Overview1

Basic structure of competition[edit]

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,
and beginning in season 21 in 2021, the season was expanded to include a Cup, a Swiss
tournament, and a Fischer Random Chess tournament.

Engine settings/characteristics[edit]
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. 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. [8] 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.

Overview[edit]
Basic structure of competition[edit]
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,
and beginning in season 21 in 2021, the season was expanded to include a Cup, a Swiss
tournament, and a Fischer Random Chess tournament.

Engine settings/characteristics[edit]
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. 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. [8] 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.