Top Chess Engine Championship

Top Chess Engine Championship, formerly known as Thoresen Chess Engines Competition (TCEC or nTCEC), is a computer chess tournament that has been run since 2010. It was organized, directed, and hosted by Martin Thoresen until the end of Season 6; from Season 7 onward it has been organized by Chessdom. It is often regarded as the Unofficial World Computer Chess Championship because of its strong participant line-up and long time control matches on high-end hardware, giving rise to very high-class chess.[1][2]

After a short break in 2012,[3] TCEC was restarted in early 2013 (as nTCEC)[4] and is currently active (renamed as TCEC in early 2014) with 24/7 live broadcasts of chess matches on its website. Supported by original engine authors and based on volunteer work and donations, it caused a surprise in February 2011, when the free version of Houdini defeated the then reigning computer chess champion Rybka in a 40-game match.[5][6]

Since season 5, TCEC has been sponsored by Chessdom Arena.[7][8] The current TCEC champion is Stockfish 180614, which defeated Komodo 12.1.1 in the TCEC Season 12 Superfinal 100-game match held in June–July 2018.

Overview

Basic structure of competition

The TCEC competition is divided into seasons, where each season happens over a course of a few months, with matches played round-the-clock and broadcast live over the internet. Each season is divided into several qualifying stages and one "superfinal", where the top two chess engines play 100 games to win the title of "TCEC Grand Champion". In the superfinal, each engine plays 50 openings, once as each side. Beginning in Season 11 in 2018, a division system was introduced; the top 2 engines in each division are promoted, and the bottom 2 are relegated. Currently there are 5 divisions (a Premier division, and divisions 1-4); newcomers generally start in division 4.

Engine settings/characteristics

Pondering is set to off. All engines run on mostly the same hardware[9] and use the same opening book, which is set by the organizers and changed in every stage. Large pages are disabled but access to various endgame tablebases is permitted. Engines are allowed updates between stages; if there is a critical play-limiting bug, they are also allowed to be updated once during the stage. If an engine crashes 3 times in one event, it is disqualified to avoid distorting the results for the other engines. TCEC generates its own elo rating list from the matches played during the tournament. An initial rating is given to any new participant based on its rating in other chess engine rating lists.

Criteria for entering the competition

There is no definite criterion for entering into the competition, other than inviting the top participants from various rating lists. Initially, the list of participants was personally chosen by Thoresen before the start of a season. His stated goal was to include "every major engine that is not a direct clone".[10] However, Shredder's developers have declined to enter it in the competition. Usually chess engines that support multiprocessor mode are preferred (8-cores or higher). Both Winboard and UCI engines are supported.

Structure by season

Season numberStructure
Pre TCEC3 matches followed by 2 tournaments then alternating between match and tournament until there were 6 tournaments and 5 matches
13 division (1 through 3) followed by elite match
2Same as Season 1 but with 6 divisions (A through F)
32 stages (1 followed by 2a)
4Same as Season 2 but with 4 more tournaments (Stages 2b, 3 and 4 followed by a superfinal, in that order)
54 stages (1 through 4) followed by a superfinal
6Same as Season 5 but stage 1 was stage 1a through c and a Chess960 tournament after the superfinal
7Same as Season 6 but no stage 1c nor tournament after the superfinal
8Same as Season 7 but no stage 4
9Same as Season 8 but between the stage tournaments and superfinal was a rapid tournament
102 stages (1 followed by 2) then superfinal then 2 other tournaments (rapid followed by blitz)
11 through 13All 3 seasons had division premier as well as division 1 through 4 and superfinal (13 with a cup as well).

