OpenChess

Posted: **Wed Apr 27, 2011 9:48 pm**

TCEC Stage 1 - Season 3

http://www.tcec-chess.org/stage_1.php

STARTS FRIDAY APRIL 29TH @ 19:00 CEST

Official discussion thread: http://www.tcec-chess.org/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=127
NB: You need to be registered in order to participate or view the discussion on the official site.

For live chat please visit http://chessbomb.com/
NB: Don't pay too much attention to their built-in computer analysis since it's running multi pv which slows it down considerably.

Code: Select all

Participants:
Houdini, Rybka, Ivanhoe, Stockfish, Critter, Naum, Komodo, Shredder
Sjeng, Gull, Spike, Protector, Hiarcs, Spark, Junior, Zappa, Booot
Hannibal, Equinox, Crafty, Scorpio, Bugchess2, Deuterium, Redqueen
Dirty, Rotor, Philou, Francesca, Danasah, Gaviota, Cuckoo, Greko

NB: Engine updates are allowed only until the tournament starts,
and then the engine version numbers will be added.

Info:
CPU: Intel Core i7 980x @ 4198 MHz
MB: Asus Rampage III Gene
RAM: 12 GB Corsair
OS: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
Threads: Up to 6 per engine.
Tournament length: 112 games.
Tournament type: Swiss (starts with the lowest boards each round)
Openings: Randomly selected, per game, from the new TCEC main opening book that currently consists of 468 openings.
This number will be increased later.
All openings are fixed to 10 moves and analyzed by Rybka & Houdini on the TCEC computer for 4 minutes per opening.

Time Control:
90 minutes + 30 seconds added per move for the whole game.

Graphical User Interface:
Type: ChessGUI
Resign: +/- 7.50 eval for 5 moves in a row (both engines)
Draw: An eval of +0.05/-0.05 for 5 moves in a row (both engines - only possible at move 30 or later)
If there is a pawn advance, or a capture by any kind, this draw counter will reset
Ponder: Off
Hash: Max 4096 MB per engine
Endgame tablebases: For any engine using these, all 3-4-5 men are available (Nalimov, Gaviota etc.)
Endgame cache: Up to 256 MB

For complete information on the rules and hardware, see the Information page.

Misc:
Stage 1 kicks off the new season. The top 16 finishers will move on
to stage 2 while the bottom 16 are out of TCEC for this season.

Stage 2 and beyond use the regular TCEC time control of 150' + 30".

Ratings are also implemented now, they will change as the
tournament progresses. The initial ratings are mostly based
on the CEGT 40/20 and CCRL 40/40 lists single CPU lists.

Complete season 1 archive: http://www.tcec-chess.org/archive.php
Complete season 2 archive: http://www.tcec-chess.org/archive.php

For news and updates check the News Forum regularly.

Posted: **Fri Apr 29, 2011 6:18 pm**

Now live!

http://www.tcec-chess.org/stage_1.php

Posted: **Tue May 03, 2011 12:11 pm**

Current World Computer Software Champion Shredder is the first to go 2/2:Around move 25, both were initially indicating Qe4/Qe3/Qg3 with a draw, but then White playing 27. Raf1 seemed to turn the tide. Shredder had expected Qa7 in return with Ne4 to follow and a 0.02 score (upon more than 3min of thinking), but after Qa7 was indeed played by Critter, the score jumped dramatically. Who says there's no horizon effect at LTC?

Posted: **Tue May 03, 2011 10:52 pm**

A lot of excitement from sharp play in this match-up, but now it seems that IvanHoe will also go 2/2:
It seems that moves 26 and 27 were White's main miscues. There might have been some lines with 29. Nb6 and winning the trapped rook, where either Black responds by promoting a pawn, and/or the ensuing Na8 is not realised as trapped until beyond the horizon.

Posted: **Wed May 04, 2011 12:05 am**

In the end, the TCEC Rules had ChessGUI award the win to IvanHoe. It is still unclear whether it is really a win. The SF mainline had 5 queens on the board at various points.
The SF mainline at the end continues: 52. Qd4 Kh3 53. Qh8+ Kg3 54. Qd4 f3 55. Qe5+ Kf2 56. Qd4+ Ke2 57. Qc4+ Ke3 58. Qc3+ Kf4 59. Qd4+ Qe4 60. Qc5 Kg3 61. d6 f2 62. Qg5+ Kf3 63. Qh5+ Ke3 64. Qg5+ Ke2 65. Qh5+ Ke1. Maybe the "auto-resign" feature should be turned off when the resigner has a queen (or 2 rooks). Perhaps someone with a database could say more, but I think "crazy pieces" (leading to stalemate) and unseen perpetuals mean that a score of -8 "could be" wrong about once every 2500 games or so, and maybe actually really affects only 25% of those.

