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.

Since season 5, TCEC has been sponsored by Chessdom Arena.[5][6] The current TCEC champion is Stockfish 20210113, which defeated LCZero 0.27.0d by a score of 53-47 in the TCEC Season 20 Superfinal 100-game match, which took place January 16 - February 1, 2021.

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[7] 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 an 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".[8] 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). Season not completed.
4Same as Season 3 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 - 145 divisions (labelled 4, 3, 2, 1, and Premier) of 8 engines each. Top 2 of each division promote, bottom 2 relegate; top 2 of Premier play the superfinal. Seasons 13 and 14 also had a cup, which were a 5-round single elimination tournament.[9]

Tournament results (TCEC)

Main seasons
SeasonDateWinnerverRunner-UpverSuperfinal score
TCEC Season 1Dec 2010 – Feb 2011Houdini1.5aRybka4.0+ 12 = 23 - 5
TCEC Season 2Feb – Apr 2011Houdini1.5aRybka4.1+ 9 = 26 - 5
TCEC Season 3Apr – May 2011N/A (season not completed)
TCEC Season 41Jan – May 2013Houdini3Stockfish250413+ 6 = 38 - 4
TCEC Season 52Aug – Dec 2013Komodo1142Stockfish191113+ 10 = 30 - 8
TCEC Season 6Feb – May 2014Stockfish170514Komodo7x+ 13 = 45 - 6
TCEC Season 73Sep – Dec 2014Komodo1333Stockfish141214+ 7 = 53 - 4
TCEC Season 8Aug – Nov 2015Komodo9.3xStockfish021115+ 9 = 89 - 2
TCEC Season 9May – Dec 2016Stockfish8Houdini5+ 17 = 75 - 8
TCEC Season 10Oct – Dec 2017Houdini6.03Komodo1970.00+ 15 = 76 - 9
TCEC Season 114Jan – Apr 2018Stockfish260318Houdini6.03+ 20 = 78 - 2
TCEC Season 124Apr – Jul 2018Stockfish180614Komodo12.1.1+ 29 = 62 - 9
TCEC Season 134Aug – Nov 2018Stockfish18102108Komodo2155.00+ 16 = 78 - 6
TCEC Season 144Nov 2018 – Feb 2019Stockfish190203LCZerov0.20.2-32930+ 10 = 81 - 9
TCEC Season 154Mar – May 2019LCZerov0.21.1-nT40.T8.610Stockfish19050918+ 14 = 79 - 7
TCEC Season 164Jul – Oct 2019Stockfish19092522AllieSteinv0.5-dev_7b41f8c-n11+ 14 = 81 - 5
TCEC Season 174Jan – Apr 2020LCZerov0.24-sv-t60-3010Stockfish20200407+ 17 = 71 - 12
TCEC Season 184May 2020 – Jul 2020Stockfish202006170741LCZerov0.25.1-svjio-t60-3972-mlh+ 23 = 61 - 16
TCEC Season 194Aug 2020 – Oct 2020Stockfish202009282242_nn-baeb9ef2d183LCZerov0.26.3-rc1_T60.SV.JH.92-190+ 18 = 73 - 9
TCEC Season 204Dec 2020 – Feb 2021Stockfish20210113LCZero0.27.0d-Tilps-dje-magic_JH.94-100+ 14 = 78 - 8

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 Cup 17October 2018Stockfish 270918Houdini 6.03
TCEC Cup 27January 2019LCZero v0.20.1-32742Houdini 6.03
TCEC Cup 37May 2019LCZero v0.21.1-nT40.T6.532Stockfish 19042711
TCEC Cup 47October 2019Stockfish 19100908LCZero v0.22.0-nT2
TCEC Cup 58April 2020Stockfish 202004181536LCZero v0.24-sv-t60-3010
TCEC Cup 68July 2020AllieStein v0.7_dev2-net_15.0LCZero v0.26.0_sv-t60-4229-mlh_opt2
TCEC Cup 78November 2020Stockfish 2020102823_nn-2eb2e0707c2bLCZero v0.26.3_T60.SV.JH.92-270
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.
8 Knockout tournament, with 4-game Rapid matches and tiebreaks if necessary.

Statistics

All-time table for champions after TCEC Season 15

[10]

Rank Engine Participations Games W D L W (%) D (%) L (%) Pts Avg Pts Finals Trophies
1 Stockfish 15 1771 484 1161 126 27.33 65.56 7.11 1064.5 0.601 15 9
2 Houdini 15 1264 316 805 143 25 63.69 11.31 718.5 0.568 6 4
3 Komodo 15 1412 366 908 138 25.92 64.31 9.77 820 0.581 7 3
4 LCZero 5 452 107 292 53 23.67 64.60 11.73 253 0.560 4 2

Notable games

Shredder vs Gull, TCEC S4
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8
8
77
66
55
44
33
22
11
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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.[11][12][13]
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[14]
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[15]
26 November 2010 (Tournament 5, Game 3 of Round 8, Game of the Month 3)HoudiniRybka1-0Checkmate will happen soon[16]
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".[17][18]
221 April 2011 (Elite Match, Game 2 of Round 19)HoudiniRybka1-0Houdini exploits minor inaccuracies by Rybka with a sacrifice.[19]
425 March 2013 (Stage 2b, Game 3 of Round 14)ShredderGull1/2-1/2Shredder, on the brink of being checkmated, pulls off a miraculous escape.[11][12][13]
521 October 2013 (Elite Match, Game 2 of Round 19)GullKomodo0-1Though a rook vs 3 pawns + 1 bishop = 5 points against 6, the pawns are storming to promotion[20]
November 3, 2013 (Stage 3, Game 4 of Round 17)HoudiniStockfish0-1Thanks to its heavy depth-oriented search, Stockfish out-calculates Houdini, and wins the game.[21]
6April 10, 2014 (Stage 3, Game 1 of Round 1)KomodoStockfish1-0As 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)[22]

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. Thoresen, Martin (August 15, 2013). "TCEC and Chessdom announces partnership". TCEC. Archived from the original on October 12, 2013. Retrieved October 25, 2013.
  6. "TCEC computer chess championship New Season starts August 26th". Chessdom. Chessdom. August 15, 2013. Retrieved October 25, 2013.
  7. 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.
  8. Chabris, Christopher. "Martin Thoresen's World Chess Championship".
  9. "Announcing TCEC Cup 2018 | Chessdom".
  10. "TCEC - Live Chess Broadcast". www.tcec-chess.com.
  11. "Shredder (Computer) vs Gull (Computer) (2013) UnBb3vable!". www.chessgames.com.
  12. "Shredder - Gull, Stage 2b: Stupendous Stalemate Swindle". Archived from the original on 25 October 2013. Retrieved 25 October 2013.
  13. "A defensive brilliancy". Archived from the original on 28 October 2013. Retrieved 27 October 2013.
  14. "Notable game from Pre TCEC". Retrieved 29 September 2018.
  15. "Notable game from Pre TCEC". Retrieved 29 September 2018.
  16. "Notable game from Pre TCEC". Retrieved 29 September 2018.
  17. "Rybka (Computer) vs Houdini (Computer) (2011) The Amazing Houdini". www.chessgames.com.
  18. Annotated by FM Dennis Monokroussos at TCEC
  19. Annotated by GM Ioannis Papadopoulos at TCEC
  20. "Notable game from Season 5". Retrieved 29 September 2018.
  21. Annotated by GM Ioannis Papadopoulos at TCEC
  22. "Notable game from Season 5". Retrieved 29 September 2018.

Sources
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