TCEC/CCC Bonus Events

Two weeks have passed since the previous report on the two top engine-vs-engine competitions: TCEC FRC Leagues; CCC11 R2 Underway. To summarize the situation at that time:-

TCEC: 'Cup 4' finished with Stockfish beating LCZero for 1st place (+1-0=7). After 'Cup 4', the TCEC held a series of chess960 (FRC) matches; Stockfish beat AllieStein in the Superfinal by a score of +10-0=10. • CCC: CCC11 R1 finished with Stockfish 3.5 points ahead of second place Leelenstein. R2 is underway.

What activities are the TCEC and the CCC organizing today? In a word, 'bonus' events:-

TCEC: The site is running a series of bonus tournaments; the current event is titled 'Viewer Submitted Openings Bonus 4', with eight engines. The relevant channel command informs,

!bookbonus • If you want to submit an opening to potentially be included in a future Viewer Submitted Openings Bonus (VSOB), see pinned message in #bonus-arena in !discord. Current openings at wiki.chessdom.org.

This was the first time I had seen the TCEC Wiki, so I added the it to the page of 'TCEC/CCC Links'. What's next for TCEC?

!next • 'N' bonuses where N >= 2 from {SF vs. Lc0 with S16 Sufi openings, VSOB5, ...} 30min + 5s. Then S17 testing followed by S17.

As for S17:-

!s17 • Tentatively set to December 2019. Delay due to a possible sponsored hardware upgrade.

Other commands overview S17 tentative plans: 'S17 Qualification League (unofficial)...', 'S17 L1: Not announced yet', etc.

CCC: CCC11 R2 finished with LC0 3.0 points ahead of second place Stockfish. Guest engine Lc0-dev, mentioned in the previous report, finished third, but is not allowed to advance to R3. The following chart gives a bird's-eye view of the R2 results; for a larger version, see 'TCEC/CCC Links'.

In last week's post, 'Fat Fritz' by Albert Silver, I wondered,

How long will it take the computer chess world to pit Fat Fritz against the battle-hardened competitors in the series of TCEC/CCC events?

After CCC11 R2, the CCC ran two matches:-

+16-6=80, Stockfish - Fat Fritz
+14-5=83, Lc0 - Fat Fritz

While the results aren't particularly encouraging for AI/NN engine Fat Fritz, the matches were against two of the top-ranked engines in the world, one a traditional CPU engine, the other an AI/NN GPU engine. As the chart for CCC11 R2 shows, the final ranking in a multi-engine, round-robin tournament can depend heavily on how well the top engines perform against the bottom finishers. Let's hope Fat Fritz finds its way into the qualification rounds of the next seasons for the TCEC and/or the CCC, perhaps along with the latest version of Fat Fritz's cousin, Fritz 17.

[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]