Top Chess Engine Championship


Top Chess Engine Championship, formerly known as Thoresen Chess Engines Competition , 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.
After a short break in 2012, TCEC was restarted in early 2013 and is currently active with 24/7 live broadcasts of chess matches on its website.
Since season 5, TCEC has been sponsored by Chessdom Arena. The current TCEC champion is Stockfish 202006170741, which defeated LCZero v0.25.1-svjio-t60-3972-mlh by a score of 53.5-46.5 in the TCEC Season 18 Superfinal 100-game match ending 3 Jul 2020.

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 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; the top 2 engines in each division are promoted, and the bottom 2 are relegated. Currently, there are 5 divisions ; newcomers generally start in division 4.

Engine settings/characteristics

is set to off. All engines run on mostly the same hardware 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. If an engine crashes 3 times in one event, it is disqualified to avoid distorting the results for the other engines. 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 from various rating lists. 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". However, Shredder's developers have declined to enter it in the competition. Usually chess engines that support multiprocessor mode are preferred. Both Winboard and UCI engines are supported.

Structure by season

Season numberStructure
Pre TCEC3 matches followed by 2 tournaments then alternating between match and tournament until there were 6 tournaments and 5 matches
13 division followed by elite match
2Same as Season 1 but with 6 divisions
32 stages. Season not completed.
4Same as Season 3 but with 4 more tournaments
54 stages followed by a superfinal
6Same as Season 5 but stage 1 was stage 1a through c and a Chess960 tournament after the superfinal
7Same as Season 6 but no stage 1c nor tournament after the superfinal
8Same as Season 7 but no stage 4
9Same as Season 8 but between the stage tournaments and superfinal was a rapid tournament
102 stages then superfinal then 2 other tournaments
11 - 145 divisions of 8 engines each. Top 2 of each division promote, bottom 2 relegate; top 2 of Premier play the superfinal. Seasons 13 and 14 also had a cup, which were a 5-round single elimination tournament.

Tournament results (TCEC)

Main seasons

Other TCEC tournaments

SeasonDateWinnerRunner-Up
TCEC Season 6 FRC5June – July 2014Stockfish 260614Houdini 4
TCEC Season 9 Rapid6September 2016Houdini 200716Komodo 1692.19
TCEC Season 10 RapidDecember 2017Stockfish 051117Houdini 6.03
TCEC Season 10 BlitzDecember 2017Komodo 1959.00Stockfish 051117
TCEC Cup 17October 2018Stockfish 270918Houdini 6.03
TCEC Cup 27January 2019LCZero v0.20.1-32742Houdini 6.03
TCEC Cup 37May 2019LCZero v0.21.1-nT40.T6.532Stockfish 19042711
TCEC Cup 47October 2019Stockfish 19100908LCZero v0.22.0-nT2
TCEC Cup 58April 2020Stockfish 202004181536LCZero v0.24-sv-t60-3010
TCEC Cup 68July 2020AllieStein v0.7_dev2-net_15.0LCZero v0.26.0_sv-t60-4229-mlh_opt2

Statistics

All-time table for champions after TCEC Season 15

RankEngineParticipationsGamesWDLW D L PtsAvg PtsFinalsTrophies
1Stockfish151771484116112627.3365.567.111064.50.601148
2Houdini1512643168051432563.6911.31718.50.56864
3Komodo15141236690813825.9264.319.778200.58173
4LCZero44521072925323.6764.6011.732530.56042

Notable games

Season numberDate and game title infoWhiteBlackResultNotes Source/s
Pre TCEC27 September 2010 StockfishHoudini1-0Taking the knight results in eventual mate or taking the queen results in a pawn, knight, bishop each for black vs a knight and rook each plus 3 pawns
Pre TCEC1 August 2010 ShredderNaum0-1The final position is a simple case of not being able to stop all the opponents passed pawns
Pre TCEC26 November 2010 HoudiniRybka1-0Checkmate will happen soon
128 January 2011 RybkaHoudini0-1Houdini sacrifices three pawns for piece activity and defeats the reigning computer chess champion Rybka in this game, popularly dubbed as the "Houdini Immortal".
221 April 2011 HoudiniRybka1-0Houdini exploits minor inaccuracies by Rybka with a sacrifice.
425 March 2013 ShredderGull1/2-1/2Shredder, on the brink of being checkmated, pulls off a miraculous escape.
521 October 2013 GullKomodo0-1Though a rook vs 3 pawns + 1 bishop = 5 points against 6, the pawns are storming to promotion
5November 3, 2013 HoudiniStockfish0-1Thanks to its heavy depth-oriented search, Stockfish out-calculates Houdini, and wins the game.
6April 10, 2014 KomodoStockfish1-0As black, the link suggests Qa7 but leads to a position about 25 moves later where white basically can do a king vs queen mate