Alliestein Wins TCEC Cup 6; CCC Tests 'Stockfish NNUE'

The previous post on the world's top two engine-vs-engine competitions announced the most recent winners of both: Stockfish Wins TCEC S18; Leela Wins CCC14 (July 2020). Here's a summary of the final rounds:-

TCEC: The S18 Superfinal finished with Stockfish beating LCZero in the 100 game match by a score of +23-16=61. • CCC: CCC14 was a double-elimination event, meaning that an engine had to lose two matches to be knocked out of the competition. Lc0 beat Leelenstein in the 'final' match but since this was Leelenstein's first match loss, the two engines played a second 'final' match, which Lc0 also won. The CCC then conducted a series of 'Post-CCC14' matches, most of them featuring a new 'Stockfish NNUE' engine.

I discussed 'Stockfish NNUE' in last week's post A Chess Monsterpiece (July 2020), and noted, 'Lc0 beat Stockfish NNUE in a 200 game match [...] A second trial is still underway.' What else has happened in the last two weeks?

TCEC: In Cup 6, the AI/NN engines dominated. Alliestein beat Stockfish in the semifinal round, then beat LCZero for the cup title. Stockfish beat Fire for third place. S19 kicked off with various flavors of Stockfish against various flavors of LCZeroCPU, followed by other forms of testing. S19 should start with the Qualification League in the next week.

CCC: In an event called 'More Chesse-Play', consisting of three closely contested 200 game matches, Lc0 beat both Stockfish-NNUE (+1) and Stockfish (+5), while Stockfish-NNUE beat Stockfish (+1). After a few more Stockfish-NNUE matches, where it clobbered weaker engines, the CCC announced AlphaZero Match Will Be Replicated In Computer Chess Champs (chess.com):-

While Chess.com can't bring AlphaZero out of hiding, we will be replicating the full AlphaZero vs. Stockfish 8 match in the Chess.com Computer Chess Championship. The open-source Leela Chess Zero will be standing in for AlphaZero. Anyone who has seen Leela's recent games could be forgiven for mistaking her for AlphaZero.

The match should start and finish during the next week. The current version of the underdog is Stockfish 11.

[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]