TCEC S22 L3 and CCC16 Blitz Final Both Underway

Another fortnight means another post in the ongoing engine vs. engine battles at the top of the chess world. Let's first have a summary of the previous post, TCEC S22 Underway; CCC16 Blitz Nears Final (January 2022):-

TCEC: Season 22 Qualification League ('S22 QL') is underway with 14 engines. • CCC: Six engines qualified from the 'CCC16 Blitz Main' event into the semifinal event. Stockfish, Dragon, and Lc0 finished 1-2-3, well ahead of the other engines.

Both competitions have advanced by several stages.

TCEC: The TCEC flagship event is a long, multistage affair. It's useful to have an overview of promotion and demotion rules for the six divisions of the TCEC leagues (from TCEC Leagues Season rules):-

1. Season : The TCEC Season is the premier championship for chess software.
2. Qualification League [QL] : The top 4 engines promote to League 4.
3. League 4 [L4] : The bottom 4 engines relegate and the top 4 promote to League 3.
4. League 3 : The bottom 4 engines relegate and the top 2 promote to League 2.
5. League 2 : The bottom 2 engines relegate and the top 2 promote to League 1.
6. League 1 : The bottom 2 engines relegate and the top 2 promote to Premier Division.
7. Premier Division : The top 2 engines promote to the Superfinal and the bottom 2 engines are relegated to League 1.
8.1 Infrafinal : Head to head contest between the 3rd and 4th place of the Premier Division. [...] The winner of the Infrafinal is the official 3rd finishing engine of the TCEC Leagues Event.
8.2 Superfinal : Head to head contest between the winner and 2nd place of the Premier Division.

Since the previous report, 'S22 Underway', both QL and L4 have finished and L3 is underway. Young 'Berserk', which finished 9th-10th in S21 QL, won S22 QL and L4 and is currently third among 12 engines in L3.

CCC: After the 'CCC16 Blitz Semifinal', Dragon and Lc0 played a 466 game 'CCC16 Blitz Challenger' match for the right to meet Stockfish. Dragon won the match with 'plus-nine' and is currently getting pummeled in the 466 game 'CCC16 Blitz Final', where Stockfish is a few games away from clinching a massive victory. CCC plans for the near future are unknown.

[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; Dragon = KomodoDragon]