TCEC Prepares S21 Sufi; CCC in Romantic Mode

After a short break, let's return to the world of engine vs. engine competitions. The previous post was TCEC Prepares S21 DivP; CCC Gives Black a Chance (June 2021). Following is a summary of that post:-

TCEC: There have been no further reports from Chessdom.com since the S21 L4 results. L2, with 12 engines, was won by Pedone. L1, with 8 engines, was won by Igel. The site is currently conducting tests for its Premier Division, 'DivP' in TCEC jargon. • CCC: Are we braced for more unorthodox openings? Yes, we are. After the 'Double Bongcloud' (the junkiest of the junk openings), and the 'Hillbilly Attack', the site is now running an event called 'Mini-Match: Leela vs Dragon, Muzio Gambit', 200 games.

That info is from four weeks ago. Now let's get up to date.

TCEC: After its initial flurry of interest in TCEC, Chessdom.com continued to report zilch. DivP ran for about three weeks and finished as shown in the following chart.

The top two finishers, Stockfish and LCZero, will meet in the S21 Superfinal ('Sufi'). The next two, KomodoDragon and Stoofvlees II, duked it out in the S21 Infrafinal, won by KomodoDragon with a score of +17-5=28, making it the no.3 chess engine on the planet.

The S21 Sufi will mark the fifth consecutive Sufi match between the same two engines. For the previous match, see Stockfish Wins TCEC S20 (February 2021), where I noted,

Stockfish beat LCZero in the S20 Superfinal match +14-8=78, for a convincing final score of 53.0-47.0. The victory was clinched after 95 games. This was Stockfish's third straight victory over LCZero, as documented by the list of posts on this blog that recorded the winners [...]

For a different pair of opponents, we have to go back nearly two years to Stockfish Wins TCEC S16 (October 2019), where AllieStein was the Sufi loser. The TCEC is currently conducting 'Sufi Testing'.

CCC: The site continues to feature offbeat openings. Here is a list of events played since the previous post, where the first three were already mentioned:-

The Hillbilly Attack (10|2)
Mini-Match: Leela vs Dragon, Muzio Gambit (10|3)
The Hillbilly Attack (10|2) [NB: the second event with this name]

Testing Fischer random chess (1|1)
Romantic Openings: Danish Gambit Accepted (3|2)
Allie test 30/06/2021 (1|2)
Romantic Openings: Evans Gambit Accepted (3|2)
Romantic Openings: Urusov Gambit Accepted (5|2)

The numbers in parentheses, e.g. '(5|2)' for the Urusov Gambit, indicate the time control. For that event it means five minutes per side per game plus two seconds per move.

As for the reasons behind the two test events -- 'Testing FRC' (aka chess960) and 'Allie Test' -- mixed in with the 'Romantic Openings', your guess is as good as mine. The site is not particularly focused on communicating with the outside world.

[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]