At least strange similarities between TSCP, KasparovX (v1.6)

[Volker Pittlik]

Geschrieben von:/Posted by: Volker Pittlik at 14 July 2004 11:27:11:

Monday morning the moderators of this forum have been announced of a new
chess engine called Capachess written by Wilfredo Malave. The announcement
also contains an URL of this program. I didn't want not publish the URL
here for reasons you will understand after reading this posting, but it
already have been done by Tim.
I replied to the mail and asked the author why he didn't post that at the
forum but didn't get an answer. The readme-file of the program does not
contain any considertion of KasparovX (which has been written by Wilfredo
Malave Davila and I suspect this is the same person) or TSCP (what is
necessary IMHO).
Monday evening I joined the live transmission of RWBC and there was some
suspicions that KasparovX is a TSCP clone. Because this has been done by
someone to keep serious I took a quick look at the exe file with a hex-
editor. At the bottom one can read
"C:\Documents and Settings\Wilfredo\My Documents\tscp181\KasparovX\Debug\KasparovX.pdb"
This could be caused by random or by compiling a debug version of something
called "KasparovX" from TSCP's source code.
BTW: The executables of KasparovX and Capachess are nearly
identical. KasparovX is 225'382 Bytes Capachess 229'376 Bytes. On the
harddisk they are both 221K. The compare function of my hex-editor
(UltraEdit) finds much more identical lines than different.
I don't expect this for different programs.
Now let's compare the programs running. This is TSCP's help output:
Tom Kerrigan's Simple Chess Program (TSCP)
version 1.81, 2/5/03
Copyright 1997 Tom Kerrigan
"help" displays a list of commands.
tscp> help
on - computer plays for the side to move
off - computer stops playing
st n - search for n seconds per move
sd n - search n ply per move
undo - takes back a move
new - starts a new game
d - display the board
bench - run the built-in benchmark
bye - exit the program
xboard - switch to XBoard mode
Enter moves in coordinate notation, e.g., e2e4, e7e8Q
tscp>
Now take a look at KasparovX:
KasparovX
version 1.6, 14/6/2004
Copyright 2003 Wilfredo Malave Davila
"help" displays a list of commands.
Your Move: help
on - computer plays for the side to move
off - computer stops playing
st n - search for n seconds per move
sd n - search n ply per move
undo - takes back a move
new - starts a new game
d - display the board
exit - exit the program
xboard - switch to XBoard mode
Enter moves in coordinate notation, e.g., e2e4, e7e8Q
Your Move:
It is not only exactly the same format, the output is identical word by word.
And now let's take a look at Capachess:
CAPACHESS
version 1.0
Copyright 2004 Wilfredo Malave
"help" displays a list of commands.
Your Move: help
on - computer plays for the side to move
off - computer stops playing
st n - search for n seconds per move
sd n - search n ply per move
undo - takes back a move
new - starts a new game
display - display the board
quit - exit the program
xboard - switch to XBoard mode
Enter moves in coordinate notation, e.g., e2e4, e7e8Q
Your Move:
Any comments necessary?
Now take a look at the bench command:

tscp> bench


8  . r b . . r k .
7  p . . . . p p p
6  . p . q p . n .
5  . . . n . . N .
4  . . p P . . . .
3  . . P . . . P .
2  P P Q . . P B P
1  R . B . R . K .
   a b c d e f g h
ply      nodes  score  pv
  1        130     20  c1e3
  2       3441      5  g5e4 d6c7
  3       8911     30  g5e4 d6c7 c1e3
  4     141367     10  g5e4 d6c7 c1e3 c8d7
  5     550778     26  c2a4 d6c7 g2d5 e6d5 c1e3
Time: 3328 ms
ply      nodes  score  pv
  1        130     20  c1e3
  2       3441      5  g5e4 d6c7
  3       8911     30  g5e4 d6c7 c1e3
  4     141367     10  g5e4 d6c7 c1e3 c8d7
  5     550778     26  c2a4 d6c7 g2d5 e6d5 c1e3
Time: 3312 ms
ply      nodes  score  pv
  1        130     20  c1e3
  2       3441      5  g5e4 d6c7
  3       8911     30  g5e4 d6c7 c1e3
  4     141367     10  g5e4 d6c7 c1e3 c8d7
  5     550778     26  c2a4 d6c7 g2d5 e6d5 c1e3
Time: 3328 ms
Nodes: 550778
Best time: 3312 ms
Nodes per second: 166297 (Score: 0.684)
tscp>


