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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] |
Stockfish (chess)
Stockfish is a free and open-source chess engine, available for various desktop and mobile platforms. It can be used in chess software through the Universal Chess Interface. Stockfish has consistently ranked first or near the top of most chess-engine rating lists and, as of October 2022, is the strongest CPU chess engine in the world. It has won the Top Chess Engine Championship 13 times and the Chess.com Computer Chess Championship 19 times. Stockfish is developed by Marco Costalba, Joona Kiiski, Gary Linscott, Tord Romstad, Stéphane Nicolet, Stefan Geschwentner, and Joost VandeVondele, with many contributions from a community of open-source developers. It is derived from Glaurung, an open-source engine by Tord Romstad released in 2004. Features Stockfish can use up to 1024 CPU threads in multiprocessor systems. The maximal size of its transposition table is 32 TB. Stockfish implements an advanced alpha–beta search and uses bitboards. Compared to other engines, it is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Endgame Tablebase
An endgame tablebase is a computerized database that contains precalculated exhaustive analysis of chess endgame positions. It is typically used by a computer chess engine during play, or by a human or computer that is retrospectively analysing a game that has already been played. The tablebase contains the game-theoretical value (win, loss, or draw) in each possible position, and how many moves it would take to achieve that result with perfect play. Thus, the tablebase acts as an oracle, always providing the optimal moves. Typically the database records each possible position with certain pieces remaining on the board, and the best moves with White to move and with Black to move. Tablebases are generated by retrograde analysis, working backward from a checkmated position. By 2005, all chess positions with up to six pieces, including the two kings, had been solved. By August 2012, tablebases had solved chess for almost every position with up to seven pieces, but the positio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
2018 In Chess
Major chess events that took place in 2018 included the Candidates Tournament, won by Fabiano Caruana, who earned the right to challenge Magnus Carlsen in the World Chess Championship 2018. Magnus Carlsen won the match on tiebreaks and retained the title of World Chess Champion. There were two Women's World Chess Championship events; the first a match held in May between Ju Wenjun and Tan Zhongyi, won by Ju Wenjun, and the second, held in November, a 64-player knockout tournament where Ju Wenjun defended her title. 2018 tournaments This is a list of 15 significant 2018 chess tournaments: Transfer Deaths * Robert Abbott (2 March 1933 – 20 February 2018), American game designer and chess variant creator. * Peggy Clarke (29 October 1937 – 15 September 2018), British Women's Champion in 1966. * Roberto Luis Debarnot (5 August 1947 – 25 May 2018), Argentine International Master and three-time Olympian. * Győző Forintos (30 July 1935 – 5 December 2018), Hungar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
AlphaZero
AlphaZero is a computer program developed by artificial intelligence research company DeepMind to master the games of chess, shogi and go. This algorithm uses an approach similar to AlphaGo Zero. On December 5, 2017, the DeepMind team released a preprint introducing AlphaZero, which within 24 hours of training achieved a superhuman level of play in these three games by defeating world-champion programs Stockfish, elmo, and the three-day version of AlphaGo Zero. In each case it made use of custom tensor processing units (TPUs) that the Google programs were optimized to use. AlphaZero was trained solely via self-play using 5,000 first-generation TPUs to generate the games and 64 second-generation TPUs to train the neural networks, all in parallel, with no access to opening books or endgame tables. After four hours of training, DeepMind estimated AlphaZero was playing chess at a higher Elo rating than Stockfish 8; after nine hours of training, the algorithm defeated Stockf ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hedgehog (chess)
The Hedgehog is a pawn formation in chess adopted usually by Black that can arise from several openings. Black exchanges the pawn on c5 for White's pawn on d4, and then places pawns on the squares a6, b6, d6, and e6. These pawns form a row of "spines" behind which Black their forces. Typically, the bishops are placed on b7 and e7, knights on d7 and f6, queen on c7, and rooks on c8 and e8 (or c8 and d8). Although Black's position is cramped, it has great latent energy, which may be released if Black is able to play ...b5 or ...d5 at some point. These pawn breaks are particularly effective because White usually places pawns on c4 and e4 (the Maróczy Bind). Black manoeuvring Once the basic Hedgehog structure is in place, and depending on how White responds, Black has various ways of reorganizing their pieces. The knight on d7 often hops to c5, where it attacks a white pawn on e4; or to e5, where it attacks a pawn on c4. The knight on f6 can go to e8 (when Black placed their roo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
English Opening