Posted: **Wed May 04, 2011 1:07 am**

Martin’s tournament computer must have one of the best cost/usage ratios around; I’d hate to see his electricity bill. And congratulations to Martin in increasing recognition and consultations on ChessVibes!

Posted: **Wed May 04, 2011 5:10 pm**

MoldyJacket wrote:Martin’s tournament computer must have one of the best cost/usage ratios around; I’d hate to see his electricity bill. And congratulations to Martin in increasing recognition and consultations on ChessVibes!

Thanks.

If you enjoy TCEC there is a donate button on my info page. The money will be spent on buying commercial engines and paying the power bills.

Best,
Martin

Posted: **Fri May 06, 2011 9:26 am**

A tremendous slugfest from the match-up we've come to expect this from, with the evals (and proposed plans) in a material imbalance bouncing to and fro. Stockfish never particularly agreed with either (though over time tending more toward Black), and the ChessBomb discussion was unclear to boot, though most seemed to prefer White for much of it (the perception that Houdini was overevaluating the queen was a common topic).
Both sides thought they were winning by about 0.25 for some time, then Rybka got a bit excited with the d6 push on moves 41-42, which then immediately was seen as evaporating any advantage (it seems that White's pieces were all optimal placed, with nothing more to do, as it were). Houdini then suddenly spiked to -0.98 with Qc1, though it wasn't immediately obvious how to provoke enough weaknesses to beat off White's coordination, and dropped to merely -0.69 after a few moves. Rybka stayed at 0.00 for some time, and at this point one question was whether Black could exploit some sort of zugzwang to force a weakening (recall that Houdini has much better mid-game zugzwang recognition than Rybka). After some King zig-zagging (Kg7-h7-g8-f7), it seems that this occurred upon White's 49. Bf1 (rather than a King shuffle), and within a move Rybka had agreed Black was winning (-0.60), and with Houdini claiming -2.21 the advantage augmented rather quickly. White gave up the Knight for two pawns to yield RRB+5 versus QRB+1, and the heavy material then won the day, with Rybka realising it was -2 upon 54. Rg4+ (the first "real think" [longer than 15s] in a couple of moves). White's King had no home, and it was over rather quickly (though the mop-up was not the swiftest, the result seemed pretty inevitable, with there really no hope for a fortress draw unless Black rashly exchanged down to a drawn QP vs RP(P) or something --- contrarily, keeping the opposite coloured bishops helped the stronger side). There was again an outside question of whether Black could break the fortress at the time of resignation as SF@30s didn't see much progress, though in this case Rybka's score had dropped to -11, and presumably there was some material loss in such a PV.

Posted: **Fri May 06, 2011 6:48 pm**

Thank you BB+ for your very interesting game comments.

After 3 of 7 rounds, Houdini is the only engine perfect so far.

Critter is having a horrible tournament and is in place 28 with 0,5 of 3.
Currently it is playing vs Deuterium in round 4 and needs a win in order
to have a shot at qualifying for stage 2.

Table:

Code: Select all

Engine               Pts   SB Old  Elo       1       2       3       4 

0001 Houdini 1.5a    3.0 4.00 0.0 3217 0025:w+ 0016:w+ 0015:b+ 0002:w* 
0002 Ivanhoe B47cB   2.5 4.75 0.0 3132 0014:w+ 0020:b+ 0004:w= 0001:b* 
0003 Komodo 4165     2.5 3.50 0.0 3020 0026:w+ 0007:w= 0017:b+ 0004:b* 
0004 Shredder 12.0   2.5 3.25 0.0 2993 0019:b+ 0028:w+ 0002:b= 0003:w* 
0005 Stockfish 2.01  2.0 3.50 0.0 3117 0021:b+ 0009:w= 0012:b= 0010:b* 
0006 Naum 4.2        2.0 3.50 0.0 3026 0018:b+ 0008:b= 0010:w= 0011:b* 
0007 Junior 12.5     2.0 3.25 0.0 2946 0023:w+ 0003:b= 0011:w= 0012:w* 
0008 Spark 1.0       2.0 3.00 0.0 2954 0024:b+ 0006:w= 0009:b= 0013:b* 
0009 Hiarcs 13.2     2.0 2.50 0.0 2960 0030:w+ 0005:b= 0008:w= 0014:b* 
0010 Gull 1.2        2.0 2.25 0.0 2972 0027:b= 0022:w+ 0006:b= 0005:w* 
0011 Zappa Mexico II 2.0 2.00 0.0 2901 0022:b= 0027:w+ 0007:b= 0006:w* 
0012 Spike 1.4       2.0 1.75 0.0 2977 0031:w+ 0015:b= 0005:w= 0007:b* 
0013 Hannibal 1.0a   2.0 1.50 0.0 2873 0015:w- 0029:b+ 0024:b+ 0008:w* 
0014 Equinox 0.96y   2.0 0.50 0.0 2869 0002:b- 0031:b+ 0028:w+ 0009:w* 
0015 Rybka 4.1       1.5 3.00 0.0 3146 0013:b+ 0012:w= 0001:w- 0019:w* 
0016 Sjeng c't 2010  1.5 1.25 0.0 2974 0029:w+ 0001:b- 0021:w= 0020:b* 
0017 Scorpio 2.7     1.5 1.25 0.0 2780 0028:b= 0025:b+ 0003:w- 0021:w* 
0018 Bugchess2 1.9   1.5 1.25 0.0 2744 0006:w- 0030:b+ 0020:w= 0022:w* 
0019 Redqueen 0.98   1.5 1.00 0.0 2626 0004:w- 0023:b= 0027:w+ 0015:b* 
0020 Protector 1.4   1.5 0.75 0.0 2951 0032:b+ 0002:w- 0018:b= 0016:w* 
0021 Crafty 23.4     1.5 0.75 0.0 2821 0005:w- 0032:w+ 0016:b= 0017:b* 
0022 Greko 8.0       1.0 1.50 0.0 2500 0011:w= 0010:b- 0023:w= 0018:b* 
0023 Cuckoo 1.1      1.0 1.25 0.0 2540 0007:b- 0019:w= 0022:b= 0025:w* 
0024 Gaviota 0.83    1.0 1.00 0.0 2550 0008:w- 0026:b+ 0013:w- 0027:b* 
0025 Booot 5.1       1.0 0.00 0.0 2869 0001:b- 0017:w- 0031:w+ 0023:b* 
0026 Deuterium 11.01 1.0 0.00 0.0 2621 0003:b- 0024:w- 0032:b+ 0028:b* 
0027 Rotor 0.6       0.5 1.00 0.0 2591 0010:w= 0011:b- 0019:b- 0024:w* 
0028 Critter 1.01    0.5 0.75 0.0 3064 0017:w= 0004:b- 0014:b- 0026:w* 
0029 Dirty 240411    0.5 0.25 0.0 2602 0016:b- 0013:w- 0030:w= 0031:b* 
0030 Danasah 4.6     0.5 0.25 0.0 2558 0009:b- 0018:w- 0029:b= 0032:w* 
0031 Philou 3.51     0.0 0.00 0.0 2572 0012:b- 0014:w- 0025:b- 0029:w* 
0032 Francesca 0.18  0.0 0.00 0.0 2553 0020:w- 0021:b- 0026:w- 0030:b*

Posted: **Sun May 08, 2011 10:09 pm**

Round 4 saw Houdini and Shredder win against IvanHoe and Komodo respectively. The latter game was rather nice, IMO.

How many humans would play Rxe5 at move 30, sacrificing the exchange for a pawn, to be directly followed by a queen exchange? Admittedly, White's pieces are way better, but there's no clear path to an "obvious" advantage from what I can see. Even at move 41 and beyond, I would not personally have been too sure of White's winning chances, but the mass of passed pawns won the day in the end.

OpenChess

TCEC Stage 1 - Season 3 (90m + 30s) LIVE relay! Starts 29/4

TCEC Stage 1 - Season 3 (90m + 30s) LIVE relay! Starts 29/4

Re: TCEC Stage 1 - Season 3 (90m + 30s) LIVE relay! Starts 2

Re: TCEC Stage 1 - Season 3 (90m + 30s) LIVE relay! Starts 2

Re: TCEC Stage 1 - Season 3 (90m + 30s) LIVE relay! Starts 2

Re: TCEC Stage 1 - Season 3 (90m + 30s) LIVE relay! Starts 2

Re: TCEC Stage 1 - Season 3 (90m + 30s) LIVE relay! Starts 2

Re: TCEC Stage 1 - Season 3 (90m + 30s) LIVE relay! Starts 2

Re: TCEC Stage 1 - Season 3 (90m + 30s) LIVE relay! Starts 2

Re: TCEC Stage 1 - Season 3 (90m + 30s) LIVE relay! Starts 2

Re: TCEC Stage 1 - Season 3 (90m + 30s) LIVE relay! Starts 2