-----------------------------------------------------
KasparovX
version 1.6, 14/6/2004
Copyright 2003 Wilfredo Malave Davila
"help" displays a list of commands.
Your Move: bench


8  . r b . . r k .
7  p . . . . p p p
6  . p . q p . n .
5  . . . n . . N .
4  . . p P . . . .
3  . . P . . . P .
2  P P Q . . P B P
1  R . B . R . K .
   a b c d e f g h
PLY     NODES  SCORE  PV
  1        124     30  c1e3
  2       4277     16  g2d5 e6d5
  3      11782     41  g2d5 e6d5 c1e3
  4     214651     23  f2f4 f7f6 g2d5 e6d5
  5     655924     41  c2a4 d6c7 g2d5 e6d5 c1e3
Time: 8578 ms
PLY     NODES  SCORE  PV
  1        124     30  c1e3
  2       4277     16  g2d5 e6d5
  3      11782     41  g2d5 e6d5 c1e3
  4     214651     23  f2f4 f7f6 g2d5 e6d5
  5     655924     41  c2a4 d6c7 g2d5 e6d5 c1e3
Time: 8578 ms
PLY     NODES  SCORE  PV
  1        124     30  c1e3
  2       4277     16  g2d5 e6d5
  3      11782     41  g2d5 e6d5 c1e3
  4     214651     23  f2f4 f7f6 g2d5 e6d5
  5     655924     41  c2a4 d6c7 g2d5 e6d5 c1e3
Time: 8578 ms
Nodes: 655924
Best time: 8578 ms
Nodes per second: 76465 (Score: 0.314)
Your Move:


--------------------------------------------------------
CAPACHESS
version 1.0
Copyright 2004 Wilfredo Malave
"help" displays a list of commands.
Your Move: bench


8  . r b . . r k .
7  p . . . . p p p
6  . p . q p . n .
5  . . . n . . N .
4  . . p P . . . .
3  . . P . . . P .
2  P P Q . . P B P
1  R . B . R . K .
   a b c d e f g h
PLY      NODES  SCORE  PV
Time: 0 ms
PLY      NODES  SCORE  PV
Time: 0 ms
PLY      NODES  SCORE  PV
Time: 0 ms


Nodes: 16
Best time: 0 ms
(invalid)
Your Move:
All three programs are using the same test position and (if they do
something) calculate an identical PV. The only difference seems to
be that KasparovX and Capachess are using caps.
From my point of view this is enough to suspect KasporvX and Capachess
beeing TSCP clones violating the copyright of Tom Kerrigan.
Yesterday I send this to the author and asked him for an explanation. I also
wrote him I'll publish it in this forum. I didn't get an answer.
Draw your conclusion.
Volker

P.S. Of course the java engine "Capachess" (http://www.f11.parsimony.net/forum16635 ... /68594.htm) is something complete different and is coming with source code.

[Axel Schumacher]

Geschrieben von:/Posted by: Axel Schumacher at 14 July 2004 19:13:19:
Als Antwort auf:/In reply to: At least strange similarities between TSCP, KasparovX (v1.6) and Capachess geschrieben von:/posted by: Volker Pittlik at 14 July 2004 11:27:11:

Hi Volker,
yes, Capachess is a clone of TSCP, you are right (not only similarities).
Same time managment, same evaluation...the usual.
Axel

