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][3] The tournament has attracted nearly all the top engines compared to the World Computer Chess Championship.

After a short break in 2012,[4] TCEC was restarted in early 2013 (as nTCEC)[5] 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.[6][7]

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 tournaments: a Leagues Season, a Cup, a Swiss tournament, a Fischer Random Chess tournament. Additionally, seasons contain various bonus contests, like the 'Viewer Submitted Opening Bonus'.

Prior to season 21, there was originally one tournament in each season. This tournament consisted of several qualifying stages and one "superfinal", and the winner of the superfinal is called the "TCEC Grand Champion" until the next season. Prior to season 11, the tournament used a cup format, while starting in Season 11, the tournament used a division system. Starting in season 13, there was also a cup tournament consisting of the top 32 engines in the main tournament, resulting in a 5-round single elimination tournament.[8]

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. In previous seasons, if an engine crashes 3 times in one event, it is disqualified to avoid distorting the results for the other engines; however starting in TCEC Season 20, an engine is allowed to crash as many times as possible without being disqualified from the current event; however, the engine will still be disqualified from future events unless the crash is fixed.[10] 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 under active development from various rating lists which can run on their Linux platform. Originally, TCEC used Windows instead of Linux. In addition, either XBoard or UCI protocol are required to participate. [11]

Usually chess engines that support multiprocessor mode are preferred (8-cores or higher), and engines in active development are given preference. Since TCEC 12, engines like LCZero which use GPUs for neural processing were supported.

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".[12] In TCEC 13, DeusX was banned due to being a clone of Leela, and in TCEC 20, Houdini, Fire, Rybka (engine in Fritz up to TCEC 16), and Critter were banned due to allegations of plagiarism.

Tournament results

TCEC Seasons
SeasonDateTCEC Grand ChampionElite match/Superfinal scoreRunner-Up
TCEC Season 1Dec 2010 – Feb 2011Houdini 1.5a (1)1+ 12 = 23 - 5Rybka 4.0
TCEC Season 2Feb – Apr 2011Houdini 1.5a (2)+ 9 = 26 - 5Rybka 4.1
TCEC Season 3Apr – May 2011N/A (season not completed)
TCEC Season 42Jan – May 2013Houdini 3 (3)+ 6 = 38 - 4Stockfish 250413
TCEC Season 53Aug – Dec 2013Komodo 1142 (1)+ 10 = 30 - 8Stockfish 191113
TCEC Season 6Feb – May 2014Stockfish 170514 (1)+ 13 = 45 - 6Komodo 7x
TCEC Season 74Sep – Dec 2014Komodo 1333 (2)+ 7 = 53 - 4Stockfish 141214
TCEC Season 8Aug – Nov 2015Komodo 9.3x (3)+ 9 = 89 - 2Stockfish 021115
TCEC Season 9May – Dec 2016Stockfish 8 (2)+ 17 = 75 - 8Houdini 5
TCEC Season 10Oct – Dec 2017Houdini 6.03 (4)1+ 15 = 76 - 9Komodo 1970.00
TCEC Season 11 Jan – Apr 2018 Stockfish 260318 (3) + 20 = 78 - 2 Houdini 6.03
TCEC Season 12 Apr – Jul 2018 Stockfish 180614 (4) + 29 = 62 - 9 Komodo 12.1.1
TCEC Season 13 Aug – Nov 2018 Stockfish 18102108 (5) + 16 = 78 - 6 Komodo 2155.00
TCEC Season 14 Nov 2018 – Feb 2019 Stockfish 190203 (6) + 10 = 81 - 9 LCZero v0.20.2-32930
TCEC Season 15 Mar – May 2019 LCZero v0.21.1-nT40.T8.610 (1) + 14 = 79 - 7 Stockfish 19050918
TCEC Season 16 Jul – Oct 2019 Stockfish 19092522 (7) + 14 = 81 - 5 AllieStein v0.5-dev_7b41f8c-n11
TCEC Season 17 Jan – Apr 2020 LCZero v0.24-sv-t60-3010 (2) + 17 = 71 - 12 Stockfish 20200407DC
TCEC Season 18 May – Jul 2020 Stockfish 202006170741 (8) + 23 = 61 - 16 LCZero v0.25.1-svjio-t60-3972-mlh
TCEC Season 19 Aug – Oct 2020 Stockfish 202009282242_nn-baeb9ef2d183 (9) + 18 = 73 - 9 LCZero v0.26.3-rc1_T60.SV.JH.92-190
TCEC Season 20 Dec 2020 – Feb 2021 Stockfish 20210113 (10) + 14 = 78 - 8 LCZero 0.27.0d-Tilps-dje-magic_JH.94-100
TCEC Leagues Season 21 May – Aug 2021 Stockfish 14_202107131735 (11) + 19 = 74 - 7 LCZero 0.28-dev+_69626
TCEC Leagues Season 22 Jan – Apr 2022 Stockfish dev15_20220401 (12) + 28 = 63 - 9 KomodoDragon 2894.00
TCEC Leagues Season 23 Aug – Nov 2022 Stockfish dev16_20221027 (13) + 27 = 63 - 10 LCZero 0.30-dag-9a9c42d
TCEC Leagues Season 24 Feb – Apr 2023 Stockfish dev-20230409 (14) + 20 = 64 - 16 LCZero 0.30-dag-a9b25c2b
1 Houdini has been disqualified since season 20 and its results in previous seasons, except those of Houdini 4 and earlier versions, have been nullified.[13][14][15]
2 Originally named "nTCEC Season 1".
3 Originally named "nTCEC Season 2".
4 Season 7 did not use endgame table bases at all and Stage two did not use opening books either.

