|
Top Chess Engine Championship
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. The tournament has attracted nearly all the top engines compared to the World Computer Chess Championship. After a short break in 2012, TCEC was restarted in early 2013 (as ''nTCEC'') 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. Overview Basic structure of competition The TCEC competition is divided into seasons, where each season happens over a cour ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Computer Chess
Computer chess includes both hardware (dedicated computers) and software capable of playing chess. Computer chess provides opportunities for players to practice even in the absence of human opponents, and also provides opportunities for analysis, entertainment and training. Computer chess applications that play at the level of a chess master or higher are available on hardware from supercomputers to smart phones. Standalone chess-playing machines are also available. Stockfish, GNU Chess, Fruit, and other free open source applications are available for various platforms. Computer chess applications, whether implemented in hardware or software, utilize different strategies than humans to choose their moves: they use heuristic methods to build, search and evaluate trees representing sequences of moves from the current position and attempt to execute the best such sequence during play. Such trees are typically quite large, thousands to millions of nodes. The computational speed ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
TCEC Season 14
The 14th season of the Top Chess Engine Championship took place between 17 November 2018 and 24 February 2019. Stockfish was the defending champion, having defeated Komodo in the previous season's superfinal. The season is notable for two things: the emergence of two strong, new engines, the Komodo variant Komodo Monte Carlo tree search (MCTS) and the neural network engine Leela Chess Zero, and the dramatic superfinal. Komodo MCTS and Leela fought their way from Division 4 and Division 3 respectively to the Premier Division, with Leela further qualifying for the superfinal against Stockfish. The superfinal was a topsy-turvy affair with the lead changing hands several times. It finished as the closest superfinal TCEC has ever seen, with Stockfish winning by a single game, 50.5–49.5 (+10 =81 -9). Overview Structure The season comprised five divisions: from the lowest Division 4 to the Premier Division. The top two engines of each division promote to the division above, while the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Computer Chess
Computer chess includes both hardware (dedicated computers) and software capable of playing chess. Computer chess provides opportunities for players to practice even in the absence of human opponents, and also provides opportunities for analysis, entertainment and training. Computer chess applications that play at the level of a chess master or higher are available on hardware from supercomputers to smart phones. Standalone chess-playing machines are also available. Stockfish, GNU Chess, Fruit, and other free open source applications are available for various platforms. Computer chess applications, whether implemented in hardware or software, utilize different strategies than humans to choose their moves: they use heuristic methods to build, search and evaluate trees representing sequences of moves from the current position and attempt to execute the best such sequence during play. Such trees are typically quite large, thousands to millions of nodes. The computational speed ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chess Engine
In computer chess, a chess engine is a computer program that analyzes chess or chess variant positions, and generates a move or list of moves that it regards as strongest. A chess engine is usually a back end with a command-line interface with no graphics or windowing. Engines are usually used with a front end, a windowed graphical user interface such as Chessbase or WinBoard that the user can interact with via a keyboard, mouse or touchscreen. This allows the user to play against multiple engines without learning a new user interface for each, and allows different engines to play against each other. Many chess engines are now available for mobile phones and tablets, making them even more accessible. History The meaning of the term "chess engine" has evolved over time. In 1986, Linda and Tony Scherzer entered their program Bebe into the 4th World Computer Chess Championship, running it on "Chess Engine," their brand name for the chess computer hardware made, and markete ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fast Chess
Fast chess, also known as Speed chess, is a type of chess in which each player is given less time to consider their moves than normal tournament time controls allow. Fast chess is subdivided, by decreasing time controls, into rapid chess, blitz chess, and bullet chess. Armageddon chess is a particular variation of fast chess in which different rules apply for each of the two players. The top ranked 2021 world rapid chess player is Magnus Carlsen from Norway, who is also the top ranked classical chess player. The top ranked blitz chess player at the beginning of 2022 is Hikaru Nakamura. The top ranked 2021 women's rapid and blitz chess player is Hou Yifan from China, who is also the top ranked women's classical chess player. FIDE rules The World Chess Federation (FIDE) divides time controls for chess into "classical" time controls, and the fast chess time controls. , for master-level players (with an Elo of 2200 or higher) the regulations state that at least 120 minutes per ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chess960
Fischer random chess, also known as Chess960 (often read in this context as 'chess nine-sixty' instead of 'chess nine hundred sixty'), is a variation of the game of chess invented by the former world chess champion Bobby Fischer. Fischer announced this variation on June 19, 1996, in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Fischer random chess employs the same board and pieces as classical chess, but the starting position of the pieces on the players' is randomized, following certain rules. The random setup makes gaining an advantage through the memorization of openings impracticable; players instead must rely more on their skill and creativity . Randomizing the main pieces had long been known as shuffle chess, but Fischer random chess introduces new rules for the initial random setup, "preserving the dynamic nature of the game by retaining for each player and the right to castle for both sides". The result is 960 unique possible starting positions. In 2008, FIDE added Chess960 to an app ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chess
Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to distinguish it from related games, such as xiangqi (Chinese chess) and shogi (Japanese chess). The recorded history of chess goes back at least to the emergence of a similar game, chaturanga, in seventh-century India. The rules of chess as we know them today emerged in Europe at the end of the 15th century, with standardization and universal acceptance by the end of the 19th century. Today, chess is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide. Chess is an abstract strategy game that involves no hidden information and no use of dice or cards. It is played on a chessboard with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. At the start, each player controls sixteen pieces: one king, one queen, two rooks, t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
TCEC Season 20
The 20th season of the Top Chess Engine Championship began on 1 December 2020 and ended on 1 February 2021. The defending champion was Stockfish, which defeated Leela Chess Zero in the previous season's superfinal. The season 20 superfinal was a rematch between the same two engines. Stockfish once again came out ahead, winning by 6 games (+14 -8 =78). Overview TCEC underwent some major changes for season 20. There were a plethora of new engines participating in the Qualification League for the first time. Furthermore, two major new rules changes went into effect: # Engines are no longer disqualified if they crash three times, although crashes are still treated as losses. # The "TCEC win rule", which stated that games are adjudicated as won if both engines showed a +10 eval or greater for 5 consecutive moves, is abolished. Instead, games are played till mate, 3-fold repetition, the 50-move rule is reached, a Syzygy 6-piece tablebase position is reached, or if the "TCEC draw rule ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
TCEC Season 19
The 19th season of the Top Chess Engine Championship began on 6 August 2020 and ended on 16 October 2020. The season 19 superfinal was a rematch between Stockfish and Leela Chess Zero, the same two engines that had contested the superfinal in the previous two seasons. Stockfish, the defending champion, won by 9 games (+18 -9 =73). Overview The format of TCEC Season 19 is largely unchanged from that of Season 18. The only difference is that the time control in the superfinal is once again 120 minutes + 10 seconds per move, increased from 90 min + 10s in Season 18. The rules are also largely unchanged, with the only significant addition being r-mobility as a tiebreak criterion. This tiebreak depends on the number of legal moves available to both sides in the last phase of the game; the side with the fewer legal moves loses. Tiebreak rules The tiebreak rules for TCEC Season 19 are: #For any event except the superfinal: the number of crashes. #Head-to-head score. #Number of wins. # ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
TCEC Season 18
The 18th season of the Top Chess Engine Championship began on 4 May 2020 and ended on 3 July 2020. The defending champion was Leela Chess Zero, which defeated Stockfish in the previous season's superfinal. The two season 17 superfinalists qualified again for the superfinal. This time Stockfish won, winning by 7 games (+23−16=61). Overview For this season, there are five leagues: the Qualification League (QL), League Three, League Two, League One, and Premier Division. Two engines promote in every league, with the top two engines of the Premier Division contesting a 100-game superfinal. Updates are allowed only between League Three and League Two, between League One and Premier Division, and between Premier Division and the superfinal. In a small change to previous seasons' rules, draw adjudication now occurs if the evaluations of both engines are within +/− 0.15 for five consecutive moves, after move 35. This increases the threshold of evaluation compared to +/− 0.08 for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
TCEC Season 17
The 17th season of the Top Chess Engine Championship began on 2 January 2020 and ended on 22 April 2020. TCEC Season 16 3rd-place finisher Leela Chess Zero won the championship, defeating the defending champion Stockfish 52.5-47.5 in the superfinal. Season 17 featured for the first time two separate leagues, one for GPU-based engines and one for CPU-based engines. TCEC also raised the computing power available to both CPU and GPU engines. The hardware for CPU engines was doubled to 88 cores, while the hardware for GPU engines was raised to 4 RTX 2080 Ti's. Overview In keeping with its identity as a competition run at long time controls on high-end hardware, TCEC secured a hardware upgrade for the competing CPU engines. Among other changes, the number of cores available is doubled from 44 to 88, the operating system used is now Linux, and Syzygy endgame tablebases are now cached directly in the RAM for faster access. Because this upgrade advantages CPU engines compared to GPU en ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
AllieStein
Leela Chess Zero (abbreviated as LCZero, lc0) is a free, open-source, and deep neural network–based chess engine and volunteer computing project. Development has been spearheaded by programmer Gary Linscott, who is also a developer for the Stockfish chess engine. Leela Chess Zero was adapted from the Leela Zero Go engine, which in turn was based on Google's AlphaGo Zero project. One of the purposes of Leela Chess Zero was to verify the methods in the AlphaZero paper as applied to the game of chess. Like Leela Zero and AlphaGo Zero, Leela Chess Zero starts with no intrinsic chess-specific knowledge other than the basic rules of the game. Leela Chess Zero then learns how to play chess by reinforcement learning from repeated self-play, using a distributed computing network coordinated at the Leela Chess Zero website. As of December 2022, Leela Chess Zero has played over 1.5 billion games against itself, playing around 1 million games every day, and is capable of play at a lev ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
