TCEC S19 Underway; CCC in 'Pre-CCC15'

Let's start by summarizing this blog's previous report on the world's top two engine vs. engine competitions. The title of that post was Alliestein Wins TCEC Cup 6; CCC Tests 'Stockfish NNUE', and its summary is:-

TCEC: In Cup 6, the AI/NN engines dominated. Alliestein beat Stockfish in the semifinal round, then beat LCZero for the cup title. S19 should start with the Qualification League in the next week • CCC: The CCC announced 'AlphaZero Match Will Be Replicated In Computer Chess Champs' (chess.com). [...] The match should start and finish during the next week.

Both of the 'should start' predictions held true. Following is the current status.

TCEC: Before the start of Season 19 (S19), the TCEC announced its format:-

!next • Now QL, then L3, then testing for L2+L1 including also Stockfish (NNUE) as test opponent, then L2, L1, DivP, Sufi.

It's cryptic, but if you know that QL = Qualification League and L3 = League 3, etc., you understand that the organizers are following the same format they used in S18. An engine with the oxymoronic name 'SlowChess Blitz Classic 2.26' won both QL and L3 by significant margins. The site is now in 'testing for L2+L1'.

CCC: The 'AlphaZero Simulation Match' finished with Lc0 beating Stockfish 8, which was the version of Stockfish used in the 2017 AlphaZero - Stockfish match. Nowhere could I find a W-L-D count of the 200 games from the match and I didn't feel like counting them myself, so here's Chess.com's display of the match.

Stockfish won five games, while Lc0 won a lot more than that. A back of the envelope calculation using the final score of plus-64 yields +69-5=126. A follow-on match Komodo vs. Stockfish 8 was won by the Dragon with a score of plus-30. After that match ended, the CCC started running a series of 'Pre-CCC15' events. A preliminary document showing the planning for CCC15 is available, but is too cryptic to understand. The name will be 'CCC 15: Bullet II' and it should start this week.

[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]