TCEC Cups
TournamentDateWinnerFinals scoreRunner-up
TCEC Cup 1Oct 2018Stockfish 270918 (1)+ 1 = 7 - 0Houdini 6.03
TCEC Cup 2Jan 2019LCZero v0.20.1-32742 (1)+ 1 = 7 - 0Houdini 6.03
TCEC Cup 3May 2019LCZero v0.21.1-nT40.T6.532 (2)+ 2 = 7 - 1Stockfish 19042711
TCEC Cup 4Oct 2019Stockfish 19100908 (2)+ 1 = 7 - 0LCZero v0.22.0-nT2
TCEC Cup 5Apr 2020Stockfish 202004181536 (3)+ 1 = 3 - 0LCZero v0.24-sv-t60-3010
TCEC Cup 6Jul 2020AllieStein v0.7_dev2-net_15.0 (1)+ 1 = 3 - 0LCZero v0.26.0_sv-t60-4229-mlh_opt2
TCEC Cup 7Nov 2020Stockfish 2020102823_nn-2eb2e0707c2b (4)+ 1 = 3 - 0LCZero v0.26.3_T60.SV.JH.92-270
TCEC Cup 8Feb 2021Stockfish 202102202249 (5)+ 1 = 7 - 0LCZero 0.27.0-pr1509_JH.94-100
TCEC Cup 9Oct 2021Stockfish dev15_20211015 (6)+ 1 = 3 - 0LCZero 0.28-dev+_609958
TCEC Cup 10May 2022Stockfish dev16_2022051413 (7)+ 2 = 9 - 1KomodoDragon 3
TCEC Cup 11Jan 2023LCZero 0.30-dag-dcb4ece9-BT2-3250000 (3)+ 2 = 13 - 1Stockfish dev16_202301021914
TCEC Cup 12Jul 2023Stockfish dev-20230713 (8)+ 10 = 9 - 9LCZero 0.31-dag-dd64c7e-T1