The English Opening is a chess opening that begins with the move: :1. c4 A flank opening, it is the fourth most popular and, according to various databases, one of the four most successful of White's twenty possible first moves. White begins the fight for the by staking a claim to the d5-square from the wing, in hypermodern style. Although many lines of the English have a distinct character, the opening is often used as a transpositional device in much the same way as 1.Nf3 – to avoid such highly regarded responses to 1.d4 as the Nimzo-Indian and Grünfeld Defences — and is considered reliable and flexible. The English derives its name from the leading 19th century English master Howard Staunton, who played it during his 1843 match with Saint-Amant and at London 1851, the first international tournament. It did not inspire Staunton's contemporaries and caught on only in the twentieth century. It is now recognised as a opening that may be used to reach both classical an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Budapest Gambit
The Budapest Gambit (or Budapest Defence) is a chess opening that begins with the moves: :1. d4 Nf6 :2. c4 e5 Despite an early debut in 1896, the Budapest Gambit received attention from leading players only after a win as Black by Grandmaster Milan Vidmar over Akiba Rubinstein in 1918. It enjoyed a rise in popularity in the early 1920s, but nowadays is rarely played at the top level. It experiences a lower percentage of draws than other main lines, but also a lower overall performance for Black. After 3.dxe5 Black can try the ''Fajarowicz variation'' 3...Ne4 which concentrates on the rapid development of pieces, but the most common move is 3...Ng4 with three main possibilities for White. The ''Adler variation'' 4.Nf3 sees White seeking a in the with his pieces, notably the important d5-square. The ''Alekhine variation'' 4.e4 gives White an important spatial advantage and a strong . The ''Rubinstein variation'' 4.Bf4 leads to an important choice for White, after 4...Nc6 5. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
ICGA Journal
The ''ICGA Journal'' is a quarterly academic journal published by the International Computer Games Association. It was renamed in 2000. Its previous name was the ''ICCA Journal'' of the International Computer Chess Association, which was founded in 1977. The journal covers computer analysis on two-player games, especially games with perfect information such as chess, checkers, and Go. It has been the primary outlet for publication of articles on solved games, including the development of endgame tablebases in chess and other games. For example, John W. Romein and Henri E. Bal reported in the journal in 2002 that they had solved Awari and, in 2015, David J. Wu reported his solution for the Arimaa Challenge.{{cite journal , first=David J. , last=Wu , year=2015 , title=Designing a Winning Arimaa Program , journal=ICGA Journal , volume=38 , number=1 , pages=19–40 , doi=10.3233/ICG-2015-38104 , url=https://icosahedral.net/downloads/djwu2015arimaa.pdf From 1983 till 2015 ''ICGA Jou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Matthew Sadler
Matthew David Sadler (born 15 May 1974) is an English chess grandmaster, chess writer and two-time British Chess Champion. He is the No. 2 ranked English player Personal life Sadler has a French mother, speaks French perfectly and is also qualified to play in closed French events. He was tipped to reach the heights scaled by other leading English players as Michael Adams and Nigel Short but made the decision to cease playing professionally in his mid 20s, opting for an IT career in the Netherlands. Chess career Sadler won the British Championship in 1995 at the age of 21 and again in 1997 (jointly with Michael Adams). He represented England in the 1996 Chess Olympiad, scoring 10½/13 and winning a gold medal for the best score on board four (England finished fourth), and also played in 1998 scoring 7½/12. He made 7/9 on board four for England at the European Team Chess Championship in Pula in 1997. His was the best individual score of the five-man English team and so ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Houdini (chess)
Houdini is a UCI chess engine developed by Belgian programmer Robert Houdart. It is influenced by open-source engines IPPOLIT/RobboLito, Stockfish, and Crafty. Versions up to 1.5a are available for non-commercial use, while 2.0 and later are commercial only. Playing style Chess commentator and video annotator CM Tryfon Gavriel compared Houdini's playing style to that of the Romantic Era of chess, where an attacking, sacrificial style was predominant. According to Robert Houdart, Houdini's advantage against other top engines is in its handling of piece mobility, which is why it "favors aggressive play that tries to win the game". Version history The latest stable release of Houdini comes in two versions: ''Houdini 6 Standard'' and ''Houdini 6 Pro''. ''Houdini 6 Pro'' supports up to 128 processor cores, 128 GB of RAM (hash) and is NUMA-aware, ''Houdini 5 Standard'' only supports up to 8 processor cores, 4 GB of hash and is not NUMA-aware. As with many other UCI eng ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leela Chess Zero
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] |
Fritz (chess)
Fritz is a German chess program originally developed for Chessbase by Frans Morsch based on his Quest program, ported to DOS, and then Windows by Mathias Feist. With version 13, Morsch retired, and his engine was first replaced by Gyula Horvath's Pandix, and then with Fritz 15, Vasik Rajlich's Rybka. The latest version of the consumer product is Fritz 18 Neuronal. This version supports 64-bit hardware and multiprocessing by default. History In 1991, the German company ChessBase approached the Dutch chess programmer Frans Morsch about writing a chess engine to add to the database program which they sold. Morsch adapted his ''Quest'' program, and ChessBase released it for sale that year as ''Knightstalker'' in the U.S. and Fritz throughout the rest of the world. In 1995, ''Fritz 3'' won the World Computer Chess Championship in Hong Kong, beating an early version of ''Deep Blue''. This was the first time that a program running on a consumer-level microcomputer defeated the mainf ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
