TCEC Season 20 Superfinal; Guess Who?
Wednesday, January 27, 2021 at 6:10PM
Dennis Monokroussos in Lc0, Stockfish, TCEC Season 20

The "real" world chess championship is underway (unless you think that no competition where AlphaZero is missing could count as a "real" or "absolute" world championship; in that case, think of this as a Candidates' tournament), and for the 10th straight season and the 16th season of the last 17 Stockfish is a finalist. Its opponent - for the fourth straight season and sixth of the last seven - is LCZero ("Leela Chess Zero"). Komodo remains the #3 engine, while Houdini hasn't been (publicly) updated in more than three years, and has metaphorically fallen off the face of the Earth.

So, Stockfish and Lc0 it is, and while they usually do a pretty good of beating up on each other, this season's superfinal is looking a bit more like a correspondence chess tournament. Stockfish is up by a point after 73 of 100 games, having won six to Leela's five games. All victories have come with the white pieces, and there have been 62 draws - and it looks like it will be 63 very soon. Catch all the "action" here.

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