Monday morning the moderators of this forum have been announced of a new
chess engine called Capachess written by Wilfredo Malave. The announcement
also contains an URL of this program. I didn't want not publish the URL
here for reasons you will understand after reading this posting, but it
already have been done by Tim.
I replied to the mail and asked the author why he didn't post that at the
forum but didn't get an answer. The readme-file of the program does not
contain any considertion of KasparovX (which has been written by Wilfredo
Malave Davila and I suspect this is the same person) or TSCP (what is
necessary IMHO).
Monday evening I joined the live transmission of RWBC and there was some
suspicions that KasparovX is a TSCP clone. Because this has been done by
someone to keep serious I took a quick look at the exe file with a hex-
editor. At the bottom one can read
"C:\Documents and Settings\Wilfredo\My Documents\tscp181\KasparovX\Debug\KasparovX.pdb"
This could be caused by random or by compiling a debug version of something
called "KasparovX" from TSCP's source code.
BTW: The executables of KasparovX and Capachess are nearly
identical. KasparovX is 225'382 Bytes Capachess 229'376 Bytes. On the
harddisk they are both 221K. The compare function of my hex-editor
(UltraEdit) finds much more identical lines than different.
I don't expect this for different programs.
Now let's compare the programs running. This is TSCP's help output:
Tom Kerrigan's Simple Chess Program (TSCP)
version 1.81, 2/5/03
Copyright 1997 Tom Kerrigan
"help" displays a list of commands.
tscp> help
on - computer plays for the side to move
off - computer stops playing
st n - search for n seconds per move
sd n - search n ply per move
undo - takes back a move
new - starts a new game
d - display the board
bench - run the built-in benchmark
bye - exit the program
xboard - switch to XBoard mode
Enter moves in coordinate notation, e.g., e2e4, e7e8Q
tscp>
Now take a look at KasparovX:
KasparovX
version 1.6, 14/6/2004
Copyright 2003 Wilfredo Malave Davila
"help" displays a list of commands.
Your Move: help
on - computer plays for the side to move
off - computer stops playing
st n - search for n seconds per move
sd n - search n ply per move
undo - takes back a move
new - starts a new game
d - display the board
exit - exit the program
xboard - switch to XBoard mode
Enter moves in coordinate notation, e.g., e2e4, e7e8Q
Your Move:
It is not only exactly the same format, the output is identical word by word.
And now let's take a look at Capachess:
CAPACHESS
version 1.0
Copyright 2004 Wilfredo Malave
"help" displays a list of commands.
Your Move: help
on - computer plays for the side to move
off - computer stops playing
st n - search for n seconds per move
sd n - search n ply per move
undo - takes back a move
new - starts a new game
display - display the board
quit - exit the program
xboard - switch to XBoard mode
Enter moves in coordinate notation, e.g., e2e4, e7e8Q
Your Move:
Any comments necessary?
Now take a look at the bench command:

tscp> bench



-----------------------------------------------------
KasparovX
version 1.6, 14/6/2004
Copyright 2003 Wilfredo Malave Davila
"help" displays a list of commands.
Your Move: bench



--------------------------------------------------------
CAPACHESS
version 1.0
Copyright 2004 Wilfredo Malave
"help" displays a list of commands.
Your Move: bench



Nodes: 16
Best time: 0 ms
(invalid)
Your Move:
All three programs are using the same test position and (if they do
something) calculate an identical PV. The only difference seems to
be that KasparovX and Capachess are using caps.
From my point of view this is enough to suspect KasporvX and Capachess
beeing TSCP clones violating the copyright of Tom Kerrigan.
Yesterday I send this to the author and asked him for an explanation. I also
wrote him I'll publish it in this forum. I didn't get an answer.
Draw your conclusion.
Volker

P.S. Of course the java engine "Capachess" (http://www.f11.parsimony.net/forum16635 ... /68594.htm) is something complete different and is coming with source code.

>8  . r b . . r k .
>7  p . . . . p p p
>6  . p . q p . n .
>5  . . . n . . N .
>4  . . p P . . . .
>3  . . P . . . P .
>2  P P Q . . P B P
>1  R . B . R . K .
>   a b c d e f g h
>ply      nodes  score  pv
>  1        130     20  c1e3
>  2       3441      5  g5e4 d6c7
>  3       8911     30  g5e4 d6c7 c1e3
>  4     141367     10  g5e4 d6c7 c1e3 c8d7
>  5     550778     26  c2a4 d6c7 g2d5 e6d5 c1e3
>Time: 3328 ms
>ply      nodes  score  pv
>  1        130     20  c1e3
>  2       3441      5  g5e4 d6c7
>  3       8911     30  g5e4 d6c7 c1e3
>  4     141367     10  g5e4 d6c7 c1e3 c8d7
>  5     550778     26  c2a4 d6c7 g2d5 e6d5 c1e3
>Time: 3312 ms
>ply      nodes  score  pv
>  1        130     20  c1e3
>  2       3441      5  g5e4 d6c7
>  3       8911     30  g5e4 d6c7 c1e3
>  4     141367     10  g5e4 d6c7 c1e3 c8d7
>  5     550778     26  c2a4 d6c7 g2d5 e6d5 c1e3
>Time: 3328 ms
>Nodes: 550778
>Best time: 3312 ms
>Nodes per second: 166297 (Score: 0.684)
>tscp>
>
>8  . r b . . r k .
>7  p . . . . p p p
>6  . p . q p . n .
>5  . . . n . . N .
>4  . . p P . . . .
>3  . . P . . . P .
>2  P P Q . . P B P
>1  R . B . R . K .
>   a b c d e f g h
>PLY     NODES  SCORE  PV
>  1        124     30  c1e3
>  2       4277     16  g2d5 e6d5
>  3      11782     41  g2d5 e6d5 c1e3
>  4     214651     23  f2f4 f7f6 g2d5 e6d5
>  5     655924     41  c2a4 d6c7 g2d5 e6d5 c1e3
>Time: 8578 ms
>PLY     NODES  SCORE  PV
>  1        124     30  c1e3
>  2       4277     16  g2d5 e6d5
>  3      11782     41  g2d5 e6d5 c1e3
>  4     214651     23  f2f4 f7f6 g2d5 e6d5
>  5     655924     41  c2a4 d6c7 g2d5 e6d5 c1e3
>Time: 8578 ms
>PLY     NODES  SCORE  PV
>  1        124     30  c1e3
>  2       4277     16  g2d5 e6d5
>  3      11782     41  g2d5 e6d5 c1e3
>  4     214651     23  f2f4 f7f6 g2d5 e6d5
>  5     655924     41  c2a4 d6c7 g2d5 e6d5 c1e3
>Time: 8578 ms
>Nodes: 655924
>Best time: 8578 ms
>Nodes per second: 76465 (Score: 0.314)
>Your Move:
>
>8  . r b . . r k .
>7  p . . . . p p p
>6  . p . q p . n .
>5  . . . n . . N .
>4  . . p P . . . .
>3  . . P . . . P .
>2  P P Q . . P B P
>1  R . B . R . K .
>   a b c d e f g h
>PLY      NODES  SCORE  PV
>Time: 0 ms
>PLY      NODES  SCORE  PV
>Time: 0 ms
>PLY      NODES  SCORE  PV
>Time: 0 ms
>

