- Blind mode tutorial
lichess.org
Donate

Fat Fritz is not the Only Ripoff and now ChessBase is Getting Sued

@rampageJackson "ChessBase used to be the only company who really provided insights of Chess " You mean they bought up all the other companies.

@rampageJackson "ChessBase used to be the only company who really provided insights of Chess " You mean they bought up all the other companies.

Wow! This was extremely useful, because I have been thinking for a while now about buying the houdini 6 software from chessbase, without knowing that it is just another ripoff if I understood the article correctly. I hope this doesn't happen again with stockfish 14 as it just came out (stockfishchess.org). But yeah, thanks a lot to lichess for pointing this out to me and so many others!

Wow! This was extremely useful, because I have been thinking for a while now about buying the houdini 6 software from chessbase, without knowing that it is just another ripoff if I understood the article correctly. I hope this doesn't happen again with stockfish 14 as it just came out (stockfishchess.org). But yeah, thanks a lot to lichess for pointing this out to me and so many others!

@plastic_pusher I don't know if that is the case. But I know they gave a lot of chances to a lot of developers to showcase their engine. including Shredder, Fritz, Junior etc.

Whether they bought or not the other companies is immaterial.

Again, I am just opposed to public shaming by lichess not stockfish legal action. Also, we have other issues more important, like for example when are going to end the capricious and arbitrary way of lichess dealing with frontage streamers, LM title etc? Can we have more transparency here?

I am sure a lot of users in lichess that are not 2000+ can be frontpage streamers as they probably have a nice and entertaining way of broadcast and I would love to see them. END ELITISM!

@plastic_pusher I don't know if that is the case. But I know they gave a lot of chances to a lot of developers to showcase their engine. including Shredder, Fritz, Junior etc. Whether they bought or not the other companies is immaterial. Again, I am just opposed to public shaming by lichess not stockfish legal action. Also, we have other issues more important, like for example when are going to end the capricious and arbitrary way of lichess dealing with frontage streamers, LM title etc? Can we have more transparency here? I am sure a lot of users in lichess that are not 2000+ can be frontpage streamers as they probably have a nice and entertaining way of broadcast and I would love to see them. END ELITISM!

Wow. Im kind of divided on this matter. Whilst it is true that Chess base appears to have broken/ or at least misunderstood the law, they have been quite a comprehensive resource for chess minds, in recent years, and for that reason I will be sorry to see them go down ?!

Wow. Im kind of divided on this matter. Whilst it is true that Chess base appears to have broken/ or at least misunderstood the law, they have been quite a comprehensive resource for chess minds, in recent years, and for that reason I will be sorry to see them go down ?!

Fuck GPL, seriously...

Fuck GPL, seriously...

Dude, no swearing in forums.

Dude, no swearing in forums.

@plastic_pusher 'Red Hat Enterprise Edition isn't just an operating system but also a tech support deal. The money you pay is mostly for support.'

100% agreed.

but what I'm still not sure about myself is whether I can buy Red Hat and share it with a friend. In some ways I think yes of course you can, it's free software. But I have this vague notion the collection of free software known as Red Hat Enterprise Linux is copyrighted and not redistributeable. Beside the collection being copyrightable, there might be things like documentation that aren't licensed for redistribution. trademarks as well which is a different set of laws.

@rampageJackson 'Again, I am just opposed to public shaming by lichess'

I read the lichess article as reporting news. They reported what others are saying about chessbase, fat fritz, houdini. Also chessbase is a company not a person that plays on lichess. Maybe if Magnus was found with an engine implanted in his brain it would be news worthy but still, Magnus is a person that plays on lichess.

@plastic_pusher 'Red Hat Enterprise Edition isn't just an operating system but also a tech support deal. The money you pay is mostly for support.' 100% agreed. but what I'm still not sure about myself is whether I can buy Red Hat and share it with a friend. In some ways I think yes of course you can, it's free software. But I have this vague notion the collection of free software known as Red Hat Enterprise Linux is copyrighted and not redistributeable. Beside the collection being copyrightable, there might be things like documentation that aren't licensed for redistribution. trademarks as well which is a different set of laws. @rampageJackson 'Again, I am just opposed to public shaming by lichess' I read the lichess article as reporting news. They reported what others are saying about chessbase, fat fritz, houdini. Also chessbase is a company not a person that plays on lichess. Maybe if Magnus was found with an engine implanted in his brain it would be news worthy but still, Magnus is a person that plays on lichess.

@rampageJackson

No, AlphaZero came up with the first Neural Network implementation for chess, which was based on expected game results of the moves, but the NNUE thing was completely unrelated technology developed by a Shogi programmer, and the technology was so strong that simply replacing Stockfish's eval with NNUE made it stronger already.

That programmer joined the Stockfish team just to give them the gift of this code, which increased Stockfish's development speed ten-fold for about two months (not exaggerating, it was the improvements of 20 months in 2 months.) This technology is based on score prediction with more depth, that is, the engine learns to predict at low depth what it'll show on bigger depths.

