OpenChess

Michel Van den Bergh wrote:I don't quite know the history but didn't Fritz Reul get a PhD for writing Loop?

That's a quite an erroneous statement in my opinion, because at some time both Loop/List were commercially available, which shows the fact that there was a whole lot more than just research into algorithms. He could have published his work as an open source, but he did not, which shows that he clearly had a whole lot more in mind than just ''research into algorithms''. Would not you agree with that ?

Damir Desevac wrote:Hi Bob,

That's a quite an erroneous statement in my opinion, because at some time both Loop/List were commercially available, which shows the fact that there was a whole lot more than just research into algorithms. He could have published his work as an open source, but he did not, which shows that he clearly had a whole lot more in mind than just ''research into algorithms''. Would not you agree with that ?

Michel Van den Bergh wrote:

That's a quite an erroneous statement in my opinion, because at some time both Loop/List were commercially available, which shows the fact that there was a whole lot more than just research into algorithms. He could have published his work as an open source, but he did not, which shows that he clearly had a whole lot more in mind than just ''research into algorithms''. Would not you agree with that ?

What he "had in mind" is not important I think. He was working on a PhD problem, presumably given to him by his advisor(s).
A valid question is I believe: would Loop not being an original work invalidate his PhD? I had a cursory look at the thesis and he clearly implies that the strength of Loop is the result of the developed algorithms. If it turns out that Loop is simply a Fruit clone then this should at least be regarded as severely misleading the examiners.

Robert Hyatt wrote:Yes, but I don't think the purpose of his dissertation was to write a chess program.

Michel Van den Bergh wrote:What he "had in mind" is not important I think. He was working on a PhD problem, presumably given to him by his advisor(s).
A valid question is I believe: would Loop not being an original work invalidate his PhD? I had a cursory look at the thesis and he clearly implies that the strength of Loop is the result of the developed algorithms. If it turns out that Loop is simply a Fruit clone then this should at least be regarded as severely misleading the examiners.

Mark Watkins wrote: Regarding the thesis of Fritz Reul, I think it is a stretch to think there is any academic dishonesty that would disqualify his thesis on the whole.

He had three main Research questions:

1. To what extent can we develop non-bitboard computer-chess architectures, which are competitive in speed, simplicity, and ease of implementation?

2. To what extent is it possible to use hash functions and magic multiplications in order to examine bitboards in computer chess?

3. How can develop an alpha-beta approach in order to implement pruning conditions in the domain of static exchange evaluation?

and a Problem Statement:

1. How can we develop new computer-chess architectures in such a way that computer-chess engines combine the requirement on knowledge expressiveness with a maximum of efficiency?

Only #1 (with the "competitive" word) much relates to the Loop results. And the specific of the evaluation function is somewhat tangential here. I might think that using the Fruit evaluation function in this guise could even be argued to be "fair use" for an academic project, though once he starts "competing" with it, the situation is more dicey.

The question of "competitive in speed" here in #1 is also touched upon in his Conclusion on the Problem Statement, where nodes per seconds-cores is used as a metric, as opposed to any tournament result.

He does mention the Loop results again for #2 (page 97, 111 of the PDF), and I actually think he is likely wrong to say that Loop did so well due to "the use of highly sophiscated perfect hash functions and magic multipliers for the computation of compound bit-patterns (bitboards) via perfect hashing". One could argue that the Fruit evaluation was more beneficial that any speed-ups he gained from internal representations. At any rate, there is no evidence and/or quantification regarding this in his work.

Also, academics don't care that much about results (though usually the writer of a thesis is sure to mention them). E.g. a thesis on talkbots would be judged more upon whether the methods were novel, and well-explained with proper relation to previous work, as opposed as to how well it fared in some competition.

Overall, my opinion is that he should have mentioned the fact that the Loop evaluation function was from Fruit, but this is in some sense "de minimis" with respect to the entirety and focus of the thesis. Jaap may have a different opinion.