Top Chess Engine Championship – Wikipedia

Top Chess Engine Championship formerly known as Thoresen Chess Engines Competition (TCEC or nTCEC) is a computer chess tournament that 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 first TCEC was in 2010. 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 all-day live broadcasts of chess matches on its website. Supported by original engine authors and based on voluntarism and donation, it caused a furor in February 2011, when the free version of Houdini defeated reigning computer chess champion Rybka in a 40-game match.[5][6]

The current season of TCEC is sponsored by Chessdom Arena.[7][8]. The current TCEC champion is Stockfish 8, which defeated Houdini 5 in the TCEC Season 9 Superfinal 100-game match held in November - December 2016.[9]

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 4 qualifying stages and 1 Superfinal, where the top two chess engines battle it out over a series of 64 games to win the title of TCEC Grand Champion.

The time control in all events is 120+30 (120 minutes + 30 seconds added per move for the whole game) and pondering is set to off. The Opening Book is taken from recent strong human Grandmaster tournaments, is truncated to the first 6 or 8 moves, and is changed in every Stage. Engines are allowed updates between stages, unless there is a critical play-limiting bug, in which case the engine are allowed to be updated once during the stage. 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.

There is no definite criterium for entering into the competition, other than inviting the top participants from various rating lists. The list of participants is personally chosen by Thoresen before the start of any new season. His stated goal is to include "every major engine that is not a direct clone".[10] Usually chess engines that support multiprocessor mode are preferred (8-cores or higher). Both Winboard and UCI engines are supported. Large pages are disabled but access to various endgame tablebases is permitted.

A game can be drawn by threefold repetition or fifty-move rule. However, a game can also be drawn at move 40 or later if the eval from both playing engines are within +0.05 to -0.05 pawns for the last five moves, or ten plies. If there is a pawn advance or a capture, this special draw rule resets and starts over. On the website, this rule shows as "Distance in plies to TCEC draw rule". It adjudicates as won for one side if both playing engines have an evaluation of at least 6.50 pawns (or -6.50 in case of a black win) for four consecutive moves, or eight plies - this rule is in effect as soon as the game starts. The GUI also adjudicates tablebase endgame positions (with 5-men or less) automatically.

N.B.: tablebases were disabled for all engines for the whole of Season 7.[10]

Shredder vs Gull, TCEC S4

Pre-TCEC:

Season 1-3:

Season 4:

Season 5:

Season 6:

Season 9:

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Top Chess Engine Championship - Wikipedia