TCEC Swiss
TournamentDateWinnerRunner-up
TCEC Swiss 1Apr 2021KomodoDragon 2679.08 (1)Stockfish 20210310
TCEC Swiss 2Nov – Dec 2021KomodoDragon 2.5.1 (2)Stockfish 14.1_20211101
TCEC Swiss 3May – Jul 2022Stockfish dev16_20220521 (1)LCZero 0.30-dev+_783363
TCEC Swiss 4Jan – Feb 2023Stockfish dev-20230114 (2)LCZero 0.30-dag-6b5f9451, KomodoDragon 3.2
TCEC Swiss 5Jun - Jul 2023Stockfish dev-20230614 (3)LCZero 0.31-dag-dd64c7e-T1

TCEC FRC (Fischer Random Chess)
TournamentDateWinnerFinal/Superfinal scoreRunner-up
TCEC FRC 1Oct – Nov 2019Stockfish 191107 (1)+ 10 = 10 - 0AllieStein v0.5_c328142-n11.1
TCEC FRC 2Nov 2020Stockfish 202011101829_nn-c3ca321c51c9 (2)+ 8 = 42 - 0LCZero v0.26.3_T60.SV.JH.92-330
TCEC FRC 3Mar 2021KomodoDragon 2671.00 (1)+ 2 = 47 - 1Stockfish 20210226
TCEC FRC 4Dec 2021 – Jan 2022Stockfish dev15_2021121915 (3)+ 13 = 28 - 9LCZero 0.29-dev+_610826
TCEC FRC 5Jul 2022Stockfish dev16_20220705 (4)+ 17 = 20 - 13LCZero 0.30-dag-bord_784038
TCEC FRC 6May 2023Stockfish dev-20230507 (5)+ 15 = 23 - 12LCZero 0.31-dag-1f90473-T1

TCEC DFRC (double Fischer Random Chess)

In DFRC, the start positions of the pieces are randomized independently for both players.

TournamentDateWinnerFinal scoreRunner-up
TCEC DFRC 1Jul – Aug 2022Stockfish dev16_202207131801 (1)+ 18 = 23 - 9LCZero 0.30-dag-bord-dfrc_784038
TCEC DFRC 2May - Jun 2023Stockfish dev-20230528 (2)+ 10 = 33 - 7LCZero 0.31-dag-590cd9ba-T1

Other TCEC tournaments
TournamentDateWinnerRunner-up
TCEC Season 6 FRCJun – Jul 2014Stockfish 260614Houdini 4
TCEC Season 9 Rapid1Sep 2016Houdini 200716Komodo 1692.19
TCEC Season 10 RapidDec 2017Stockfish 051117Houdini 6.03
TCEC Season 10 BlitzDec 2017Komodo 1959.00Stockfish 051117
TCEC Season 23 Chess Bonus Aug 2022 Stockfish dev16_202208061357 KomodoDragon 3.1
TCEC Season 23 4k Engine EventDec 2022ice4 9e94b824ku 1.0
1 Double round robin tournament.

See also

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. Roeder, Oliver (January 25, 2022). "We Taught Computers To Play Chess — And Then They Left Us Behind". Fivethirtyeight. Retrieved February 15, 2022.
  4. Thoresen, Martin (May 28, 2011). "TCEC announcement: End of project". Talkchess. Archived from the original on October 25, 2013. Retrieved October 25, 2013.
  5. 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.
  6. Thoresen, Martin (August 15, 2013). "TCEC and Chessdom announces partnership". TCEC. Archived from the original on October 12, 2013. Retrieved October 25, 2013.
  7. "TCEC computer chess championship New Season starts August 26th". Chessdom. Chessdom. August 15, 2013. Retrieved October 25, 2013.
  8. "Announcing TCEC Cup 2018 | Chessdom".
  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. "TCEC Leagues Season Rules, 15.Crashes".
  11. "Rules". TCEC Wiki.
  12. Chabris, Christopher. "Martin Thoresen's World Chess Championship".
  13. "Open Source Community Critical Of Chessbase, Fat Fritz 2". chess.com. 25 February 2021.
  14. "ChessBase's Fat Fritz 2 condemned as 'rip-off' Stockfish clone". chess24. 22 February 2021.
  15. "Engines and authors - TCEC wiki".

Sources
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