Then someone came with the idea of using the higher depth of that to make a new net that at low depth can predict what that net would show at high depth. And then another which does that to that one, so there were high improvements just by training nets like this.

That's the main source of Fat Fritz 2's strength, all Albert Silver did was gather training resources to train a net and press the go button, and wait. And independent testers showed that his efforts weren't even better than the Stockfish's net at the time (you read this correctly, people would be better buying Fat Fritz 2 and throw its engine away and put the Stockfish version they used instead and get better analysis, which means Albert's efforts weakened the engine!)

The problem was that version couldn't be had by... the layman, that's why they had to accelerate the release of Stockfish 13 to show clear superiority (and nowadays Stockfish 14 leaves 13 in the dust, anyway.)

What Chessbase did was nothing wrong, I actually commend them on being the first because the Stockfish's license allows and entices it. The problem was THE WAY they did it. Claiming it was something new, whilst they only changed 12 lines of code (to accomodate Albert's efforts of doubling the net's size), and being very vague about the engine's origins, and withholding the net they sell commercially (while putting on the available source code a dummy net which is weaker and doesn't allow people to build Fat Fritz 2 on their own.)

It's basically plagiarism, all they needed to do was give full credit and accept all they're giving you is a different net for a free open source engine (anybody saying they also give GUI, bells and whistles forget they sell much cheaper products with the GUI, bells and whistles - basically people are much better grabbing Komodo Dragon at this point, because at least it's not something free yet.)

The irony - They didn't do it the right way because they feared it'd hurt sales. It's scammy to sell something pretending to be something else. But the scandal might end up killing their sales.

The irony of the irony - all publicity is good publicity, the bigger this gets, the more people are going to know they exist, they're gonna look them up, they're gonna see they sell stuff, and they're gonna buy. Maybe they're geniuses doing this on purpose so people know about them.

@rampageJackson No, AlphaZero came up with the first Neural Network implementation for chess, which was based on expected game results of the moves, but the NNUE thing was completely unrelated technology developed by a Shogi programmer, and the technology was so strong that simply replacing Stockfish's eval with NNUE made it stronger already. That programmer joined the Stockfish team just to give them the gift of this code, which increased Stockfish's development speed ten-fold for about two months (not exaggerating, it was the improvements of 20 months in 2 months.) This technology is based on score prediction with more depth, that is, the engine learns to predict at low depth what it'll show on bigger depths. Then someone came with the idea of using the higher depth *of that* to make a new net that at low depth can predict what *that* net would show at high depth. And then another which does that to *that one*, so there were high improvements just by training nets like this. That's the main source of Fat Fritz 2's strength, all Albert Silver did was gather training resources to train a net and press the go button, and wait. And independent testers showed that his efforts weren't even better than the Stockfish's net at the time (you read this correctly, people would be better buying Fat Fritz 2 and throw its engine away and put the Stockfish version they used instead and get better analysis, which means Albert's efforts weakened the engine!) The problem was that version couldn't be had by... the layman, that's why they had to accelerate the release of Stockfish 13 to show clear superiority (and nowadays Stockfish 14 leaves 13 in the dust, anyway.) What Chessbase did was nothing wrong, I actually commend them on being the first because the Stockfish's license allows and entices it. The problem was THE WAY they did it. Claiming it was something new, whilst they only changed 12 lines of code (to accomodate Albert's efforts of doubling the net's size), and being very vague about the engine's origins, and withholding the net they sell commercially (while putting on the available source code a dummy net which is weaker and doesn't allow people to build Fat Fritz 2 on their own.) It's basically plagiarism, all they needed to do was give full credit and accept all they're giving you is a different net for a free open source engine (anybody saying they also give GUI, bells and whistles forget they sell much cheaper products with the GUI, bells and whistles - basically people are much better grabbing Komodo Dragon at this point, because at least it's not something free yet.) The irony - They didn't do it the right way because they feared it'd hurt sales. It's scammy to sell something pretending to be something else. But the scandal might end up killing their sales. The irony of the irony - all publicity is good publicity, the bigger this gets, the more people are going to know they exist, they're gonna look them up, they're gonna see they sell stuff, and they're gonna buy. Maybe they're geniuses doing this on purpose so people know about them.

yes chessbase has gotten into quite a bit of hot water , i still remember the engine scandal with rybka copying code from other engines too, and the owner refused to share the code of his engine and later it was found out to be copied from a free engine gambit fruit. that was a huge change to the engine standings and we never heard of rybka again only to know stockfish is the real one haha.

yes chessbase has gotten into quite a bit of hot water , i still remember the engine scandal with rybka copying code from other engines too, and the owner refused to share the code of his engine and later it was found out to be copied from a free engine gambit fruit. that was a huge change to the engine standings and we never heard of rybka again only to know stockfish is the real one haha.

This topic has been archived and can no longer be replied to.