Tournament results (TCEC)

Main Seasons:

SeasonDateWinnerRunner-UpSuperfinal score
TCEC Season 1Dec 2010 – Feb 2011Houdini 1.5aRybka 4.0+ 12 = 23 - 5
TCEC Season 2Feb – Apr 2011Houdini 1.5aRybka 4.1+ 9 = 26 -5
TCEC Season 3Apr – May 2011N/A (season not completed)
TCEC Season 41Jan – May 2013Houdini 3Stockfish 250413+ 6 = 38 - 4
TCEC Season 52Aug – Dec 2013Komodo 1142Stockfish 191113+ 10 = 30 - 8
TCEC Season 6Feb – May 2014Stockfish 170514Komodo 7x+ 13 = 45 - 6
TCEC Season 73Sep – Dec 2014Komodo 1333Stockfish 141214+ 7 = 53 - 4
TCEC Season 8Aug – Nov 2015Komodo 9.3xStockfish 021115+ 9 = 89 - 2
TCEC Season 9May – Dec 2016Stockfish 8Houdini 5+ 17 = 75 - 8
TCEC Season 10Oct – Dec 2017Houdini 6.03Komodo 1970.00+ 15 = 76 - 9
TCEC Season 114Jan – Apr 2018Stockfish 260318Houdini 6.03+ 20 = 78 - 2
TCEC Season 124Apr – July 2018Stockfish 180614Komodo 12.1.1+ 29 = 62 - 9
TCEC Season 134Aug 2018 - in progress[11]In progress Oct 2018; Finalists are Stockfish and Komodo

Other TCEC tournaments:

SeasonDateWinnerRunner-Up
TCEC Season 6 FRC5June – July 2014Stockfish 260614Houdini 4
TCEC Season 9 Rapid6September 2016Houdini 200716Komodo 1692.19
TCEC Season 10 RapidDecember 2017Stockfish 051117Houdini 6.03
TCEC Season 10 BlitzDecember 2017Komodo 1959.00Stockfish 051117
TCEC Season 13 Cup7October 2018In progress
1 Originally named "nTCEC Season 1".
2 Originally named "nTCEC Season 2".
3 Season 7 did not use endgame table bases at all and Stage two did not use opening books either.
4 League format.
5 Special Chess960 quad-round-robin tournament consisting of the top 8 engines that had support for Chess960.
6 Double round robin tournament.
7 Knockout tournament, with 8 game Rapid matches and tiebreaks if necessary

Notable games

Shredder vs Gull, TCEC S4
abcdefgh
8
b8 black king
e7 white rook
b6 black pawn
a5 black pawn
c5 black pawn
g5 black pawn
a4 black queen
b4 black knight
c4 white bishop
d4 black knight
g4 white queen
h4 black pawn
f3 white pawn
b2 white pawn
b1 white king
8
77
66
55
44
33
22
11
abcdefgh
Shredder (White) is on the brink of being checkmated, but found the defensive resource 46. Bb3 Nxb3 47. Qf4+ gxf4 48. Rb7+ Kc8 49. Rc7+ Kd8, etc. If Black captures the white rook, it is stalemate.[12][13][14]
Season numberDate and game title infoWhiteBlackResultNotes (material calculations excluding king)Source/s
Pre TCEC27 September 2010 (Match 3, Game 3 of Round 23, Game of the Month 1)StockfishHoudini1-0Taking the knight results in eventual mate or taking the queen results in a pawn, knight, bishop each for black vs a knight and rook each plus 3 pawns[15]
1 August 2010 (Tournament 1, Game 3 of Round 1, Game of the Month 2)ShredderNaum0-1The final position is a simple case of not being able to stop all the opponents passed pawns[16]
26 November 2018 (Tournament 5, Game 3 of Round 8, Game of the Month 3)HoudiniRybka1-0Checkmate will happen soon[17]
128 January 2011 (Elite Match, Round 1 of Game 1)RybkaHoudini0-1Houdini sacrifices three pawns for piece activity and defeats the reigning computer chess champion Rybka in this game, popularly dubbed as the "Houdini Immortal".[18][19]
221 April 2011 (Elite Match, Game 2 of Round 19)HoudiniRybka1-0Houdini exploits minor inaccuracies by Rybka with a sacrifice.[20]
425 March 2013 (Stage 2b, Game 3 of Round 14)ShredderGull1/2-1/2Shredder pulls off a save, at the brink of defeat.[12][13][14]
521 October 2013 (Elite Match, Game 2 of Round 19)GullKomodo0-1Though a rook vs 3 pawns + 1 bishoo = 5 points against 6, the pawns are storming to promotion[21]
November 3 2013 (Stage 3, Game 4 of Round 17)StockfishHoudini0-1Thanks to its heavy depth-oriented search, out-calculates Houdini, and wins the game.[22]
6April 10 2014 (Stage 3, Game 1 of Round 1)HoudiniStockfish1-0As black, the link suggests Qa7 but leads to a position about 25 moves later where white basically can do a king vs queen mate (however there is another passed pawn, which can be eventually used as a 2nd queen in a 2 queen electrical fence checkmate)[23]
914 November 2016 (Superfinal Game 15 - only 1 round)StockfishHoudini1-0Houdini 5 sacrifices its Queen but still loses to Stockfish[24]

