20 December 2021

KomodoDragon Wins TCEC Swiss 2; CCC16 Bullet Semifinals Underway

This is the last post of the year covering the world's two foremost, ongoing engine vs. engine competitions. Following the usual format of posts in this series, here's a summary of the previous post, TCEC Swiss 2 in Final Round; Stockfish Wins CCC16 Rapid (December 2021):-

TCEC: The 'Swiss 2' event is now in the last of 11 rounds. KomodoDragon is a half point ahead of Stockfish and LCZero. The tournament will finish in a couple of days, to be followed by 'FRC4', a chess960 event. • CCC: The site is currently running the 'CCC 16 Bullet' tournament, which is in the 'Qualification' stage.

Following is the current situation.

TCEC: KomodoDragon won 'Swiss 2', a point ahead of the two engines mentioned in the summary. The runners-up in 2nd/3rd places finished 1.5 points ahead of the next group, which placed 4th through 7th.

The site is currently conducting 'FRC4 Testing', preparation for the next event, which has been running for over a week. For more about FRC4 (chess960), see TCEC FRC 4 (wiki.chessdom.org). The number of engines has increased by 50%, but the extended testing period suggests that not all engines are fully compliant with C960/FRC rules. For posts in this series about the previous FRC event, see:-

CCC: In the 'CCC 16 Bullet Qualification' event, Berserk and two other (tied) engines were promoted into the 12-engine 'Main' event. Berserk was also one of six engines to qualify into the semifinals. Stockfish, Dragon, and Lc0 -- in that order -- are well ahead of the other engines for the two-engine final event.

The emerging star of both brief reports on the TCEC / CCC is KomodoDragon / Dragon. For more about this return from obscurity by the faded star Komodo, see last week's post Komodo Dragon (December 2021).

[For further information from the various stakeholders in the engine-to-engine events, see the tab 'TCEC/CCC Links' at the top of this page. • NB: Leela = LC0 = LCzero; Dragon = KomodoDragon]

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