[Wael Deeb]

Geschrieben von:/Posted by: Wael Deeb at 14 July 2004 19:21:51:
Als Antwort auf:/In reply to: At least strange similarities between TSCP, KasparovX (v1.6) and Capachess geschrieben von:/posted by: Volker Pittlik at 14 July 2004 11:27:11:

Monday morning the moderators of this forum have been announced of a new
chess engine called Capachess written by Wilfredo Malave. The announcement
also contains an URL of this program. I didn't want not publish the URL
here for reasons you will understand after reading this posting, but it
already have been done by Tim.
I replied to the mail and asked the author why he didn't post that at the
forum but didn't get an answer. The readme-file of the program does not
contain any considertion of KasparovX (which has been written by Wilfredo
Malave Davila and I suspect this is the same person) or TSCP (what is
necessary IMHO).
Monday evening I joined the live transmission of RWBC and there was some
suspicions that KasparovX is a TSCP clone. Because this has been done by
someone to keep serious I took a quick look at the exe file with a hex-
editor. At the bottom one can read
"C:\Documents and Settings\Wilfredo\My Documents\tscp181\KasparovX\Debug\KasparovX.pdb"
This could be caused by random or by compiling a debug version of something
called "KasparovX" from TSCP's source code.
BTW: The executables of KasparovX and Capachess are nearly
identical. KasparovX is 225'382 Bytes Capachess 229'376 Bytes. On the
harddisk they are both 221K. The compare function of my hex-editor
(UltraEdit) finds much more identical lines than different.
I don't expect this for different programs.
Now let's compare the programs running. This is TSCP's help output:
Tom Kerrigan's Simple Chess Program (TSCP)
version 1.81, 2/5/03
Copyright 1997 Tom Kerrigan
"help" displays a list of commands.
tscp> help
on - computer plays for the side to move
off - computer stops playing
st n - search for n seconds per move
sd n - search n ply per move
undo - takes back a move
new - starts a new game
d - display the board
bench - run the built-in benchmark
bye - exit the program
xboard - switch to XBoard mode
Enter moves in coordinate notation, e.g., e2e4, e7e8Q
tscp>
Now take a look at KasparovX:
KasparovX
version 1.6, 14/6/2004
Copyright 2003 Wilfredo Malave Davila
"help" displays a list of commands.
Your Move: help
on - computer plays for the side to move
off - computer stops playing
st n - search for n seconds per move
sd n - search n ply per move
undo - takes back a move
new - starts a new game
d - display the board
exit - exit the program
xboard - switch to XBoard mode
Enter moves in coordinate notation, e.g., e2e4, e7e8Q
Your Move:
It is not only exactly the same format, the output is identical word by word.
And now let's take a look at Capachess:
CAPACHESS
version 1.0
Copyright 2004 Wilfredo Malave
"help" displays a list of commands.
Your Move: help
on - computer plays for the side to move
off - computer stops playing
st n - search for n seconds per move
sd n - search n ply per move
undo - takes back a move
new - starts a new game
display - display the board
quit - exit the program
xboard - switch to XBoard mode
Enter moves in coordinate notation, e.g., e2e4, e7e8Q
Your Move:
Any comments necessary?
Now take a look at the bench command:

tscp> bench



-----------------------------------------------------
KasparovX
version 1.6, 14/6/2004
Copyright 2003 Wilfredo Malave Davila
"help" displays a list of commands.
Your Move: bench



