Top Chess Engine Championship Explained

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

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]

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.[7]

Engine settings/characteristics

Pondering is set to off. All engines run on mostly the same hardware[8] 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 any number of times without being disqualified from the current event, although the engine will still be disqualified from future events unless the crash is fixed.[9] 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. [10]

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".[11] 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

The number within the brackets denote the number of times the engine has won the particular competition.

TCEC Seasons

Season Date TCEC Grand Champion Elite match/Superfinal scoreRunner-Up
TCEC Season 1 Dec 2010 – Feb 2011 Houdini (1)1+ 12 = 23 - 5
TCEC Season 2 Feb – Apr 2011 Houdini (2)+ 9 = 26 - 5Rybka
TCEC Season 3 Apr – May 2011 colspan="5"
TCEC Season 42 Jan – May 2013 Houdini (3)+ 6 = 38 - 4
TCEC Season 53 Aug – Dec 2013 Komodo (1) + 10 = 30 - 8Stockfish
TCEC Season 6 Feb – May 2014 Stockfish (1) + 13 = 45 - 6Komodo
TCEC Season 74 Sep – Dec 2014 Komodo (2) + 7 = 53 - 4Stockfish
TCEC Season 8 Aug – Nov 2015 Komodo (3) + 9 = 89 - 2Stockfish
TCEC Season 9 May – Dec 2016 Stockfish (2) + 17 = 75 - 8Houdini
TCEC Season 10 Oct – Dec 2017 Houdini (4)1+ 15 = 76 - 9Komodo
TCEC Season 11Jan – Apr 2018Stockfish (3)+ 20 = 78 - 2Houdini
TCEC Season 12Apr – Jul 2018Stockfish (4)+ 29 = 62 - 9Komodo
TCEC Season 13Aug – Nov 2018Stockfish (5)+ 16 = 78 - 6Komodo
TCEC Season 14Nov 2018 – Feb 2019Stockfish (6)+ 10 = 81 - 9
TCEC Season 15Mar – May 2019LCZero (1)+ 14 = 79 - 7Stockfish
TCEC Season 16Jul – Oct 2019Stockfish (7)+ 14 = 81 - 5
TCEC Season 17Jan – Apr 2020LCZero (2)+ 17 = 71 - 12Stockfish
TCEC Season 18May – Jul 2020Stockfish (8)+ 23 = 61 - 16LCZero
TCEC Season 19Aug – Oct 2020Stockfish (9)+ 18 = 73 - 9LCZero
TCEC Season 20Dec 2020 – Feb 2021Stockfish (10)+ 14 = 78 - 8LCZero
TCEC Leagues Season 21May – Aug 2021Stockfish (11)+ 19 = 74 - 7LCZero
TCEC Leagues Season 22Jan – Apr 2022Stockfish (12)+ 28 = 63 - 9KomodoDragon
TCEC Leagues Season 23Aug – Nov 2022Stockfish (13)+ 27 = 63 - 10LCZero
TCEC Leagues Season 24Feb – Apr 2023Stockfish (14)+ 20 = 64 - 16LCZero
TCEC Leagues Season 25Aug – Oct 2023Stockfish (15)+ 27 = 50 - 23LCZero
TCEC Leagues Season 26May – Jun 2024Stockfish (16)+ 31 = 52 - 17LCZero

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.[12] [13] [14]

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

Tournament Date Winner Finals scoreRunner-up
TCEC Cup 1 Oct 2018 Stockfish (1) + 1 = 7 - 0Houdini
TCEC Cup 2 Jan 2019 LCZero (1) + 1 = 7 - 0Houdini
TCEC Cup 3 May 2019 LCZero (2) + 2 = 7 - 1Stockfish
TCEC Cup 4 Oct 2019 Stockfish (2) + 1 = 7 - 0LCZero
TCEC Cup 5 Apr 2020 Stockfish (3) + 1 = 3 - 0LCZero
TCEC Cup 6 Jul 2020 AllieStein (1) + 1 = 3 - 0LCZero
TCEC Cup 7 Nov 2020 Stockfish (4) + 1 = 3 - 0LCZero
TCEC Cup 8 Feb 2021 Stockfish (5) + 1 = 7 - 0LCZero
TCEC Cup 9 Oct 2021 Stockfish (6) + 1 = 3 - 0LCZero
TCEC Cup 10 May 2022 Stockfish (7) + 2 = 9 - 1KomodoDragon
TCEC Cup 11 Jan 2023LCZero (3) + 2 = 13 - 1Stockfish
TCEC Cup 12 Jul 2023 Stockfish (8) + 10 = 9 - 9LCZero
TCEC Cup 13 Mar 2024 Stockfish (9) + 4 = 17 - 1LCZero

