TCEC Season 9 is Underway
Even though no one is actually playing chess in the Top Chess Engines Championship (formerly known as the Thoresen Chess Engines Competition), strictly speaking, it is reasonable on another level to view it as the real world chess championship, as the best engines - currently the latest versions of Komodo and Stockfish - spit out moves at what would be a 3300+ rating clip if they came from the minds of mortal men. As such, the games are of interest, even if they are not always as accessible as battles between humans. (Which are themselves sometimes relatively inaccessible, both because of the strength of the strongest humans, and because their ideas are often the product of a collaboration with chess engines.)
The event, which will last several months, starts with a field of 32 engines who will be whittled down, step by step, to a final between Komodo and Stockfish the two survivors of the three preliminary stages. (More details here.) As I've already suggested twice, Komodo and Stockfish are significant favorites to reach the final for the fifth time in the last six seasons, but perhaps Houdini will break up the party. The current version of Houdini is quite old - it came out in late 2013 - but its programmer, Robert Houdart, has promised that a new version will come out at some point during the competition. As TCEC rules allow switches to upgraded versions after each stage (assuming the engine in question has qualified for the next stage), Houdart still has a fair amount of time to make his improvements before the start of Stage 3.
(HT: Howard Sample, for reminding me that the event had started.)