TCEC Season #19 Superfinal: Stockfish and LCZero (again); Stockfish Leading After 74 (of 100) Games
Monday, October 12, 2020 at 1:49AM
Dennis Monokroussos in Lc0, Stockfish, TCEC Season 19

Stockfish and Leela Chess Zero have been dominating computer chess for some time now, as Houdini hasn't been updated in something like three years and Komodo has fallen off the pace, and after briefly being surpassed by LC0 Stockfish has reasserted its usual supremacy of late. This trend has held up in the ongoing 100-game Superfinal matchup of Season 19 of the Top Chess Engine Competition (TCEC), with Stockfish leading 39-35.

Impressively, Leela had only one unavenged win, (a win with one color that in a particular line - generally with White - that wasn't avenged by the other engine in the next game, where it had White in the same variation); Stockfish had five.

Both engines won with White in the idiotic line 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.e5 Ng8?, with 2.Bg5 against the Dutch, on the white side of a mainline Taimanov(!), on the white side of the Keres Attack (6.g4) vs. the Scheveningen, with White in a King's Gambit - don't get excited here - where Black plays the terrible 2...Qf6, and with White in a Classical Rauzer with 6...Qb6.

Leela's unavenged win was on the white side of a Queen's Indian with 4.g3, while Stockfish was the sole winner - as with all the other games, with and only with White - in the following lines: the Keres Attack vs. the Scheveningen (here Black met it with 6...h6; in the games mentioned in the preceding paragraph Black played 6...Nc6), against the English Defense (by transposition), a Classical King's Indian with 7...Nbd7, Alekhine's Defense, and an open Slav with 5...Na6.

Game 75 is underway, with the engines forced to play the position after 1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.e5 Bf5 4.Nf3 e6 5.c3 Nd7 6.Be2 Ne7 7.0-0 h6 8.Nbd2 Qc7 9.Re1 0-0-0. I would not recommend this line to anyone shopping for opening ideas for Black, and would not be surprised to see one or two white wins coming up here.

Article originally appeared on The Chess Mind (http://www.thechessmind.net/).
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