TCEC Swiss

Tournament Date Winner Runner-up
TCEC Swiss 1 Apr 2021 KomodoDragon (1) Stockfish
TCEC Swiss 2 Nov – Dec 2021 KomodoDragon (2) Stockfish
TCEC Swiss 3 May – Jul 2022 Stockfish (1) LCZero
TCEC Swiss 4 Jan – Feb 2023 Stockfish (2) LCZero, KomodoDragon
TCEC Swiss 5 Jun - Jul 2023 Stockfish (3) LCZero
TCEC Swiss 6 Jan – Feb 2024 LCZero (1) Stockfish

TCEC FRC (Fischer Random Chess)

Tournament Date Winner Final/Superfinal scoreRunner-up
TCEC FRC 1 Oct – Nov 2019 Stockfish (1) + 10 = 10 - 0AllieStein
TCEC FRC 2 Nov 2020 Stockfish (2) + 8 = 42 - 0LCZero
TCEC FRC 3 Mar 2021 KomodoDragon (1) + 2 = 47 - 1Stockfish
TCEC FRC 4 Dec 2021 – Jan 2022 Stockfish (3) + 13 = 28 - 9LCZero
TCEC FRC 5 Jul 2022 Stockfish (4) + 17 = 20 - 13LCZero
TCEC FRC 6 May 2023 Stockfish (5) + 15 = 23 - 12LCZero

TCEC DFRC / FRD (double Fischer Random Chess)

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

Tournament Date Winner Final score Runner-up
TCEC DFRC 1 Jul – Aug 2022 Stockfish (1) + 18 = 23 - 9 LCZero
TCEC DFRC 2 May - Jun 2023 Stockfish (2) + 10 = 33 - 7 LCZero
TCEC FRD 1 Nov - Dec 2023 Stockfish (3) + 11 = 29 - 10 LCZero
TCEC FRD 2 Jun - Jul 2024 Stockfish (4) + 20 = 16 - 14 LCZero

Other TCEC tournaments

Tournament Date Winner Runner-up
Jun – Jul 2014 Stockfish Houdini
TCEC Season 9 Rapid1 Sep 2016 Houdini Komodo
TCEC Season 10 Rapid Dec 2017 Stockfish Houdini
TCEC Season 10 Blitz Dec 2017 Komodo Stockfish
TCEC Season 23 Chess BonusAug 2022Stockfish KomodoDragon
TCEC Season 23 4k Engine Event Dec 2022 ice4 4ku

1 Double round robin tournament.

See also

Sources

External links

Notes and References

  1. Web site: TCEC Computer Chess Championship New Season starts August 26th. Kosteniuk . Alexandra. August 15, 2013. Chess News Blog. October 25, 2013. https://web.archive.org/web/20131025063745/http://www.chessblog.com/2013/08/tcec-computer-chess-championship-new.html. October 25, 2013.
  2. Web site: We Taught Computers To Play Chess — And Then They Left Us Behind. Roeder. Oliver. January 25, 2022. Fivethirtyeight. February 15, 2022.
  3. Web site: TCEC announcement: End of project.. Thoresen. Martin. May 28, 2011. Talkchess. October 25, 2013. https://web.archive.org/web/20131025055429/http://talkchess.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=39217&highlight=tcec. October 25, 2013.
  4. Web site: Official (re)launch of TCEC - website is up!. Thoresen. Martin. January 12, 2013. Talkchess. October 25, 2013. https://web.archive.org/web/20131025061102/http://talkchess.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=46861&highlight=tcec. October 25, 2013.
  5. Web site: TCEC and Chessdom announces partnership. Thoresen. Martin. August 15, 2013 . TCEC. October 25, 2013. https://web.archive.org/web/20131012014936/http://www.tcec-chess.net/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=161. October 12, 2013.
  6. Web site: TCEC computer chess championship New Season starts August 26th. Chessdom. August 15, 2013 . Chessdom. October 25, 2013.
  7. Web site: Announcing TCEC Cup 2018 | Chessdom.
  8. 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. Web site: TCEC Season 13 – the advance of the NNs. Chessdom. 2 August 2018.
  9. Web site: TCEC Leagues Season Rules, 15.Crashes.
  10. Web site: Rules . TCEC Wiki.
  11. Web site: Martin Thoresen's World Chess Championship. Christopher. Chabris.
  12. Web site: Open Source Community Critical Of Chessbase, Fat Fritz 2. chess.com. 25 February 2021.
  13. Web site: ChessBase's Fat Fritz 2 condemned as 'rip-off' Stockfish clone. chess24. 22 February 2021.
  14. Web site: Engines and authors - TCEC wiki.