Author: Omid David Tabibi
Date: 09:38:27 12/13/03
Go up one level in this thread
On December 13, 2003 at 12:18:43, Sune Fischer wrote: >>A CCT style tournament can never turn into an official event, since you cannot >>prevent any kind of cheating. I can run 5 engines on different computers, see >>which analysis I like, and then force my engine to play that move by feeding the >>move via a file it checks once a second. How are you going to prevent that? By >>looking at the analysis I output?! I can force my engine to print a spurious PV >>starting with the move I want it to play... > >You can do exactly the same in WCCC. > >Here is one way, you do a ssh to some remote 'super' computer not monitored by >any officials. >Then you get your cheating partner sitting at home to use multiple engines to >decide on the move. >He then feeds the best move into your proxy which then makes up some bogus node >count and PV and sends it back. > >You can even let it show analysis on the fly, it just has to have the right fail >high at the time when the move is sent. It's a nobrainer to fake. It's all true. But the only person running remote in Graz was Vincent. And we know enough about him and what he does to be confident that he is running on what he says he is running. I ensure you that if an unknown person shows up running on some unknown remote machine, everyone will question that and will ask for verification. > >>The only reason why CCT tournaments are popular is that the stakes are not high. > >You may be on to something here, we are all so scared when the stakes are high. >:-) > >Nah, I think the answer is more straight forward: it's because it's so >accessible to everyone while the ICGA event is so unaccessible to most. > >>Most programmers join CCT only to test their engine against others (speaking for >>myself, I will enter a totally experimental and untested version of Falcon). > >I will enter whatever version I think is the strongest, probably it will be >experiment and somewhat untested, all my versions are. >I would have done the same had I been at the WCCC. I wouldn't. In Graz I used a version which was tested enough (tens of long time control matches against top programs), and was proven to be stable. During the whole tournament I didn't encounter even one bug in Falcon. I learned quite a lot about its weaknesses, but no programming bugs. > >I assume you also won't be joining with something you know for certain to be >weaker 'just for the testing'. Untested means I don't know. It could be stronger or weaker. > >>But >>when you give an official title to the winner, expect many (if not most) >>participants to cheat in various degrees starting from "move now" to playing all >>the moves as dictated by the operator. > >So you expect most people at WCCC to be cheaters given the chance? The stakes in WCCC are so high that you cannot rule out that option. If you don't do any drug tests in 100 meter sprint in the olympics, how many contenders will use drugs in your opinion? > >And you think showing up in person made cheating impossible for everyone there? Makes it very hard to cheat, and almost impossible to fake a whole game. > >>The physical presence of the programmers (or operators) is inevitable for an >>official event, especially one giving the title "World Computer Chess Champion" >>to the winner. > >It doesn't prevent cheating at all, nothing can prevent cheating 100% unless you >want to release codes etc... In a physical WCCC there is no easy way to cheat, apart from plagiarism which is a different story. When playing against an engine in WCCC, I know that the move it just played was produced by itself, not some external entity (machine or human). Could you say the same in CCT? > >-S.
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