Leela Beat Stockfish in TCEC S17 & CCC13 Finals

Two weeks ago, in my report on two world class engine vs. engine competitions, the title told the full story: TCEC S17 & CCC13 Finals : Leela vs Stockfish. The details were buried in the body of the report.

TCEC: LCZero is currently leading +8-6=25 in the 100-game final match, aka TCEC Superfinal. This extrapolates to a four or five point win for the full match. • CCC: In the 200-game final match, Lc0 has a 10.0 point lead over Stockfish with 40 games left to be played.

Both matches finished as expected.

TCEC: LCZero beat Stockfish with an S17 final score of +17-12=71 (52.5-47.5), just as the extrapolation predicted. The last 20 games had more decisive games than draws, +7-4=9, perhaps due to forced openings that give one side a clear advantage -- in each pair of games the engines play the same opening with colors switched.

TCEC Cup 5 is well underway and has reached the semifinal stage. Stockfish qualified to the final from the first semifinal match, and LCZero is facing Alliestein in the second match. A report for the full event is available on the TCEC wiki, TCEC Cup 5.

CCC: Lc0 beat Stockfish with a CCC13 final score of +19-7=174 (106.0-94.0). Peter Doggers of Chess.com wrote the final report, Leela Chess Zero Beats Stockfish 106-94 In 13th Chess.com Computer Chess Championship. I can't remember Doggers reporting on another CCC event, a reflection on the lack of top-level human events which have been decimated by the global coronavirus COVID-19. His report flagged some of the most interesting CCC13 games.

Since CCC13 ended, the Chess.com organizers have been running a series of exhibition events. A week ago I spotted an event called 'Post-CCC13 CPU Party'. Today I see a notice under the site's Discord announcements: 'CCC13: CPU Semifinal has been abandoned due to lame-ness'. The 'CPU Party' is missing from the archive.

I haven't yet seen any plans for TCEC S18 or for CCC14. I imagine they'll be available, maybe the events will even be underway, by the time of my next report in two weeks. Whatever happens, the crown for top chess engine has passed firmly from the traditional, hand-crafted A/B CPU engines to the 21st-century, self-learning AI/NN GPU engines. There is no reason to expect that the crown will revert anytime soon.

[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]