10:15:00, pavel wrote:

>On September 21, 2002 at 10:07:02, Peter Skinner wrote:
>
>>Personally I agree with Bob on this one.
>>
>>For Ruffian to be as strong as it is, and no one ever hear about it until a few
>>weeks ago is kind of suspicious.
>>
>>The results against the commercial products is what makes me believe this. There
>>has only one post where Ruffian has lost a series to a commercial product. This
>>to me sounds a little fishy.
>>
>>When Ruffian started on FICS quite a while ago the account used Fritz 5.32 via
>>the Ebbi autoplayer for it's games, on a PII 300 Mhz system. A few weeks later
>>out comes the Ruffian engine and not a single rating point difference came of
>>it. It was doing well for the hardware and the program used being Fritz. I
>>thought and actually asked several times about the hardware used and I was only
>>ever told to read the finger notes like the operator couldn't remember what he
>>put there.
>>
>>I remember this only because the operator of the account was actually very rude
>>in asking for help getting the autoplayer to work correctly. He was having
>>problems with the winboard commandline options for the auto player.
>>
>>So personally I don't believe this is a _new_ engine. Rather an _old_ engine
>>simply renamed and possibly a few perameters changed to attain the results it
>>has.
>>
>>I would not doubt it is simply Fritz or something.
>>
>>If I left any doubt I will say again. If you look on the "doubters" fence, I
>>will be sitting next to Robert drinking coffee.
>
>
>How does it feel to not make any sense?
>Ruffian is a Winboard/UCI engine, fritz supports none of those protocol.

I said he _used_ Fritz in the past. I would not doubt if it was in fact a rip
off of another commercial product.

>
>Telling that it is a fake is questioning not only integrity of the programmer
>but also a shitload of fine people who are testing it.
>
>pavs

Saying it is fake is more likely to the truth than the possibility that it is a
_new_ found discovery.

If you designed a chess program that beat everything out there, would you not be
making results public? Or have someone doing that for you?

It does not take a few months to make a program of that strength. It would take
years.

If you want to follow the rainbow to end to get the pot of gold, I am afraid it
might be a used pot. Just beware.

I have a sinking feeling here that I am _not_ going to be the one that is going
to look foolish.



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