TCEC Stage 2a - Season 3 (150m + 30s) LIVE! Starts 18/5

[Martin Thoresen]

TCEC Stage 2a - Season 3

http://www.tcec-chess.org/stage_2a.php

STARTS WEDNESDAY MAY 18TH @ 19:00 CEST

Official discussion thread: http://www.tcec-chess.org/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=126
NB: You need to be registered in order to participate or view the discussion on the official site.

For live chat please visit http://chessbomb.com/
NB: Don't pay too much attention to their built-in computer analysis since it's running multi pv which slows it down considerably.

Participants:
Rybka
Stockfish
Junior
Naum
Spark
Sjeng
Critter
Gull

NB: Engine updates are allowed only until the tournament starts,
and then the engine version numbers will be added.


Info:
CPU: Intel Core i7 980x @ 4198 MHz
MB: Asus Rampage III Gene
RAM: 12 GB Corsair
OS: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
Threads: Up to 6 per engine.
Tournament length: 56 games.
Tournament type: Double round robin.
Openings: Randomly selected from the new TCEC main opening book.
All openings are fixed to 10 moves and analyzed by Rybka & Houdini on the TCEC computer for 4 minutes per opening.


Time Control:
150 minutes + 30 seconds added per move for the whole game.


Graphical User Interface:
Type: ChessGUI
Resign: +/- 7.50 eval for 5 moves in a row (both engines)
Draw: An eval of +0.05/-0.05 for 5 moves in a row (both engines - only possible at move 30 or later)
If there is a pawn advance, or a capture by any kind, this draw counter will reset
Ponder: Off
Hash: Max 4096 MB per engine
Endgame tablebases: For any engine using these, all 3-4-5 men are available (Nalimov, Gaviota etc.)
Endgame cache: Up to 256 MB

For complete information on the rules and hardware, see the Information page.


Misc:
Stage 2a is half of the qualifiers from stage 1. The top 4 finishers will
move on to stage 3 while the bottom 4 are out of TCEC for this season.

Complete season 1 archive: http://www.tcec-chess.org/archive_s1.php
Complete season 2 archive: http://www.tcec-chess.org/archive_s2.php

For news and updates check the News Forum regularly.

[Martin Thoresen]

Now live!

http://www.tcec-chess.org/stage_2a.php

[Jouni]

I hate seeing 5 piece draws played for hours and hours (Naum - Spark), totally waste of time and energy, should be outlawed immediately Even if one engine can lose draw position no effect to total result. But otherwise TCEC is the most interesting cc tournament by far, Martin

Jouni

[Martin Thoresen]

I hate seeing 5 piece draws played for hours and hours (Naum - Spark), totally waste of time and energy, should be outlawed immediately Even if one engine can lose draw position no effect to total result. But otherwise TCEC is the most interesting cc tournament by far, Martin

Jouni

Jouni,

Yes I agree, but in general people didn't want to let the GUI adjudicate TB positions due to the problem that some engines don't use TBs.

In any case, there was a hardware problem making Naum - Spark stop
so I have decided to manually adjudicate that game as a draw.

Also, this problem might be the cause of the SF crash yesterday, so
I have resumed SF - Critter from the last position.

The hardware issues should be resolved now, hopefully there won't be
any more trouble.

Best,
Martin

[Martin Thoresen]

Standings after 2 of 14 rounds:

Code: Select all

N Engine         Pts   SB   J N S S S R C G 

1 Junior 12.5    1.5  1.50        =   1     
2 Naum 4.2       1.5  1.00          =   1   
3 Stockfish 2.11 1.5  0.25              = 1 
4 Sjeng c't 2010 1.0  1.25  =       =       
5 Spark 1.0      1.0  1.25    =   =         
6 Rybka 4.1      1.0  0.00  0             1 
7 Critter 1.01   0.5  0.75    0 =           
8 Gull 3683      0.0  0.00      0     0     

[Martin Thoresen]

A minor update to the TCEC site has been made.

1: One separate live page with only the current live game (the LIVE link in the menu).
2: The other stage pages will contain all finished games, and they will be linked in color to the LIVE link.
3: A small timer has been added since the last move was made.
4: The crosstable will now update automatically, you can also click "Update" to force it to update.

This should make it easier for people with a low-bandwidth internet connection to follow the live games.

[Jouni]

IMHO Evaluation Graph is ugly and too big (Screen Size = medium). I would prefer more material balance display. Another thing: Critter seems to be best as blitz player, not in long games?

Jouni

[Martin Thoresen]

IMHO Evaluation Graph is ugly and too big (Screen Size = medium). I would prefer more material balance display. Another thing: Critter seems to be best as blitz player, not in long games?

Jouni

You can now hide the eval graph if you prefer.

[Mike S.]

Critter seems to be best as blitz player, not in long games?

In the CEGT 4/40 blitz list, Critter 0.90 is 4th between Stockfish and Naum, and in the CCRL 40/4 list Critter 1.01 is on the same rank. The ranking doesn't seem to be different from the 40/20 and 40/40 ratings.

Probably Critter has had some "statistical" bad luck at TCEC S3, so far. We see engines overperforming too, like Shredder and also Junior I think. The number of games is small, so we need to hesitate before we draw conclusions about the general strengths under these specific conditions.

Often it's very interesting to kibitz!

[Jouni]

OK finally Critter scored a win BTW if one game is as average 5 hours, when is stage 4 over (I am too lazy to calculate)?

Jouni