TCEC: Stockfish Wins Cup 5, S18 Underway; CCC14?

The previous report on the two world class engine-to-engine competitions that I review every two weeks marked a milestone : Leela Beat Stockfish in TCEC S17 & CCC13 Finals. I ended it saying, '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.' As for the details,

TCEC: LCZero beat Stockfish with an S17 final score of +17-12=71 (52.5-47.5). TCEC Cup 5 is well underway and has reached the semifinal stage. • CCC: Lc0 beat Stockfish with a CCC13 final score of +19-7=174 (106.0-94.0). Since CCC13 ended, the Chess.com organizers have been running a series of exhibition events.

Referring to both of those ongoing competitions, I noted,

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.

That 'next report' is now, so let's have an update.

TCEC: In TCEC Cup 5, Stockfish beat Komodo +2-0=1 in the first semifinal match. After four draws in the second semifinal between LCZero and AllieStein, the tiebreak rules came into force:-

In case of an equal score after these four games, tiebreakers will be played out at the end of the Cup round. Tiebreakers consist of additional game-pairs; a decisive pair of tiebreaker games decides a match.

LCZero prevailed in the second of the 'additional game-pairs'. Stockfish beat LCZero +1-0=3 in the final, while AllieStein beat Komodo +2-0=2 in the consolation match.

The following chart shows the many stages of TCEC S18. The link under the chart leads to the larger, original version.

TCEC Season 18 - TCEC wiki
(wiki.chessdom.org)

The Qualification League finished with the engines Counter and Asymptote qualifying into League 3, which is currently underway. For an explanation of the color-coded stages shown in S18, follow the link under the chart for 'TCEC Season 18 Rules'.

CCC: The series of exhibition events continues. At the time of my post two weeks ago, the CCC site was running an event called 'Chesse Gambetts (5|2)', which has since disappeared from the archive. When I checked a week ago, the active event was 'Bullet Match: Stockfish Test (1|1)'. At the time of today's post, the current event is 'ECO MegaMatch! (1|1)' with 1080 games played out of 2099 scheduled (an odd number of games for a match!?).

Can the CCC continue as a viable platform for engine competition? The list of PGN files is only current through 7 March, the Discord tournament results are through 3 May, and the 'CCCC Club' is moribund. A brief Discord conversation from 4-5 May explains,

Q: When will CCC14 start? • A: The Bullet Match, will be in a day or two probably. CCC14 will be worked on during/after that. But as with CCC11, CCC12, CCC13, there will almost certainly be huge delays.

During 13 seasons, the CCC has never settled into a standard format. What will CCC14 bring?

[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]