Vasik Rajlich

Vasik Rajlich

Vasik Rajlich (born 1971 in Cleveland, Ohio) is an International Master in chess and the author of Rybka,[1] previously one of the strongest chess playing programs in the world.[2] Rajlich is a dual Czechoslovakian-American citizen by birth; he was born in the United States of America to Czech parents, at that time graduate students, but grew up in Prague. He later spent years in the United States as a student, graduating from MIT.[3]

He married Iweta (née Radziewicz) on 19 August 2006. Iweta, who is also an International Master in chess,[1] helps him with the development of Rybka as its tester.[4] In April 2012, the couple was living in Budapest, Hungary and had one child, a son.[4][5]

In April 2012, Rajlich participated in an April Fool's joke claiming by using Rybka he had proven to a "99.99999999% certainty" (it might be that there is a flaw somewhere, but if there is it will not be discovered in the course of this universe – that would require more computational power than could ever be provided), that the accepted King's Gambit is a draw for White, but only after 3. Be2.[5]This fooled the German chess marketer ChessBase into publishing his work, concluding " We have made contact with the technical director of the Google server farms, who was definitely interested. So maybe in a year or two we will have solved the Najdorf."

Rajlich's handle on the Internet Chess Club is "vrajlich".[6]

WCCC disqualification and banning

On 28 June 2011, the International Computer Games Association (ICGA) determined that Rajlich had plagiarized two other chess software programs: Crafty and Fruit.[7] The ICGA sanction for Vasik Rajlich and Rybka was the disqualification from the World Computer Chess Championship (WCCC) of 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010.[8] Vasik Rajlich is banned for life from competing in the WCCC or any other event organized by or sanctioned by the ICGA.[9] Rajlich had already responded to these charges with an e-mail to David Levy, president of the ICGA, in which he stated:

“ Rybka “does not include game-playing code written by others”, aside from standard exceptions which wouldn’t count as ‘game-playing’. [...] The vague phrase “derived from game-playing code written by others” also does not in my view apply to Rybka[10] ”

Notes

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Ross, Phillip E. (February 2007). "Vasik Rajlich: Game Boy". IEEE Spectrum.
  2. ↑ "The SSDF Rating List". Swedish Chess Computer Association. 2007-11-03. Retrieved 2008-04-22.
  3. ↑ "Engineer Shocks Chess World". 2007-06-21.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 "Rybka team". Rybka. Retrieved 2009-02-23.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Frederic Friedel (April 2, 2012). "Rajlich: Busting the King's Gambit, this time for sure". ChessBase News. Retrieved 2012-04-02.
  6. ↑ "vrajlich". Internet Chess Club. Retrieved 3 March 2011.
  7. ↑ ICGA Investigation Documents
  8. ↑ Washington Times: Computer chess champ stripped of its four titles
  9. ↑ Tech World: World's best chess program loses titles in plagiarism row
  10. ↑ "Rybka disqualified and banned from World Computer Chess Championships". Retrieved 4 July 2011.

External links

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