13 October 2015

The Rybka - ICGA Ethics Judgement

After yesterday's post Chess Engines : Bitboards touched on 'The Rybka Affair', I started wondering what had become of the matter. First, here's a summary of previous posts on this blog.

The Rybka Affair: An Official Reaction (January 2012) • 'On the Rybka disqualification from the World Computer Chess Championships'

Feller, Rybka, Arbiters, and More (October 2012) • FIDE Ethics Commission: 'Case 2/2012: "Rybka and ICGA" (complaint by Mr Vas Rajlich and Mr Chris Whittington against the International Computer Games Association ("ICGA")) Procedural decision (preliminary request of additional information).'

Ethics and Cheating (December 2013) • 'Case 2/2012: "Rybka and ICGA" [...] concerning an assumed violation of par. 2.2.3 of the FIDE Code of Ethics has to be considered as receivable'

The original ICGA action dates back to June 2011, more than four years ago. I found a couple of relevant posts on RybkaForum.net. The first was from the time the case was accepted:-

FIDE Case 2/2012 “Rybka and ICGA” • 'From the FIDE Code of Ethics: 2.2.3 Organizers, tournament directors, arbiters or other officials who fail to perform their functions in an impartial and responsible manner.' (November 2013)

The second was from six months ago:-

Complaint to FIDE Ethics Commission (April 2015) • 'The FIDE decision was made in 2014. It was delivered recently. We're not allowed to publish the judgement as a whole, but we may quote from it. The complaint is attached.'

One quote contains a (partial?) summary of the judgement

The EC [Ethics Commission] unanimously rules that:
- Otherwise, by imposing a lifetime ban as a sanction against Mr Rajlich, in absence of a clear statutory basis and without sufficient procedural guarantees for Mr Rajlich, the ICGA did not act in accordance with FIDE rules, this way violating par. 2.2 and 2.2.10 of the FIDE Code of Ethics.
- ICGA has to be sanctioned with a warning and has to be invited to modify their statutes in accordance with FIDE principles and rules.

The word 'otherwise' in the first bullet makes me think that something is missing. More discussion can be found at FIDE Rules on ICGA - Rybka controversy (April 2015; Open-chess.org). I can't imagine that anyone is satisfied with this outcome.

No comments: