Stockfish Wins TCEC 13 Superfinal, 55-45

Stockfish has won yet another TCEC, but the margin is closer than what we saw in the last two TCEC Superfinals. Stockfish beat Houdini 59-41 in season 11 and beat Komodo 60-40 a few months ago, so Komodo's "only" losing by 10 games this time is an improvement. Stockfish achieved 14 of its 16 victories with the white pieces, while Komodo scored five of its six wins with White.

The TCEC homepage is showing random silliness at the moment, so the best way to access the games from the Superfinal is via the TCEC archive page, here.

Sunday Summary: TCEC Cup, Shankland-Svidler, Isle of Man Int'l

One event came to an end today, another one started, one is ongoing and another one begins tomorrow. All the chess action a fan can stand, and then some.

1. TCEC Cup. The 8-game finale between Stockfish and Houdini was close. The first six games were drawn, and then Stockfish won a miniature. Houdini didn't manage anything serious in the rematch (the openings are in pairs, giving each engine a chance to have White in the same line), and when it finished in a draw Stockfish once again proved the strongest "pound-for-pound" program. (I'm excluding Alpha Zero, which used hardware that vastly exceeded anything Stockfish had in their match last December.)

Right now they're playing some nonsense games on the site, making Stockfish play 1.e4 e5 2.Ke2 against other top engines, but at some point tomorrow (Monday) the TCEC 13 Final between Stockfish and Komodo will get underway.

2. Shankland-Svidler. Sam Shankland won a nice game in the opener of his six-game match with Peter Svidler. About a week ago Svidler looked like a significant favorite, but after his mostly disastrous European Club Cup and his loss in this game, it's hard to say who's the favorite. And as it turns out, Shankland has just passed Svidler on the live rating list. (Regardless of what happens in this match, it's still too soon to think that Shankland has surpassed Svidler as a chess player, but he's still an impressive player on the way up. At 27, he's a bit older than the usual rising star, but if we focus on his trajectory instead of his age there's reason to think he could still move quite a ways up the rating list.) On the undercard match between Vladimir Fedoseev and Jorden Van Foreest, game 1 ended in a draw.

3. Isle of Man International. The 2700 crowd had an even tougher day today, though they generally managed to avoid the worst outcome. On board 1 Levon Aronian was losing two moves before the end to the brilliantly named Dennis Wagner, but Wagner's 51.Ka3?? was the wrong way to protect the a-pawn. Moving either rook to g4 would have kept a winning position; instead, he resigned after Black's 52nd move. Viswanathan Anand only managed to draw against Robert Hess with the white pieces - and that was an achievement, as he was worse almost throughout and losing for a while too. Other 2700s were nipped for draws as well, and some high-2600s lost, but as far as I can tell no 2700s lost. However, while most of the 2700s who were nipped for draws in round 1 bounced back with wins today, two didn't: Vladimir Kramnik, who failed to defeat Alina Kashlinskaya (who drew with Anish Giri in round 1!); and Michael Adams, who drew with Irina Bulmaga.

Click here for Stockfish's win over Houdini and Shankland's win over Svidler, with my light commentary.

Saturday Summary, Sans Svidler-Shankland, Starting Sunday

I guess the supposed starting date for the Svidler-Shankland match was based on the opening ceremony. They'll start playing tomorrow (Sunday).

There was plenty of action elsewhere though. First, let's get the computer action out of the way: Lc0 is still the chess entity of the future. Stockfish beat it 4.5-2.5 in one final, and in the other semi Houdini beat Komodo 4.5-3.5. Stockfish will beat Houdini tomorrow (Sunday) in the final of the TCEC Cup.

Now for the main event, round 1 of the Isle of Man International. Of the 82 games in round 1, only one saw the lower-rated player beat the favorite, and that was all the way down on board 68. But when we change the subject and talk about draws, it's a very different story. Despite gaps from nearly 300 points to slightly over 400, 20 players managed to draw their heavily favored opponents. Sticking only to 2700+ players, Anish Giri, Vladimir Kramnik, Wesley So, Hikaru Nakamura, Radoslaw Wojtaszek, Richard Rapport, Le Quang Liem, Michael Adams, and Zoltan Almasi were all held to draws. Some of them were losing or much worse (Kramnik, So, Wojtaszek, Rapport) and had to eke out the draw, while others (Kramnik again, Rapport again, Adams) were winning or at least much better before their opponents saved themselves.

Worse still for the top players, this was their supposedly easy round. In round 2 the top players are already facing mid-to-high 2500s, and it's only going to get tougher from there. This will be an entertaining event.

The Final Four, TCEC-Style

This is not the main TCEC event, but I like the format of the TCEC Cup, a 30' + 10" knockout event that's down the final four. Very unsurprisingly, the semi-finalists are Stockfish, Lc0 (Leela), Houdini, and Komodo. The first semi is underway, featuring the first pair.

All the matches in the event are best-of-eight, with pairs of tiebreak games played if necessary. Stockfish has demolished its opponents so far while Lc0 has squeaked through its matches (scroll down the page linked above to see the brackets), but sooner or later one assumes Lc0 will devour all the conventional programs. Has that time come yet? Probably not, but we'll see.

Stockfish Wins TCEC Season 12 Superfinal over Komodo, 60-40

It started off competitively, but it didn't end that way. Stockfish 180614 (i.e. the June 14, 2018 development version) drubbed Komodo 12.1.1 by a 60-40 score, 29-9 in decisive games to take the TCEC season 12 title. (All the games from this season, and previous seasons as well, can be found and downloaded from here.)

Stockfish is still the engine to beat - at least among those running on the sorts of hardware we "regular" people have access to. Congrats to the Stockfish developers, and thanks to them for keeping it free!

Komodo 12 Available

I'm not shilling for them, and probably shouldn't even write these posts. But I feel bad for people who have bought a one-year subscription for the Komodo engine and never get notified when they make the latest upgrade available, so here's your notice: Komodo 12 was released a week or so ago.

How will it fare against Stockfish and Houdini? We should get a glimpse fairly soon, as the penultimate preliminary stage of TCEC Season 12 is around 2/3 finished.

The Pounding Ends: Stockfish Beats Houdini 59-41 in the TCEC Season 11 Superfinal

That's 20-2 in decisive games. One of Houdini's two wins came in the revenge game for a 3...Be7 Tarrasch French, so one can blame that on the opening, and the other win was a 95-move win on the white side of a Dutch...so you can also blame that one on the opening. (No doubt the Stockfish programmers have been hard at work figuring out how they didn't manage to win their white game against the Dutch.)

Those were Houdini's high points, all two of them. Stockfish won 20 games, 13 with White and an impressive 7 with Black. (My two favorites were games 31, its white win in the 3...Be7 Tarrasch French; and game 81, which bore a little resemblance to the sorts of games it lost to Alpha Zero a few months back.) There were many other games where Stockfish had the upper hand, and it wasn't clear whether Houdini would manage to save them. So as convincing as the victory was, it could have been even worse.

Congratulations to the Stockfish team, and I hope Houdini's programmer Robert Houdart doesn't wait a year or two to make improvements, but springs back into action as soon as real life permits. (Likewise, I hope the Komodo team makes some big improvements as well.) Stockfish is doing great, but if they don't feel any pressure they might slacken the pace.

TCEC home page.

TCEC archives (the games can be downloaded from here).

Stockfish home page.

Stockfish *Really* Pounding Houdini in the TCEC Season 11 Superfinal

This is amazing: in the last 10 games, Stockfish has won six, three with each color, and is crushing Houdini 19.5-10.5 in the TCEC Season 11 Superfinal. At the moment, Stockfish is in a class by itself.

TCEC Superfinal: Stockfish Pounding Houdini

Three cheers for open source software, as Stockfish is clubbing Houdini so far with an undefeated 14.5-9.5 lead. 76 games remain in the TCEC Season 11 Superfinal.

Stockfish vs. Houdini in the TCEC 11 Superfinal

The coming match between Magnus Carlsen vs. Fabiano Caruana wasn't the only world championship final set this week; the unofficial but de facto world computer chess championship finalists have been set as well. The latest development version of Stockfish came in first in the last of the preliminary stages of the Top Chess Engine Championship, scoring 61/84 and finishing with a plus score against all the other engines. It lost a game to Komodo in the first cycle (on the black side of a Botvinnik System, which is an eminently loseable line for any finite entity lacking access to a massive opening book); it eventually avenged itself twice over. It also defeated the runner-up, Houdini, in a single game, drawing the rest. The other five engines were obliterated by Stockfish.

As for Houdini, it also performed well. It came in clear second with 54.5 points, losing only the one game to Stockfish and beating Komodo three times. Houdini and Stockfish will face off in the Superfinal starting sometime on Thursday.

Komodo was the odd engine out, scoring 51.5 points. In addition to its losses to its main competitors, it also lost a game to one of the other engines - to Andscacs. (Which is not to say that it had a minus score to it - Komodo beat it six times in the other 11 games.)

In fourth place was Fire with 42.5, barely achieving a plus score, and the next engine down was Chiron with 36. Andscacs scored 35, Fizbo 31, and Ginkgo came in last with 24.5. 

By my (possibly slightly inaccurate) count, the big three beat the bottom five 83-1 in decisive games. Seriously, TCEC people, it's time for a three engine or four engine final.