Tcec 2267

The 17th season of the Top Chess Engine Championship began on 2 January 2020 and ended on 22 April 2020. TCEC Season 16 3rd-place finisher Leela Chess
Zero won the championship, defeating the defending champion Stockfish 52.5-47.5 in the superfinal.[1]

Season 17 featured for the first time two separate leagues, one for GPU-based engines and one for CPU-based engines. TCEC also raised the computing power
available to both CPU and GPU engines. The hardware for CPU engines was doubled to 88 cores, while the hardware for GPU engines was raised to 4 RTX 2080
Ti's.[2]

Contents

 1Overview
o 1.1Structure

 2Results

o 2.1CPU Qualification League

o 2.2CPU League Two

o 2.3CPU League One

o 2.4GPU league

o 2.5Playoff

o 2.6Premier Division

o 2.7Superfinal

o 2.8Notable games

 2.8.1Game 1

 2.8.2Game 3

 2.8.3Game 6

 2.8.4Game 14

 2.8.5Game 21

 2.8.6Game 33

 2.8.7Game 40

 2.8.8Game 61

 2.8.9Game 66

 2.8.10Game 95

 2.8.11Game 96

 3External links

 4References
Overview[edit]
In keeping with its identity as a competition run at long time controls on high-end hardware, [3][4] TCEC secured a hardware upgrade for the competing CPU engines.
[5]
 Among other changes, the number of cores available is doubled from 44 to 88, the operating system used is now Linux, and Syzygy endgame tablebases are
now cached directly in the RAM for faster access. Because this upgrade advantages CPU engines compared to GPU engines, TCEC split the qualification paths to
Premier Division by introducing separate leagues for CPU and GPU engines. While an upgrade to the GPU servers is being secured, the CPU leagues are played
first.

Structure[edit]
For CPU engines, there will first be a Qualification League consisting of 16 engines, followed by League 2 (16 engines) and League 1 (16 engines). In the
Qualification League the top 6 engines promote. In League 2 the top 4 engines promote. The engines in each league are seeded based on their performances in
previous seasons. For GPU engines, there will be one league only, with up to 16 competitors. The top 2 GPU engines will then contest a playoff against the top 4
CPU engines in League 1, with the four highest-placing engines promoting to Premier Division.

Premier Division is also expanded from 8 engines to 10. Six engines – Stockfish, Komodo, Houdini, Leela Chess Zero, AllieStein, and Stoofvlees – are seeded
directly to Premier Division, based on their top 6 finishes in the previous season. Finally, the top two engines in Premier Division qualify for the 100-game
superfinal match.

Results[edit]
CPU Qualification League[edit]
After not competing for five seasons, Season 11 Div 3 engine Defenchess trailblazed the qualification league. It scored 18 wins while conceding no losses,
finishing 3.5 points clear at the top. It was the only undefeated engine. Demolito and Winter also locked up two of the promotion spots smoothly, but the remaining
three slots were closely contested. Among the competitors, Igel was the only engine to not lose to Defenchess and Demolito, but it lost to bottom-half engines
FabChess and Topple. Comparatively, iCE was whitewashed by Defenchess and Igel, but it turned in a strong performance against its other rivals, losing only one
other game to Winter. Pirarucu went through a tense moment when it lost to Winter in the penultimate round; however, it pulled out a win with Black against Topple
to promote. 7th-placed Minic was in a promotion spot all the way up to the final round, when it lost to Gogobello while iCE beat Counter. This left the two tied at
17.5 points. Minic had the better Sonneborn–Berger score, but it also had one crash, and the number of crashes was the first tiebreak. Nonetheless, in a stroke of
good fortune for Minic (and 8th-placed PeSTO), the League Two engines chess22k and Fritz crashed three times during testing for the division. By TCEC rules, if
this happened, the author(s) would have to update the engine or it is disqualified. chess22k's and Fritz's authors were not able to update the engines in time,
resulting in Minic and PeSTO promoting as lucky losers.[6][7]

Pos Engine Pld W D L Pts Qualification

1 Defenchess 30 18 12 0 24

2 Demolito 30 12 17 1 20.5

3 Winter 30 14 12 4 20

Advance to League Two

4 Pirarucu 30 10 16 4 18

5 Igel 30 10 16 4 18

6 iCE 30 10 15 5 17.5

7 Minic 30 10 15 5 17.5

Advance to League Two (see text)

8 PeSTO 30 8 17 5 16.5
 9 Marvin 30 8 16 6 16

10 Gogobello 30 8 14 8 15

11 Topple 30 8 12 10 14

12 Counter 30 4 12 14 10

13 FabChess 30 3 14 13 10

14 Tucano 30 4 9 17 8.5

15 Asymptote 30 2 13 15 8.5

16 Cheese 30 2 8 20 6

Source: [1]

CPU League Two[edit]

Former Premier Division engine Fire won League Two. It had been relegated in the previous season because its developer had submitted a drastically different
neural network-based version that turned out to be significantly weaker. This season, the original, traditional engine played, and it dominated with an undefeated
22/28 (16 wins and 12 draws). It defeated seven engines, including fourth-place Vajolet, 2–0. Second-placed Defenchess also turned in a strong performance,
finishing with an undefeated 20.5/28 (13 wins and 15 draws). For the other promoted engines, Winter and PeSTO performed surprisingly well, comfortably
finishing above their peers in 7th and 8th respectively. The remaining five promoted engines occupied the bottom five spots and were all relegated along with
Wasp (which crashed three times).

After the division concluded, in a repeat of testing for League Two, four League One engines either pulled out or did not run on the new Linux operating system,
resulting in the 5th-8th placed engines in League Two promoting.[7]