--------------------------------------------------------
CAPACHESS
version 1.0
Copyright 2004 Wilfredo Malave
"help" displays a list of commands.
Your Move: bench



Nodes: 16
Best time: 0 ms
(invalid)
Your Move:
All three programs are using the same test position and (if they do
something) calculate an identical PV. The only difference seems to
be that KasparovX and Capachess are using caps.
From my point of view this is enough to suspect KasporvX and Capachess
beeing TSCP clones violating the copyright of Tom Kerrigan.
Yesterday I send this to the author and asked him for an explanation. I also
wrote him I'll publish it in this forum. I didn't get an answer.
Draw your conclusion.
Volker

P.S. Of course the java engine "Capachess" (http://www.f11.parsimony.net/forum16635 ... /68594.htm) is something complete different and is coming with source code.

>8  . r b . . r k .
>7  p . . . . p p p
>6  . p . q p . n .
>5  . . . n . . N .
>4  . . p P . . . .
>3  . . P . . . P .
>2  P P Q . . P B P
>1  R . B . R . K .
>   a b c d e f g h
>ply      nodes  score  pv
>  1        130     20  c1e3
>  2       3441      5  g5e4 d6c7
>  3       8911     30  g5e4 d6c7 c1e3
>  4     141367     10  g5e4 d6c7 c1e3 c8d7
>  5     550778     26  c2a4 d6c7 g2d5 e6d5 c1e3
>Time: 3328 ms
>ply      nodes  score  pv
>  1        130     20  c1e3
>  2       3441      5  g5e4 d6c7
>  3       8911     30  g5e4 d6c7 c1e3
>  4     141367     10  g5e4 d6c7 c1e3 c8d7
>  5     550778     26  c2a4 d6c7 g2d5 e6d5 c1e3
>Time: 3312 ms
>ply      nodes  score  pv
>  1        130     20  c1e3
>  2       3441      5  g5e4 d6c7
>  3       8911     30  g5e4 d6c7 c1e3
>  4     141367     10  g5e4 d6c7 c1e3 c8d7
>  5     550778     26  c2a4 d6c7 g2d5 e6d5 c1e3
>Time: 3328 ms
>Nodes: 550778
>Best time: 3312 ms
>Nodes per second: 166297 (Score: 0.684)
>tscp>
>
>8  . r b . . r k .
>7  p . . . . p p p
>6  . p . q p . n .
>5  . . . n . . N .
>4  . . p P . . . .
>3  . . P . . . P .
>2  P P Q . . P B P
>1  R . B . R . K .
>   a b c d e f g h
>PLY     NODES  SCORE  PV
>  1        124     30  c1e3
>  2       4277     16  g2d5 e6d5
>  3      11782     41  g2d5 e6d5 c1e3
>  4     214651     23  f2f4 f7f6 g2d5 e6d5
>  5     655924     41  c2a4 d6c7 g2d5 e6d5 c1e3
>Time: 8578 ms
>PLY     NODES  SCORE  PV
>  1        124     30  c1e3
>  2       4277     16  g2d5 e6d5
>  3      11782     41  g2d5 e6d5 c1e3
>  4     214651     23  f2f4 f7f6 g2d5 e6d5
>  5     655924     41  c2a4 d6c7 g2d5 e6d5 c1e3
>Time: 8578 ms
>PLY     NODES  SCORE  PV
>  1        124     30  c1e3
>  2       4277     16  g2d5 e6d5
>  3      11782     41  g2d5 e6d5 c1e3
>  4     214651     23  f2f4 f7f6 g2d5 e6d5
>  5     655924     41  c2a4 d6c7 g2d5 e6d5 c1e3
>Time: 8578 ms
>Nodes: 655924
>Best time: 8578 ms
>Nodes per second: 76465 (Score: 0.314)
>Your Move:
>
>8  . r b . . r k .
>7  p . . . . p p p
>6  . p . q p . n .
>5  . . . n . . N .
>4  . . p P . . . .
>3  . . P . . . P .
>2  P P Q . . P B P
>1  R . B . R . K .
>   a b c d e f g h
>PLY      NODES  SCORE  PV
>Time: 0 ms
>PLY      NODES  SCORE  PV
>Time: 0 ms
>PLY      NODES  SCORE  PV
>Time: 0 ms
>