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.
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 score
Runner-up
TCEC Cup 1
Oct 2018
Stockfish 270918 (1)
+ 1 = 7 - 0
Houdini 6.03
TCEC Cup 2
Jan 2019
LCZero v0.20.1-32742 (1)
+ 1 = 7 - 0
Houdini 6.03
TCEC Cup 3
May 2019
LCZero v0.21.1-nT40.T6.532 (2)
+ 2 = 7 - 1
Stockfish 19042711
TCEC Cup 4
Oct 2019
Stockfish 19100908 (2)
+ 1 = 7 - 0
LCZero v0.22.0-nT2
TCEC Cup 5
Apr 2020
Stockfish 202004181536 (3)
+ 1 = 3 - 0
LCZero v0.24-sv-t60-3010
TCEC Cup 6
Jul 2020
AllieStein v0.7_dev2-net_15.0 (1)
+ 1 = 3 - 0
LCZero v0.26.0_sv-t60-4229-mlh_opt2
TCEC Cup 7
Nov 2020
Stockfish 2020102823_nn-2eb2e0707c2b (4)
+ 1 = 3 - 0
LCZero v0.26.3_T60.SV.JH.92-270
TCEC Cup 8
Feb 2021
Stockfish 202102202249 (5)
+ 1 = 7 - 0
LCZero 0.27.0-pr1509_JH.94-100
TCEC Cup 9
Oct 2021
Stockfish dev15_20211015 (6)
+ 1 = 3 - 0
LCZero 0.28-dev+_609958
TCEC Cup 10
May 2022
Stockfish dev16_2022051413 (7)
+ 2 = 9 - 1
KomodoDragon 3
TCEC Cup 11
Jan 2023
LCZero 0.30-dag-dcb4ece9-BT2-3250000 (3)
+ 2 = 13 - 1
Stockfish dev16_202301021914
TCEC Cup 12
Jul 2023
Stockfish dev-20230713 (8)
+ 10 = 9 - 9
LCZero 0.31-dag-dd64c7e-T1
TCEC Cup 13
Mar 2024
Stockfish dev-20240217 (9)
+ 4 = 17 - 1
LCZero 0.31-dag-5c1051f-BT4
TCEC Swiss
Tournament
Date
Winner
Runner-up
TCEC Swiss 1
Apr 2021
KomodoDragon 2679.08 (1)
Stockfish 20210310
TCEC Swiss 2
Nov – Dec 2021
KomodoDragon 2.5.1 (2)
Stockfish 14.1_20211101
TCEC Swiss 3
May – Jul 2022
Stockfish dev16_20220521 (1)
LCZero 0.30-dev+_783363
TCEC Swiss 4
Jan – Feb 2023
Stockfish dev-20230114 (2)
LCZero 0.30-dag-6b5f9451, KomodoDragon 3.2
TCEC Swiss 5
Jun - Jul 2023
Stockfish dev-20230614 (3)
LCZero 0.31-dag-dd64c7e-T1
TCEC Swiss 6
Jan – Feb 2024
LCZero 0.31-dag-a487796-BT3 (1)
Stockfish dev-20240114
TCEC FRC (Fischer Random Chess)
Tournament
Date
Winner
Final/Superfinal score
Runner-up
TCEC FRC 1
Oct – Nov 2019
Stockfish 191107 (1)
+ 10 = 10 - 0
AllieStein v0.5_c328142-n11.1
TCEC FRC 2
Nov 2020
Stockfish 202011101829_nn-c3ca321c51c9 (2)
+ 8 = 42 - 0
LCZero v0.26.3_T60.SV.JH.92-330
TCEC FRC 3
Mar 2021
KomodoDragon 2671.00 (1)
+ 2 = 47 - 1
Stockfish 20210226
TCEC FRC 4
Dec 2021 – Jan 2022
Stockfish dev15_2021121915 (3)
+ 13 = 28 - 9
LCZero 0.29-dev+_610826
TCEC FRC 5
Jul 2022
Stockfish dev16_20220705 (4)
+ 17 = 20 - 13
LCZero 0.30-dag-bord_784038
TCEC FRC 6
May 2023
Stockfish dev-20230507 (5)
+ 15 = 23 - 12
LCZero 0.31-dag-1f90473-T1
TCEC DFRC / FRD (double Fischer Random Chess)
In DFRC / FRD, the start positions of the pieces are randomized independently for both players.
^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. "TCEC Season 13 – the advance of the NNs". Chessdom. 2 August 2018.