References

  1. ↑ Kosteniuk, Alexandra (August 15, 2013). "TCEC Computer Chess Championship New Season starts August 26th". Chess News Blog. Archived from the original on October 25, 2013. Retrieved October 25, 2013.
  2. ↑ Soltis, Andy (June 9, 2013). "Engine Super Bowl". New York Post. Retrieved October 25, 2013.
  3. ↑ Thoresen, Martin (May 28, 2011). "TCEC announcement: End of project". Talkchess. Archived from the original on October 25, 2013. Retrieved October 25, 2013.
  4. ↑ Thoresen, Martin (January 12, 2013). "Official (re)launch of TCEC - website is up!". Talkchess. Archived from the original on October 25, 2013. Retrieved October 25, 2013.
  5. ↑ Video annotation by Kingscrusher on YouTube
  6. ↑ Monokroussos, Dennis. "Houdini 1.5a defeats Rybka 4: 23.5-16.5". Retrieved 25 October 2013.
  7. ↑ Thoresen, Martin (August 15, 2013). "TCEC and Chessdom announces partnership". TCEC. Archived from the original on October 12, 2013. Retrieved October 25, 2013.
  8. ↑ "TCEC computer chess championship New Season starts August 26th". Chessdom. Chessdom. August 15, 2013. Retrieved October 25, 2013.
  9. ↑ Until season 13, all engines ran on the same hardware; however in season 13 the entrance of two neural network engines caused TCEC to use different hardware for the two types of engines. "TCEC Season 13 – the advance of the NNs". Chessdom. 2 August 2018.
  10. ↑ http://blog.chabris.com/2015/01/martin-thoresens-world-chess.html
  11. ↑ "Link to Chess24's live page for TCEC S13 Premier division (finished)". Retrieved 29 September 2018.
  12. 1 2 The game on chessgames.com
  13. 1 2 "Shredder - Gull, Stage 2b: Stupendous Stalemate Swindle". Archived from the original on 25 October 2013. Retrieved 25 October 2013.
  14. 1 2 "A defensive brilliancy". Archived from the original on 28 October 2013. Retrieved 27 October 2013.
  15. ↑ "Notable game from Pre TCEC". Retrieved 29 September 2018.
  16. ↑ "Notable game from Pre TCEC". Retrieved 29 September 2018.
  17. ↑ "Notable game from Pre TCEC". Retrieved 29 September 2018.
  18. ↑ The immortal game on chessgames.com
  19. ↑ Annotated by FM Dennis Monokroussos at TCEC
  20. ↑ Annotated by GM Ioannis Papadopoulos at TCEC
  21. ↑ "Notable game from Season 5". Retrieved 29 September 2018.
  22. ↑ Annotated by GM Ioannis Papadopoulos at TCEC
  23. ↑ "Notable game from Season 5". Retrieved 29 September 2018.
  24. ↑ "SPECIAL EDITION Why Houdini 5 sacrificed his Queen? Superfinal Game 15 TCEC 2016". Youtube. Retrieved 6 December 2016.

Sources

  • "TCEC Season 8 – complete information". chessdom.com. August 18, 2015. Retrieved October 9, 2015.
  • Perez-Franco, Roberto (January 15, 2014). "DIGITAL CHESS REVIEW: One chess champion per laptop". The Tech. 133 (62). Retrieved February 2, 2014.
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